Family Careers: Rethinking the Developmental Perspective [1 ed.] 9781452247342, 9780803951808

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FAMILY

CAREERS

FAMILY

CARERS

Rethinking the Developmental Perspective Joan Aldous

SAGE Publications International Educational and Professional Publisher Thousand Oaks London New Delhi

Copyright © 1996 by Sage Publications, Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

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Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Aldous, Joan. Family careers: Rethinking the developmental perspective / author, Joan Aldous. p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 0-8039-5179-5 (acid-free paper). — ISBN 0-8039-5180-9

(pbk.: acid-free paper) 1. Family. 2. Family—United States. 3. Life change events. I. Title. HQ734.A385 1996

306.85—dc20 95-41746 This book is printed on acid-free paper.

98 99 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 Sage Production Editor: Tricia K. Bennett



Contents

Preface

xi

Part I: The Family Careers Perspective 1. Following Family Careers

3

Family Development

3

The Uses of Family Development

4

The Plan of the First Chapter

4

Looking In on the Jones Family

4

A Family Development Analysis of the Jones Family

6

An Assessment of the Family Development Framework

7

Family Issues Not Covered

9

The Eclectic Nature of Family Development

11

Making Static Concepts Dynamic

12

A Comparison of Family Development and

Other Approaches to Family Analysis

15

Conflict Analysis

18

Life Course Analysis and Family Development

19

Summary

20

Appendix A: Family Development Methodology

21

Appendix B: A Touch of Class

25

2. Family Time and Its Divisions

29

Family Lives in Family Development

29

Stages and Role Transitions

30

Dividing the Family Career

33

Family Career Models

34

A General Model

37

The Value of Family Career Analysis

42

Summary

44

3. The Family as a Social System

46

An Introductory Question

46

Families as Social Systems

46

Selective Boundary Maintenance

51

Adaptability to Change and Change Initiation

57

The Family as a Task Performance Group

62

Task Performance Over the Family Life Cycle

67

Summary

68

4. The Making of Family Roles

70

Family Interaction Structures

70

Family Composition Variables

70

Birth Order and Family Interaction

73

Age and Gender Composition

73

Family Structures and Role Performance

75

Role Making and Role Behaviors

77

Role Conformity and Family Social Control

78

Interaction Structures

81

Power Structures

81

Communication Structures

84

Affection Structure

85

The Interrelation of Interaction Structures

88

Social Class and Family Structures

91

Summary

92

5. Developmental Tasks for Families and Individuals

93

Tasks and Stages

93

The Individual Developmental Task

93

The Family Developmental Task

97

Limited Linkages

99

Uses of the Developmental Task Concepts

102

Developmental Task Research Issues

105

Summary

108

Part II: Couple Relations Over Time 6. Couple Beginnings: The Establishment of Intimate Commitment

113

The Partner Subsystem

113

Love or Arranged Marriages

114

Changes in the Family Formation Transition

115

Why Marry?

119

Developmental Tasks and Establishing Couple Relations

124

Limited Linkages to Marital Outcomes

127

The Cultural Context of Permanent Availability

and Marital Stability

130

Getting Married in the Context of the Family Career

131

Summary

132

7. Couple Relations and Parenthood

133

The Parenthood Transition

133

Childless Couples

134

Parenthood as Transition

135

Variation in the Parenthood Transition

140

Bringing Fathers Into Parenthood

141

Children and Divorce

144

Single Women and Parenthood

144

Single Men and Parenthood

147

Summary

148

8. Partner Relations During the Child-Rearing Years

149

What Is Coming

149

The Demographics of the Marital Career

149

Marriage and Personal Happiness

150

Marital Quality During the Child-Rearing Years

151

A Summary of Factors Related to Changes in Marital Quality

156

Remarriage and Marital Quality

157

The Long Arm of the Job

159

Summary

164

9. Alone Again: Couples When Children Grow Up

166

The Middle Years of Marriage

166

Couple Relations and Adolescents

166

Couples and the Departing of Adult Children

169

Myths and the Reality Concerning Midlife Couples

171

Marital Breakup in the Postparental Period

174

Summary

177

10. Elderly Couples and the End of the Family Career

179

Closing Years

179

A Demographic Description

179

Developmental Tasks for Elderly Couples

181

Retirement and Marital Quality

183

Kin Contacts

186

Being Grandparents

190

The Last Transition

192

Summary

193

Part III: Parent-Child Relations Over Time 11. First Acquaintance

197

Prior Influences on Parents' Socialization Styles

198

Fathers and Child Care

200

Variation in Fathering

202

Leaving Children With Others

205

The Coming of Other Children

206

Socialization in Mother-Only Families

208

Divorce and Its Outcomes

208

Married Without Children

209

Summary

210

12. Child Rearing in School and Work Contexts

212

Families and the World Outside

212

Preschool Experience and the Primary School Transition

212

Parental Socialization and Primary School Performance

214

Work and Family Life

219

Hours of Employment

222

Maternal Employment and Child Development

224

Interchanges With New and Former Household Members

226

Summary

233

13. A Time of Transitions: Families With Adolescents

235

The New Age

235

Parent-Youth Relations During Puberty

236

Parents' Socialization of Youths for Adulthood

238

Educational Attainment and Family Relations

241

Family Background and Economic Outcomes

244

Establishing Intimate Commitments

245

Precocious Parenting

246

Leaving Home

247

Summary

250

PartTV: Sibling Relations Over Time 14. Sibling Relations From Givens to Choice

253

Kin Ties That Last

253

Sibling Developmental Tasks

254

Growing Up Together and Apart

254

Siblings and Divorce

257

Learning From Siblings

258

Siblings in Adolescence

260

Siblings in Adulthood

262

Siblings in Old Age

265

Summary

267

15. A Summing-Up

268

Final Thoughts

268

Getting It Together

268

Recurrent Themes

271

Families in the Present Era

273

In Conclusion

274

References

276

Index

295

About the Author

301

Preface

§§§ An observer could characterize what has happened to the family scene in the United States over the past several decades as a trans­ formation of seismic proportions. There have always been other families besides the garden variety of husband, wife, and children, just as women along with men have long contri­ buted to the domestic purse. Among presentday families, however, there are, in addition to nuclear families, sizable numbers of singleparent households: some due to death of a spouse, others resulting from divorce, and still others the outcome of parenthood out­ side of marriage. In addition to the other family groups, there are stepfamilies and co­ habiting partners. All of them can be labeled families, because they constitute intimate residential units of some duration joined by blood, marriage, or custom and are usually to some degree economically interdependent. Also, with a majority of women joining the paid labor force, regardless of marital or paren­ tal status, breadwinning is no longer associated with only one gender, although homemaking largely continues to be. Family Careers: Rethinking the Developmen­ tal Perspective is the result of just that—a rethinking. To take account of these changes in families, I have had to expand and modify

the family development framework to demar­ cate the expectable sequences, transitions, and outcomes of the various families present in the current era. The thought I have devoted to this task, along with the research I have examined, has convinced me that in the lives of families there are continuities in the midst of transformation. Otherwise, how could we gauge the degree of change? Consequently, I am able to write of the patterns that charac­ terize different family composition types from their formation until their dissolution. The framework enabled me to trace the careers of domestic units, whether initiated by mar­ riage, by living together, or by parenthood, until their dissolution due to the death of a partner, a divorce, or children's leaving home, often to begin their own family careers. To do all this in the following pages, I present in the first segment of the book the concepts that differentiate family development from other approaches to understanding families. The next sections contain an ap­ plication of the concepts to what research tells us about turning points within the family subunits. In my discussion of them, I begin with an analysis of the patterns in partner relations over time, followed by my depiction of the expectable shifts in the interrelations of xi

xii parents and children. Both these sets of chap­ ters cover long periods of time. Marriages and intergenerational relations after children have left their parents' hearths can be measured in decades. This is also true of sibling interac­ tions, but the lack of research on this subject limits my consideration of this trajectory to one chapter. Using the method of presenting the careers of partners, parents and children, and sib­ lings separately has distinct advantages. Take partnership relations as an example. By con­ sidering the relation at its inception and then looking at the shifts that the coming of chil­ dren entails, I can compare those with children and those who do not make this transition. I am able to focus on the partners and the quality of their relation as it modifies or breaks and re-forms within the context of parent­ hood. Similarly, in applying family develop­ ment analysis to parents and children, I can discuss not only parents without partners and their children but also two-parent families, whether the parents were biological or step­ parents. These different family sequences all occur within the contexts of parents' work and children's school attendance, as indi­ cated in these chapters. In turn, the chapter on siblings provides an opportunity to con­ centrate on what can be the most durable of family ties as affected by relations with parents, partners, and own children. After putting together all the pieces of concepts and research relevant to the family development framework, I am more than ever convinced of its usefulness in making sense of the family puzzle. To convince others of this, I have tried to make the presentation clear, informative, and thought provoking. To help accomplish these goals, I have included a number of quotations from letters I have received, comments from interviews, literary excerpts, and questions to advice columnists. These illustrations and my own explanations of family development are designed to sus­ tain the interest of readers and to pique their curiosity. My hope is that you will want to continue reading and so learn about the per­ spective. After all, it is not an inconsiderable talent to know something about what to ex­ pect in family lives over the extended periods of their existence.

FAMILY CAREERS

Acknowledgments This book has been a long time in my thoughts. I have correspondence concerning it that dates back more than 10 years. Its slow­ ness in appearing was due not just to the demise of one publishing company committed to the work and another's incorporation into a larger entity uninterested in academic pub­ lishing. Nor was it because of the mounting evidence of fundamental changes in U.S. families, changes that would necessitate a major rethinking and rewriting on my part of my initial venture into exploring family careers. The major difficulty was my own reluc­ tance to put aside other tantalizing oppor­ tunities for the sustained and concentrated effort doing the book would require. I like to have a mix of ongoing projects, so when ideas cease to flow on one, I can turn to another. With a book, I find this is less pos­ sible. I finally decided that if I was ever going to fulfill my pledge to myself and others to work on the book, I'd better finish it. The result is in your hands. That I persevered and reached my goal is due to several persons. Certainly, one of the most important was Linda Williams. She skill­ fully translated my handwriting and arcane notes on how to find portions of sentences on the top, back, and bottom of pages into read­ able typescript. She also patiently checked references and quotations. Adding all of these tasks together resulted in an amount of time that her husband, Joe Williams, estimates to be 14% of her life. I am grateful for her en­ durance, her patience, and her sense of humor. All of them made putting the book together if not always a pleasure, at least a satisfying part of my life. Some time earlier, one of her predecessors, good friend Adele Lanan, as­ sured me she thought the book would be­ come a reality. The memory of those words eased me over a number of difficult writing periods. Tracy Westlake, the successor to Linda Williams, completed preparing the book manuscript for publication. It was into her capable hands that I entrusted final chapter drafts and the responsibility for obtaining the permissions to use excerpts from other writers. My ideas for new charts became a reality thanks to the computer know-how of

PREFACE

Robert D. Woodberry, who built on the work of Paul Perl. Over the years of the book's incubation, Bob, Ruihong Zhang, and Chris­ tine Torgerson did the library work that kept me apprised not only of the most recent U.S. census reports on families but also of articles and books relevant to my subject. The past counsel of Mitch Allen, my long­ time editor at Sage and now publisher of AltaMira Press, encouraged me to keep writ­ ing when my interest was waning. Jim Nageotte, my current editor, provided sound advice when he assured me that no completed books were ever perfect. This statement pro­ vided the rationale for my finally putting an end to searching for the most applicable re­ search study. And editorial assistant, Nancy S. Hale, answered my many questions as to manu­ script format. I continue to find discussions with Univer­ sity of Notre Dame colleague, David Klein, on issues large and small, exciting and thought provoking. He has kept after me to do the book and supplied suggestions that provided crea­ tive sustenance to my thinking and thereby improved it. Reviewers, Duane Crawford, of Texas Tech University, and James White, of the University of British Columbia, pointed out interpretations of research I needed to reconsider and murky writing that weakened my discussion. I am grateful to them, as my readers should be. Another intellectual debt I continue to owe is to Reuben Hill. As my thesis adviser, friend, and former university colleague, he introduced me to the family development perspective and was an unfailing source of ideas and support. His continuing influence is reflected in the book's organiza­ tion and its content. I also want to remember my parents. My childhood was a happy one. My father, a pro­ fessor of agronomy at what was then Kansas State College, delighted in his family. A special treat was when he would take me along to his experimental plots, where he inspected the various strains of grass he was trying to im­ prove. (He was the only person I have known whose doctoral thesis was written before he began his official Ph.D. training.) A strain of grass now bears his name, a tribute to his pioneering work on pasture grasses. I like to think my own interest in research goes back

xiii to those pleasant expeditions. His sudden death, just as he was experiencing the joy of applying his research findings to the droughtfighting activities of the newly established U.S. Soil Conservation Service, was my first experience of great personal loss. That this blow was softened by a host of warm memories is due to the indomitable spirit of my mother. Only as an adult was I able to appreciate what his death must have meant to her, for theirs was a genuinely happy marriage. They used to joke that their only quarrels occurred on moving days, and cer­ tainly my remembrance of family arguments is limited to my own disagreements with my sister. Having to support two daughters and also make a life of her own, my mother set off for New York City and obtained her master's degree from Columbia Teachers College during that institution's heyday. She returned to a position in the Department of Family and Child Development at Kansas State Univer­ sity, where she taught a generation of home economics students about marriage relations and the development and guidance of youths, the latter a course she inaugurated and ap­ plied to her own family. Through her example and those of her friends, it was clear to me that women could lead just as happy lives by writing, doing re­ search, teaching, and traveling as they could being wives and mothers. Consequently, I have never had any difficulty in visualizing women competently engaged in a whole cornucopia of roles. It should be apparent from all this that I have been blessed with a family background that continues to comfort me. Even though my parents are now both gone, I like to think that they would find this book a suitable tri­ bute, and in my mother's case, an addition to her knowledge as a family scholar. Although the people who have helped me in one way or another to put this book together are not responsible for its failings, they have certainly contributed to whatever strengths it has. Because of the kind of persons they are, it has been a pleasure to remember them and all the others who in one way or another made this book possible. —Joan Aldous

PART

I

§§§

The Family

Careers Perspective

1

Following Family Careers

Family Development The goal of this book is to increase your knowledge concerning expectable changes in families throughout their existence using the family development conceptual framework. Family development is concerned with how present-day families live out the months or years they endure and with the alterations they are Hkely to experience. The temporal divisions that are its concern have to do with time as individuals gauge it, not the decades and centuries historians examine. Family de­ velopment concentrates on how families change over their lifetimes. Family careers, which is also the title of this book, is another term for family development and its focus on family biographies. This approach provides markers for dividing families' social clocks into segments. These divisions make under­ standing family biographies more manage­ able than trying to look at them over all the years of their functioning. The first five chapters of the book contain an analysis of the perspective in terms of the concepts that set it apart from other ways of studying families. Quotations and other material from family life illustrate the con­ cepts' meanings and usefulness. As is also true in the second half of the book, these descrip­

tions come primarily from the United States. Although the approach can be applied to understanding what is going on in other societies, much of the applicable research continues to come from the United States. The second section of the book demon­ strates how the family development concepts clarify central questions facing families over time. I apply the concepts to a selection of the relevant studies available to me to give a coherent picture of how this era's families are functioning in living. The differential way of thinking a family careers perspective permits appears in the organization of the chapters in the second section. They do not follow the usual chronological approach. Instead, each subsystem of the family, whether the partner, the parent-child, or the sibling, is followed over time to indicate some of the distinctive transitions each will encounter. This organi­ zation permits me to highlight variations within these units. I can differentiate cohabitants and married couples as well as continuously married couples and those who divorce among partner units. In the chapters on parents and children, I look at single-parent families as well as stepfamilies and the childless. A summing-up of the ap­ proach and its application appears in the final chapter. 3

4

T H E FAMILY CAREERS

The Uses of Family Development Family development and its uses can be of value to you. It should make you a better analyst of families in general and how they change. By learning about them, you prepare yourself to reach beyond your own family boundaries and deal with persons from other families. When you know something about families, you are better able to understand the behavior of people you have daily contact with. There are some readers who are devot­ ing their occupational careers to studying families. The family careers approach should enable them to do a better job of working with families, whether as a member of the helping professions, by looking at families as a researcher, or by talking about families as a teacher. Family development can help you be more objective about your own family. The regu­ larities researchers have found in a number of families can provide a comparison with what went on in the family you are closest to and enable you to make better sense of it. By pointing up both the common elements your family shares with others and the differences, the book gives you a better perspective on the pleasures and the pains inherent in family living and those specific to your own experi­ ences. It may also give you some ideas about how to increase the pleasures and decrease the pains. Greater insight into your own family and the lives of other families is what you can gain from your study of family develop­ ment. It can be a help in getting along in your existing family or the one you are thinking of beginning. By examining expectable transi­ tions and the changes they entail, you are better prepared to deal with them. If you pass on to intimates the insights you have gained on family careers, together you maybe able to ease the disruptions in family life that transi­ tions bring and avoid some of the associated pitfalls.

PERSPECTIVE

for introducing the main features that set it apart. The discussion will indicate the special character of family development. It indicates the strengths that make it useful to students of the family. Families are too complex for students to look at every aspect of them. Fam­ ily development enables us to concentrate on particular family matters. As blinders on a horse serve to limit what it can see, so family development centers our attention on predict­ able changes in the lives of various family types. To explain the approach in family terms, I begin with a description of a mythical family, which I then analyze, using the approach. After covering some of the concepts specific to family careers, the discussion continues with a comparison of it with other ways of study­ ing families. These include exchange theory and the conflict and life course perspectives. This will serve to point up its distinctive charac­ ter, including aspects of family life it does not cover. Because the approach is different, it requires special ways for obtaining the kind of information appropriate for its kind of an­ alysis. A guide to family development metho­ dology is in Appendix A at the end of the chapter. It is followed by Appendix Β on social class differences among families. The following four chapters contain detailed discussions of various critical fea­ tures of the framework. They all prepare you to be a family developmentalist in your thinking. You will then be better able to un­ derstand the application of the approach to the material on the segments of family careers I write about in the second part of the book. These initial chapters provide the concepts for making sense of the way families change over their existence. The examples along the way and throughout the book are there to clarify the analyses and to pique your interest in studying families, whether in the commu­ nity, in the clinical setting, in the classroom, or in your own home. Looking In on the Jones Family

The Plan of the First Chapter This beginning chapter presents an over­ view of the approach and what it is all about. Because the family development approach to studying families is distinctive from other perspectives, thisfirstchapter serves as a means

Let us start our study of family develop­ ment with a short case history of the Joneses, a mythical family. A description of some of the events this family has experienced over time in its family career shows the kind of information students of the family look for.

FOLLOWING FAMILY CAREERS

More important, it provides an opportunity to apply the family development approach and to indicate some of the issues it spotlights. The Jones example confronts the abstract world of ideas with the concrete reality of family life. We all know families like the Joneses. They are the kind of people who are the backbone of the nation. They pay their taxes, obey the laws, and are active in the various organiza­ tions that make community life livable and put bread and butter on the nation's tables. If the school needs someone to explain a proposed sex education program to parents, Principal Mary Piatrowski thinks first of Chris and Ed Jones. And the fellows on the 7 to 3 shift at Macroglomerate International see Ed Jones as the natural person to complain to the foreman about the state of the washrooms or the too short break times. He knows his job, and the so-and-sos upstairs listen good when he gets mad. He is also a voice of reassurance in a time of layoffs and rumors that the plant will shut down. Chris Jones is presently a checkout cashier at a local supermarket. Her pay enables the family to make the house payments and put away something for the kids' college educa­ tion. Chris Junior keeps talking about being a lawyer like the woman on her favorite TV program, and she has the grades to be the first Jones to go to college. Chris remains active in local concerns de­ spite occupational and family demands. There is the matter of serving as financial officer for the church, a first for a woman, although Chris is quick to say she's no feminist, just a fair play partisan. She's happy to leave wom­ en's issues to her daughter, who, according to Chris, is feminist enough for both of them. Chris also did some telephoning for one of the political parties at the last election and was so busy at completing her list of names that she almost didn't make it to the polls herself. Meanwhile, back at 301 North Sample, when the front door is closed and everyone is home, life is not all sweetness and light. The Joneses have their share of the worries and disappointments that come with family living, along with the satisfactions that contribute to the family's durability as an institution. Chris comes home tired from her job and tries not to resent Ed's being stretched out on the couch most evenings, watching television and having

5 done nothing toward getting dinner ready. To him, housework still remains women's work, even when Chris is sharing breadwin­ ning responsibilities. Sixteen-year-old Chris Junior, or Tina as she insists on being called, is a credit to her parents, and aside from irritating her father by needling him to do more around the house, is seldom a source of worry. She has gotten over her earlier rivalry with younger brothers, Harry and Eddie, and has managed to stay away from the fast crowd at high school who is supposedly into drugs, fast cars, and sexual intercourse. Harry, though, continues to be a problem. He seems to have never made new friends after the family moved, 2 years ago, into its present three-bedroom home. He was just entering high school then, and the one he attends now is in a different district from where his old buddies are. He doesn't like his teachers and has been known to skip classes, and at least twice that his parents have heard about, he has drunk enough beer to become sick. Both state law and parental rules hold that he is too young to drink. There is also his friendship with the girl next door, who, in Chris's view, has clothes that are too tight and morals that are too loose. Tina vacillates between being Harry's severest critic and, when he and his father are arguing, his staunchest advocate. Ed never was much for physical punishment, especially when he's seen how it doesn't do any good. Like Chris, he's relied on scolding; but now that Harry is older, it seems nothing works— not loss of privileges or reasoning or yelling. The parents continue to hope that some of their daughter's ambition will rub off on their older son. According to the birth certificates, there's only a 14-month difference between llth-grade Harry and 12th-grade Tina, but they're several years apart in maturity. Young Eddie, however, although an un­ planned "accident," is a joy to everyone. Too young at 8 to face woridiy temptations, he tolerantly accepts Harry's supervision in his parents' absence, perhaps because Harry is clearly so fond of him. In fact, Harry and Tina please their parents (and themselves) by taking Eddie to various events, both educa­ tional and entertaining. As for the parents' lives when the kids are not around, there have been some rocky times.

6 Shortly after the change in residences, things got so bad that Chris asked Ed to find some­ where else to live. "We're fighting too much, and it's beginning to affect the kids," was Chris's tearful explanation. The quarrels centered on her wanting to get a job and Ed's insistence that she stay home to devote her time to him and the children. As soon as Ed left for his sister Linda's house, Chris got her present job. Friends and relatives, and especially Linda, urged Ed to give a little and accept Chris's new, more independent status. "After all," Linda pointed out, "you can use the extra money." Ed also found that his brother-in-law's wel­ come was wearing thin, and the lumpiness of the sofa made sleeping difficult. Moreover, he missed Chris and the kids more than he ad­ mitted even to himself. It was only after Ed agreed to Chris's working and also promised to do the weekly grocery shopping and make supper three times a week, however, that Chris admitted she also missed him and his loving. His return home was a triumphant occasion, marred only by Harry's less than enthusiastic welcome. In fact, Ed and Chris date Harry's serious difficulties from the time Ed "got his back up" and tried to make Chris remain at home. Life has gone more smoothly for hus­ band and wife since this troubled couple of months. Sure, there are arguments, but they get smoothed over. Ed really loves Chris and the kids, and Chris didn't relish having to face their disputes, demands, and difficulties alone. True, she continues to miss the kind of sex she remembers they had before Tina was born. Maybe though, she comforts herself, when the children have left home, things will get better. Certainly, Ed is trying hard to be more sensitive to her needs, and they are talking and laughing together more. Ed accepts the lack of excitement in their marriage as something that comes with mid­ dle age. His attention is focused on the dis­ crepancy between income and outgo, a worry that overshadows his contentment with the reassuring routines of television and an oc­ casional night out with Chris. He sometimes wonders why he made such a fuss about Chris's job. After all, her weekly check keeps the fami­ ly financially afloat, and his determination to be boss almost lost him the comforts of home.

T H E FAMILY CAREERS

PERSPECTIVE

While tossing on the uncomfortable daybed in his sister's living room for a month of restless nights, he had a lot of hours to realize just how much his family did mean to him. A Family Development

Analysis of the Jones Family

Now let us see what we can make of this case history, using a family development an­ alysis. Notice that we have information from more than one time period. Without it, we could not use the approach to look at the changes that members can expect in family life throughout its existence. Thus, in exam­ ining what is going on in families with this perspective, we try to determine how the con­ tent and timing of fairly major events, in both individual and family histories, affect family interaction patterns among the members. Events that alter family ways include age markers in children's development signaled by their births, their school progress, and their eventual departure from home, as well as the possible disruption of the marital dyad and the adults' occupational sequences. For the portion of the Jones's family history we read about, these turning points were a residential move, Ed's leaving home, Chris's return to outside employment, Ed's rejoining the fami­ ly unit, and Tina's anticipated departure from home after graduating from high school. Students applying the family development approach to the Jones family would look at the beginning of the family* in this case, the marriage of Ed and Chris, and the accompany­ ing changes their living together brought. An­ other significant family time guidepost would be the coming of children, followed by their entry into and progress through school. We saw how Harry's entrance into a new school, combined with the family's residential move and the parents' difficulties, ushered in a dif­ ferent period in the Jones's existence. The conflict between Ed and Chris that resulted in his leaving home threatened the existence of the Jones's two-parent family unit. If Ed had left permanently, the Jones family would have entered another stage. Like the other periods the Joneses have lived through, this one would have been qualitatively dif­ ferent from the ones preceding and following

7

FOLLOWING FAMILY CAREERS

it in terms of family member behaviors and interactions. New behaviors that family members take on, along with major modifications in exist­ ing roles at such times, usher in qualitatively different periods. One example of such chang­ es was Chris's becoming chief disciplinarian and emotional support giver to her children when Ed left home. These changes were com­ pounded by her new job and Tina's and Harry's having to do more household tasks in her absence. The different interaction patterns these shifts entailed characterized the new family stage when Ed, the husband-father, left home. The social context and historical era in which they live set limits on the Jones's family actions. In their world, as contrasted with that of their parents at the same age, women are more likely to be in the labor force and less dependent on their husbands. Many have to work due to hard economic times. It takes two incomes to make ends meet for lower-income families and to maintain a comfortable level of living for the more affluent. The increasing number of college-educated women also want to put their educations to work. In addition, there also remains the possibility that the one breadwinner will lose his job. But divorce is more an option for unhappy couples when both partners are in the labor force, and with both parents employed, there may be less su­ pervision of young people. They are more sexually active but less willing to marry if the adolescent girl becomes pregnant. Family development differs from other ap­ proaches, because it is concerned with families throughout their lifetimes, not just at one point in time. Their beginnings and endings and the fairly expectable qualitative shifts in family interdependencies in between are its working stuff. The distinctiveness of the family development framework comes from the concepts and issues that are its particular concern. This book is devoted to presenting them. With this information, you, too, can participate in the endeavor to understand families. Because knowledge is so dependent on the concepts that organize our subject matter, let us examine the intellectual tools we propose to use and the context in which we propose to use them to analyze expectable temporal changes in families.

An Assessment of

the Family Development Framework

EXPECTABLE CHANGE SEQUENCES

From the previous application of family development to a short family history, some distinctive features of the framework that make it valuable for studying families stand out. One such feature is its emphasis on somewhat expectable changes over time in families. These include the coming together of couples and, for most, the birth of children and their even­ tual departure from the home. Other quali­ tative changes occur if families are created through births to unwed mothers or if parents divorce and one or both remarries. Another change is when the parents leave the world of work at retirement. Thus, family development is set apart from frameworks that analyze families as they exist at just one point in time. When Evelyn Duvall and Reuben Hill (1948) were first thinking about this framework in the late 1940s, certain regularities were mani­ fest in family life. Nuclear families, twoparent families with children that endured until death separated the spouses, were the model and the actuality in U.S. family life. Divorce and childlessness were at low levels, and the golden age of the traditional family in the 1950s was about to occur. Husbands were the breadwinners, and wives were sup­ posed to be homemakers. Times change, how­ ever, and families in the present historical era are not so much alike. A number of other types have joined nuclear families as repre­ sentative U.S. families. As a consequence, this analysis of families using the family develop­ ment approach represents a fairly complete rewrite of an earlier book (Aldous, 1978). At present, families get started in several ways. Most persons continue to marry, but others choose to remain single or opt for cohabitation. Intimate partners may include two persons of the same gender as well as the customary heterosexual couples. The com­ parative lack of information on homosexual partners, even as to their number, largely pre­ cludes their being discussed in this analysis. Couples, through choice or infertility, may remain childless. Some also get started through the birth of a child to a single woman.

8 The end of many a marriage comes through divorce; although if children are present, it is not the end of the family unit. Death of a partner or members leaving home in a oneparent family does lead to the dissolution of a family. The family formation process starts again as adult children cohabit or marry or as a divorced person remarries. Consequently, not all families follow the same sequence of events. Some cohabiting couples may separate and never marry, other couples may marry and remain childless, and some women may have children without a partner. Divorced parents remarry and add their children to those of the new spouses in blended families. There are also class and ethnic differences in terms of age at marriage, as well as fertility patterns, children's years of schooling, job participation, prevalence of di­ vorce and remarriage. Thus, different family types may follow a variety of living paths in terms of the timing and type of family events to which the family development approach alerts us. In addition to contrasting these different patterns in family life, we can also determine whether there are underlying stage regularities that crosscut family composition, class, and ethnic differences. Chapters in the second part of the book contain discussion of fairly com­ mon regularities such as the family changes brought about by the coming of children and their leaving home or the divorce and sub­ sequent remarriage of one of the parents. Thus, the changes family development em­ phasize are those occurrences that large num­ bers of families experience with the passage of time. This feature also entails another one. In studying families such as the Joneses, we can examine how the timing and content of past stages in individual and family histories af­ fect present interaction patterns. For ex­ ample, Chris and Ed married right out of high school, and Chris quit her job 6 months later, when she found she was pregnant. Due to the timing of these events, Ed had little oppor­ tunity to become accustomed to her having her own paycheck, with its associated indepen­ dence. This past history affected later family interactions when two of the children were adolescents and Chris wanted to reenter the labor market.

T H E FAMILY CAREERS

PERSPECTIVE

Family development also enables us to look at particular segments of the family life cycle to determine the special stage characteristics that make them distinctive. In other words, what is there about the way husbands and wives, and parents plus children, get along during the childbearing period that sets this period apart from others in the family career? How do husbands and wives interact after children leave home, and what are their trans­ actions with these adult children that makes this a separate segment? And are there regu­ larities in the transition period from marriage to divorce and the immediate postdivorce period? Family development provides answers to such questions by highlighting the differ­ ent characteristics of these periods. It enables us to categorize together families living through similar happenings, dealing with similar crises, and trying to fulfill similar developmental tasks in particular stages (Mattessich & Hill, 1987, p. 445). SOURCES OF CHANGE

Family development also possesses the ad­ vantage of viewing families from without as well as from within, with respect to sources of change. We can place the family in its societal context and historical era to obtain the outer perspective on change. Family members are linked to the broader community of educa­ tion, government, work, and welfare in­ stitutions through the participation of family members in them. Events such as a family member's taking a job or a child's entering school and progressing through the various education divisions bring these outside influ­ ences into the family. As Chapter 5 will show, in connection with the concept of develop­ mental task, these transitions often associated with chronological age specify certain tasks members must take on and shifts in the con­ tent of ongoing functions that families fulfill for their members at those times. Working women balancing job and child care duties are seldom conscious of their roles as ambassadors linking two different worlds. Yet these ongoing transactions be­ tween families and other groups in society, mediated by participants in both arenas, lead to family life change. To take one example, many companies experience the so-called 3

9

FOLLOWING FAMILY CAREERS

p.m. syndrome. It is a time of telephone tieups, when school lets out and mothers are checking to ensure that all is well with their children. No longer at home to see for them­ selves that the children are safe, they have changed their supervision from direct obser­ vation to indirect auditory techniques. These family member community trans­ actions, however, are two-way affairs. Family matters spill over into other settings." 'Obvi­ ously,' " reported Jeanne Milstein, a program manager for the Connecticut State Depart­ ment of Human Resources, in reference to the 3 p.m. syndrome," 'in places that provide day care that doesn't happen' " (Libov, 1986, p. 3CN). It pays company officials to take account of such family issues. Employee morale is higher, with less absenteeism and turnover, when workplaces allow for the needs of fam­ ilies through means such as providing day care facilities. Changes also come from the internal dy­ namics of family living. These include family composition events such as marriages and the coming of children and their leaving home. Even these seemingly internal events, how­ ever, can be affected in their timing and frequency by historical trends in the social environment. Couples hurry marriages when men are going off to war but postpone them when times are hard. An example of the latter appears in the poignant letter of "Little Girl" to advice giver, Martha Carr, in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch of October 16, 1931. It details the consequences of the Great Depression of the 1930s for couples wanting to marry. 1

"I am 20 years old and am engaged to a fine boy who is 21. Unlike most boys, he realizes that it is not right to monopolize me and keep me from going with other boys, because he is not working seriously and cannot afford to take me everywhere or to marry just now." (quoted in Modell, 1988, p. 185) Marriage rates rebounded in the pros­ perous 1950s, but persons are marrying later in the present era. Young people, especially women, are less dependent on marriage to meet their needs. Factors in today's social environment such as women getting more education, their higher labor force participa­ tion, and the increase in premarital sexuality

have made singlehood more acceptable. Thus, the internal events that mark off the family clock are affected by wider societal trends. This dual inner and outer perspective on change underlies the sociological nature of family development. We look for similarities in families as groups, similarities in the timing of change, and similarities in transi­ tions between stages and the stages them­ selves. The focus on the social influences on family units from member interactions, or their activities in other organizations, means that family development is less concerned with individual characteristics than the organiza­ tional properties of families. When we study what goes on in families, we look at the chang­ ing roles members play over time as partners, parents, or children, as well as how the resul­ tant interactions and interdependencies are shaped by societal factors such as the job market. To take one example, the alterations that have made the role of breadwinner a part of both wives' and husbands' positions in middle-class as well as working-class and lower-class families loom large in our dis­ cussion of marital relations. To account for women's employment, social factors such as the cost of living, job availability, and women completing more years of education play a part. We look at internal family factors affecting women's employment, such as husbands' feel­ ings about their wives' employment, whether women are married, the age of their children, and the availability of child care facilities. We generally do not take women's cognitive skills and personality characteristics into consider­ ation as influences. Our interest, in other words, lies in whether the Chris Joneses of the world decide to get a job due to their education, family finances, marital power considerations, and children's abilities to take over family tasks and self-care. We leave it to other ap­ proaches to look at individual reasons such as intellectual flexibility, valuation of self-direc­ tion, and need for achievement that affect women's job seeking (Kohn & Schooler, 1983). Family Issues Not Covered The above discussion of family develop­ ment has suggested issues it does not handle. We have just seen that its selective approach

10 emphasizes members playing roles within and outside the family that affect family interaction. Their particular psychological characteristics are less relevant. Along the same lines, family development leaves to other approaches the study of in­ dividual activities that have little relation to family roles. Family development is much in­ terested in the interweave of members' par­ ticipation in the broader community as it impinges on families. The availability of jobs, their pay, work schedules, and schooling requirements that limit how persons fulfill family responsibilities and determine family routines are part of the subject matter of family development. Family development does not cover nonfamily aspects of the life course of individuals (Elder, 1985) or events affecting them that do not impinge on the lives of other family mem­ bers. How individuals mediate and combine the demands of their various roles as family mem­ ber, worker, student, citizen, and religious adherent is an area apart from family de­ velopment. Its focus on families and family subgroups, whether the couple, the parentchild, or the sibling, leaves unstudied indi­ vidual life trajectories in other organizations such as the workplace. The approach is a temporal one, with time measured in weeks and years. Family stages take blocks of time. The period when youths are leaving home, for example, involves a number of months. It covers the transition weeks when elders and youths are thinking about the coming departure and modifying the ways they relate to one another in prepa­ ration for it. The actual departure also strings out as youths move away gradually, return­ ing periodically for vacations or family get­ togethers. Thus, family development does not customarily deal with minutes or hours, un­ less short periods of interactions become habitual and their consequences affect stages and stage timing. Repeated shouting matches between a daughter and her mother, leading to the daughter's prematurely leaving home, is an example of short episodes between parents and children that lead to breaks in family careers. Just as family development does not focus on short interaction sequences, so does it also not cover broad sweeps of historical time

T H E FAMILY CAREERS

PERSPECTIVE

(Hareven, 1984). Its concern is with the tem­ poral careers of families as they exist in the present era within the existing social context. Not for us is an analysis of how couples paired off among turn-of-the-century bluecollar youths compared with their presentday counterparts or how widows managed the child-rearing period a half century ago as contrasted with contemporary single parents. The approach is not ahistorical, however. As discussed earlier, it necessarily takes into account those specific historical factors, oper­ ating in the present era, that set limits on what families of different durations can do. Younger families are more likely to be affected by histori­ cal events and to consequently become agents of social change. Less tied down by jobs, home ownership, and children but with fewer accumulated resources than families farther along in their careers, they are more apt to use the disadvantages they experience as oppor­ tunities to depart from parental ways (Ryder, 1965, p. 848). Accordingly, family development must take into account the stages families are in when they experience particular historical events. The double-digit inflation period of the late 1970s and early 1980s provides an il­ lustration of this point. It affected families differently, depending on where they were in their life cycle stage at this time. Inflation had litde adverse effect on married persons 25 to 34 years of age. In their childbearing or early child-rearing years, they were already estab­ lished in the labor market. Their incomes kept up with inflation. Because they were also often home owners, inflation "cheapened" their mortgage payments. In contrast, single persons, just-married couples, one-parent families, and older couples with adolescent or adult children suffered from inflation. Many of the youthful singles and newly married were recent entrants into the labor force, at beginning pay scales, and felt the squeeze of rising prices and low wages. Single mothers in low-paying jobs or out of the labor force due to child care demands also were at a disadvantage. Older couples might have benefited from less costly money to pay off consumer debts, but the failure of their wages to keep up with the rising cost of living left them with litde money to take advantage of the opportunity (Aldous, 1989).

FOLLOWING FAMILY CAREERS

The Eclectic Nature

of Family Development

Now that you have some general idea of what family development is about and its strengths, it is good to look in some detail at the characteristics of its analytical tools. These concepts center our attention on features com­ mon to a number of seemingly disparate families. The ideas they represent, as summar­ ized in their labels, enable us to concentrate on relevant similarities that unite a number of different groups, objects, and events. The concept family, for example, abstracts certain common features from a large variety of different groups. These commonalities con­ sist of the following: membership based on mutual consent, blood, or adoption; the pre­ sumption of a relatively long duration for the group, usually including a common resi­ dence; and functions that the group per­ forms for its members and for society, such as physical maintenance, social control, morale maintenance, socialization, and procreation. Seemingly diverse groups—such as a woman, her daughter, and her daughter's son; a man and a woman living together in a consensual union for 6 years; a married couple and their two children; two women sharing a common residence jointly owned; or a blended house­ hold consisting of a remarried couple and one child from her previous marriage and two children from his—can all be categorized as families. The definition does not limit families to two generation groups so that parents and children are always present. Rather, it recog­ nizes that in the present era, the intimate relations involved in living together can in­ clude just one generation. This would include couples who have always been childless, those whose children have left home, and homo­ sexual partners. Although economic inter­ dependence in some form or another tends to be a family characteristic, the increasing participation of women in the paid labor force has modified the physical maintenance func­ tion. Partners break up more easily when both are employed and the women are less finan­ cially dependent on the men. The increase in commercial services also makes men less de­ pendent on women for domestic care.

11 Family development as a means for study­ ing families is often referred to as a conceptual framework. This simply means that it pro­ vides a particular vocabulary of interrelated concepts that hang together and point to cer­ tain aspects of families (Hill &Hansen, 1960). The special nature of this vocabulary and the assumptions underlying it lie in the graphic view of temporal change in families it presents. Assumptions that characterize the framework include the following: 1. Family behavior is the sum of the previous experiences of family members as incorporated in the present and in their ex­ pectations for the future. Thus, families are currently constrained by what went on in the past. A different period does not mean a com­ pletely new start. Linkages with the past limit present choices. Members remember past events and these memories affect what continues or shifts in interaction patterns. At the same time, members are conscious of pos­ sible future projects, and their plans for mak­ ing them a reality influence their current dayto-day behaviors. 2. Families develop and change over time in similar and consistent ways. We assume that, despite social class and ethnic and other such differences, we can expect that families in the same stage or stage transition will ex­ perience some similar problems and display somewhat similar behaviors in response. This does not mean that all families follow the same sequence. As we shall see later, single parents, remarried couples, and two-parent families in their first marriages have some­ what different career trajectories; however, family development assumes that families sharing the same stage sequences do display certain behavioral regularities. 3. The family and its members must per­ form time-specific tasks set by themselves and by persons in the broader society. This as­ sumption makes explicit sources of altera­ tions in family lives. Expectable changes in family time come from member demands based on family, school, and work careers along with the social meanings attached to their age. Members press for change due to events out­ side the family and the expectations they and other members hold for themselves within

12 it. These events and expectations occur at particular times that account for the timing and the sequence assumptions of the approach. Family development scholars may well be concerned with issues that other approaches also have something to say about. Family development scholars differ, however, by analyzing these issues within the context of expectable shifts over time in family careers. Because the users of this framework have bor­ rowed a number of concepts from other ap­ proaches to better analyze families, we say the framework is eclectic and shamelessly so. But the borrowed concepts have a particular meaning given by the family development framework. Let me demonstrate how borrowed con­ cepts were modified for family development analysis with its focus on expectable change. To determine whether change has occurred, it is necessary to have a stable point of com­ parison. Thus, I begin this conceptual analysis of families at one point in time. In addition, I will be shifting the analysis from a con­ sideration of families as actual groups of in­ teracting members, my usual focus in this book, to looking at the family as an institu­ tion. In discussing concepts concerning the family as an institution, I am using a level of analysis different from that devoted to an an­ alysis of families as organized groups (Rodgers & White, 1993; White, 1991). An institution usually refers to the values and the behavioral prescriptions to fulfill them that exist in an area fundamental to society. (See Homans, 1961, and Sirjamaki, 1964, for classic discus­ sions of the concept.) The family is essential to society, because it provides the trained recruits that keep societies going. Considering the family as an institution allows me to go to a level of analysis that is abstract enough to get at the similarities among families that may be less apparent at first glance than their dif­ ferences. An institutional analysis also em­ phasizes the unchanging aspects of families because it assumes families conform to be­ havioral prescriptions. I shall begin the analysis with the concepts of position, role, and norm borrowed from the symbolic interaction framework. A posi­ tion consists of a certain location in a social group to which is assigned a collection of rights and duties (Stryker, 1980, p. 54). The concept

T H E FAMILY CAREERS

PERSPECTIVE

of position is linked to the concept of role, because organized coherent patterns of be­ havior centering on some broadly defined activity or roles are tied to particular posi­ tions (Linton, 1936, pp. 113-131). A position is composed of a cluster of roles. Each role in turn consists of a set of norms, which are shared behavioral prescriptions among actors that set off one role from another. Other per­ sons reward or punish the actor, depending on his or her conformity to the norms de­ lineating the roles he or she plays. Consequent­ ly, norms are sanctioned as well as shared behavioral patterns. These concepts—norm, role, and position—are defined in terms of each other, and this interrelation is one of the principal characteristics of conceptual frameworks. Note that they do not refer specifi­ cally to families or to change. When we analyze families with this vocabu­ lary, it becomes more restricted. Husbandfather, wife-mother, daughter-sister, and sonbrother are positions in the family group. A family position, such as wife-mother, in turn generally includes roles such as breadwinner, sex partner, disciplinarian, teacher, and com­ panion. Among these roles, that of breadwin­ ner contains as one norm that a certain pro­ portion of the wife-mother's earnings should go to the family. This norm would also hold for the breadwinner role in the husbandfather position. Making Static Concepts Dynamic Position, role, and norm, when applied to existing families, remain static. They refer to one point in time and provide a basis for comparison to determine whether change has occurred. Family development incorporates these institutional concepts but gives them a change perspective. The concern with system­ atic change added to the concept of position gives us the concept positional career, with its time implication of continuance beyond the present. Placing the role concept in temporal trajectory results in role sequence. When viewed over time, a position consists of a cluster of changing role sequences, and this sequence can be termed a positional career (Färber, 1961). Figure 1.1 contains a diagram of the posi­ tions, roles, and norms in a two-parent family with two children at one point in time. It

13

FOLLOWING FAMILY CAREERS

Husband-Father Position

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T h e Relations o f Family P o s i t i o n s , Roles, a n d N o r m s

SOURCE: Adapted from Bates (1956), p. 314 (Figure 2) a n d p . 319 (Figure 6).

indicates how norms fit within roles, which in turn make up a position at any one time. The diagram does not encompass the temporal changes that the concepts of positional career and role sequence highlight. For example, the content of roles and the roles themselves, as shown in Figure 1.1, shift for an actual person in the wife-mother posi-

tion. Her behaviors as lover, breadwinner, teacher, disciplinarian, and affection giver differ as the years pass. She adds the role of companion to her children as well as to her husband, and the norms in the role of disciplinarian to her children alter. As they become older, she issues fewer rules for them without talking them over first. She adds the

14 norm of listening to their views and attempt­ ing to gain their cooperation. Otherwise, they are likely to disobey, and she will lose their respect, both negative sanctions enforcing the norm of listener in the disciplinarian role. All these additions, subtractions, and modifica­ tions of norms and roles make up the wifemother positional career. Sociologist Bernard Färber (1961) used the concept of positional career as a basis for characterizing the family as a set of mutually contingent careers. By this label, he referred to events in the life course of individual family members that affect others in the family. Entering school, leaving home, or retiring from the workplace are examples of happen­ ings to individuals that, due to member inter­ dependencies, lead to family change. These multiple-member career courses, their time schedules, and their intersection in the family compose the family career, as sociologist Roy Rodgers (1964, p. 266) termed it, and the name for family development that I use to title this book. Throughout the chapters, to avoid monotony, I use family development, family life cycle, and family career interchange­ ably to refer to the approach. So finally, we have come to the title of the book and its subject matter. The term career is a borrowing from the occupation area, but its idea of expected sequence is useful to us in our analysis of family time. There are certain event progressions that demarcate family existence. The family usually gets started when a man and woman who have left home cohabit. A few years later, they are likely to have children. Both marrying and having babies are family events. Adults have to synchronize their marital and parental careers with their occupations. The children they have also enter the com­ munity through their school attendance. At this transition point in family development, the children's beginning formal schooling, the worlds of both government and education touch families. There are laws that force children to begin their educational careers at certain ages and follow them for a certain number of years. When older, the children leave home. The parents, if still together, con­ tinue their occupational and marital career commitments until retirement eliminates the former, and divorce or death the latter. Note that what is important in these ab­ stract concepts tied to family careers is the

T H E FAMILY CAREERS

PERSPECTIVE

interrelations they point to among members. The social structures arising from persons in their family positions, playing roles with others in the family cast, bring members to­ gether in repeated interactions and are the material of which family life consists (Bates & Peacock, 1989). Power, communication, and affection structures are three examples of frameworks that we will consider later of particular import for creating family groups from individual members. Modifications in these patterns due to the addition or depar­ ture of members, their participation in school, the workplace, and other organizations, and members' aging are what make for family development. Also, as I point out in connec­ tion with role making in Chapter 3, norms in the present era are nowhere near so likely to be as clearly specified and unchanging as in the past. In addition, there are family norms that prescribe change. Parents expect to treat youths differently from children and en­ counter negative sanctions, in the form of offspring's protests and disobedience, if they do not. Family development focuses on the expectable alterations families experience at certain times on the family clock. As a result, there is more flux in families than an institu­ tional analysis would suggest. Something of the flavor of family event sequences is caught in the following counsel­ ing record. Two persons were trying to break away from parental influences to establish their own family career (McGoldrick & Carter, 1984, pp. 180-181). The situation they took to the therapist was this: Carol and Steve had been cohabiting for 3 years. Both parents disapproved of their relation. Carol wanted to get married, but Steve was unsure. They had been engaged three times, but Steve had broken each one. The counselor found the bones of conten­ tion between the two centered on class and ethnic differences. Steve's upper-middle-class, white Anglo-Saxon Protestant family looked down on Carol's lower-middle-class, Jewish family. In turn, Carol's parents were critical of what they saw as Steve's inability to loosen up, and the fact that he was not Jewish. Both wanted to conform to the filial norm of re­ maining on good terms with their parents. After other strategies to settle the couple's arguments failed, the therapist finally told them they would have to try seriously to ob­ tain parental acceptance of the marriage. Only

15

FOLLOWING FAMILY CAREERS

then, she felt, would they both be ready for marriage. Somewhat later, Carol and Steve did marry and left counseling. They maintained contact with their parents despite parental disapproval of the marriage. This continued until the birth of a child, 2 years later, when both sets of parents came around. Here we see the ups and downs in the family positional careers of Steve and Carol. Interactions in their families of origin origin­ ally kept them from taking on husband and wife positions. They already played com­ panion, economic coprovider, and sexual part­ ner roles as cohabitants. After marrying, their positions as son and daughter, with the roles of comfort giver to aging parents, placed their marriage in jeopardy. Only when Carol and Steve added parental roles to their family posi­ tions, making grandparents of their parents, did the two sets of parents become favorable to the union. A family career such as Carol and Steve's, or any other for that matter, is a bit like a heart line. Think of the wavy line on a heart monitor, with the periodic blip due to a heartbeat. Families tend to rock along fairly evenly as long as the multiple careers of their members are synchronized. The blips in family life pop up when change disorganizes family routines or new careers appear. The disruption with established behavioral patterns throws off family routines and the overall family career. Mothers going from part-time to full-time employment after children are in school all day, children leaving home for college, job loss in occupational careers, or the active duty of fathers in the armed forces are such blips that force renegotiation, reintegration, and reconciliation of family roles. The smooth­ ness or roughness of the "fit" in members' positional careers over time determines the continuance or disruption of stages in the family career. A Comparison of Family Development and Other Approaches to Family Analysis We have seen that family careers give a temporal change perspective to studying fam­ ilies. To further emphasize this and other fea­ tures that differentiate family development analysis, it is useful to contrast it with the exchange and conflict approaches to family

analysis. Family scholars created family de­ velopment. This was not the case with either the exchange or the conflict approaches. Both are means for analyzing social relations of all kinds. Their concepts are abstract enough to analyze work groups, religious bodies, and friendship networks as well as families. Be­ cause the concepts of family development are chosen specifically for studying families, this framework is probably less applicable to the analysis of other types of groups. The scope of phenomena it covers is smaller than either the exchange or the conflict perspectives can handle. Neither of those perspectives, how­ ever, is designed to analyze specifically expect­ able change in families over time. Their users tend to concentrate on short interac­ tion episodes rather than on longer existing occurrences. EXCHANGE THEORY

Exchange theory, our first comparison, dif­ fers from both the conflict and the family development frameworks because it has the characteristics of a theory. It consists of propositions stating the association between key variables. Some of these propositions have been tested in the real world. Those that were falsified have been discarded or modified to fit the findings and tested again (Lenski, 1988, pp. 166-167). In contrast, according to Robert K. Merton's (1957, pp. 87-88) theory clas­ sification scheme, the conflict and the family development frameworks are "general orien­ tations." (For a contrasting view, see White, 1991.) Both frameworks consist of a core of related concepts that serve as sensitizing ideas for their practitioners to use in analyz­ ing a particular phenomenon such as fam­ ilies. Propositions linking concepts that tell us specifically what to look for in everyday exis­ tence are less common. For example, there are not many family development propositions relating a particular stage to particular rela­ tionship consequences, such as the generali­ zation that wives tend to lose marital decision-making power with the arrival of children (England & Kilbourne, 1990). The origins of exchange theory lie in both psychology and sociology (Homans, 1961; Thibaut & Kelley, 1959). Its emphasis is on fairly immediate face-to-face dyadic interac­ tions. To bridge the gap between individual

16 actors and groups such as families or between informal groups such as families and formal organizations such as business or government bureaucracies, its exponents look at inter­ changes within social networks (Cook, Emer­ son, & Gillmore, 1986; Ekeh, 1974). In their view, we humans are continually exchanging things with one another. A mother tells her son that unless he cleans up his dirty room, he cannot use the car on the weekend. An attractive woman goes out with a boring man who has hard-to-get tickets to a rock concert. These transactions illustrate the underlying principle of exchange: Both parties are trying to make arrangements that maximize their rewards while minimizing their costs. Some of the assumptions of exchange theory are the following. None of them specifi­ cally has to do with families or temporal change (Nye, 1979): 1. Unless a social behavior has been rewarded in the past, persons will not repeat it. An exception to this assumption occurs when an alternative entails more costs. 2. Persons are satisfied with exchanges in which they receive what they believe they deserve. They are angry if they receive less and feel guilty if they receive more. 3. There is general agreement within a group or society about what is a reward or a cost. 4. Social life demands reciprocity, (p. 7) The kinds of exchanges persons are able to make depend on their resources, the norms that regulate exchanges, and the balance of power in the relation involved. The person seeking an exchange calculates the resources she or he can provide to compensate the other for whatever the first person wants. These resources can take the form of love, service, money, information, tangible goods, or status (Foa & Foa, 1980). The rules of the game also affect the exchange. Norms of fair play are particularly strong in families in which power differences between parents and children and husbands and wives make exploitation by the more powerful family member an everpresent possibility. The individual initiating the exchange has to assess whether the exchange is worth alter­ native rewards necessarily foregone and the possible punishment associated with the ex­ change. Sixteen-year-old Bob wonders if

T H E FAMILY CAREERS

PERSPECTIVE

having the use of the family car for an evening is worth the drudgery of cleaning his room when he could be out playing baseball in the park. After all, he's too big for his mom to make him clean the room, and he doesn't really need the car. But he realizes the fairness norm holds that he help her keep the house tidy. The good-looking woman considers whether a date to hear her rock idol really compensates for her spending time with a man she finds tedious. She has no plans for a long-time relation, so she is not held to the norm of not hurting the feelings of a close friend. These illustrations of a few underlying prin­ ciples of exchange theory prepare us to look at two social exchange propositions to see how its focus contrasts with family development's. Proposition 1. If women perceive a possible unwanted pregnancy to be more costly than do men, then women experience greater costs and fewer rewards than men from sexual in­ tercourse (based on Nye, 1979, pp. 18-19). Following from this proposition, we can de­ duce the following: Proposition 2. If contraceptives are readily available to women, then their perceptions of the rewards and costs of sexual intercourse will be similar to those of men. Notice the linkage of the concepts, costs, and rewards central to exchange theory in these propositions. A theory usually contains a few such empirically tested propositions having to do with a particular issue, such as sexual intercourse. Family development, a conceptual framework, generally has fewer such proposi­ tions. Notice also that neither proposition deals explicitly with expectable sexual be­ havior changes in couples over time, our con­ cern in family development. EXCHANGE THEORY AND FAMILY DEVELOPMENT

We could give these propositions a family development twist. Women's interest in sex provides one example. We would look for periods in family histories when women might be particularly worried about becoming preg­ nant. Such a period is likely to occur when

17

FOLLOWING FAMILY CAREERS

they already have several preschool children. The demands of child care along with house­ hold, marital, and job responsibilities could make women wary of engaging in inter­ course for fear of adding another child to their burdens. The social context of family life plays a part in their fears. Earlier studies showed that many women who married before effective con­ traceptives made family planning possible welcomed the menopause (Neugarten, 1970). Even now, one can find women who are un­ enthusiastic about sex after they have the number of children they want. One 26-year­ old-woman wrote to Ann Landers (1984)," Ί want three children, so, obviously I need more than conversation. After I have my family, I would happily settle for separate rooms. Sex doesn't do a thing for me' " (p. 10b). Or listen to this woman for whom contraceptives don't work: 2

"I can honestly say to you thatfromthe second year of our marriage to the fifteenth, I enjoyed sex as much as he did. But no more. Not one of my children was planned. No matter what kind of birth control we used, something always happened. Five years ago, I got pregnant again for the fifth time. Fortunately, I had a miscar­ riage, so I didn't have to have the baby. But it turned me off sex, and ever since we have big rows over it for the first time in our lives." (Rubin, 1979, pp. 84-85) In today's world, however, most women are able to control the timing and number of births, and their fear of the consequences of sex has diminished. They can enjoy inter­ course during the childbearing years. Another illustration of how exchange theory can be used in a developmental ana­ lysis comes from gender differences in marital power. Power refers to the ability of indi­ viduals to carry out their actions despite the objections of others affected by the indi­ viduals' behaviors. To lay the groundwork for this discussion, I first examine the following exchange proposition: Men are more power­ ful than women, so they receive more rewards and fewer costs from marital arrangements. My rationale for the proposition is that women, even when holding jobs, continue to be largely responsible for household tasks along with member care and nurturance. Men

receive the benefits from these wifely costs. They provide financial support for their wives and families and they receive rewards for shouldering the costs of family monetary responsibilities. But women employed out­ side the home carry both financial and family care responsibilities. This imbalance in mari­ tal rewards and costs occurs because hus­ bands generally have the knowledge resources that come from being older and so maybe more experienced in handling problems. In addi­ tion, they generally earn more than women. Their usually greater size also gives them physical power to get their way. Therefore, the marital bargain in the past among middle-class couples often consisted of an exchange of financial support from husbands for house­ hold services from wives. And wives recog­ nized their dependence: "My husband is seven years older than I am. And that means he's probably going to die before I do. Then what'll happen to me if he hasn't been able to provide for me? I simply couldn't make it on my own. So he has to carry a terrible burden. All these years, he not only has to worry about supporting all of us now, but he has to worry about my future. It's no wonder he's so snappish." (Rubin, 1979, p. 31) According to exchange analysis, an unhap­ py wife may announce an end to the marriage only when she has an alternative source of support by way of a better job or through another man who is willing to support her and her children. Men are less dependent on a particular marriage. Their jobs enable them to get along financially if their marriages dis­ solve. Being unlikely to have custody of any children resulting from the unions, they are less tied down by these continuing responsi­ bilities after divorce. This advantage and their usually greater financial resources enable men to manage as single persons and seek new partners more easily. Women have less money to tide them and their children over if their marriages end. They are more dependent on a particular partner relation. Thus, men gener­ ally have more power in marriages (England 8c Kilbourne, 1990). As long ago as 1913, novelist L. M. Montgomery (1913/1976) recognized the situation when women lack other life alternatives than a marriage partner. She has a character say," 'When Dorcas Sloane

18

T H E FAMILY CAREERS

got married last summer, she said if she'd had enough money to live on she'd never have been bothered with a man, but even a widower with eight children was better than living with a sister-in-law' " (p. 135). Exchange propositions, when associated with family time, are applicable to family development. We could deduce from the previous discussion that women would be at their greatest disadvantage with respect to possession of bargaining resources in the child­ bearing period. Child care responsibilities make it more likely they would have to cut back their labor force activities. Although, by the 1990s, 68% of married mothers with chil­ dren under 6 were in the labor force, just 28% worked full-time year-round. This compared with the 78% of married mothers, with chil­ dren aged 6 to 17, who held jobs and of whom two firths were in full-time, 12-month work (Bianchi, 1994, Table 1.4). In terms of exchange theory as specified by family development, wives in this child­ bearing period would be more dependent on husbands for financial support. They would have to provide more family nurturance and household care services even when their part­ ners were disagreeable. Their marital satisfac­ tion should decrease at this time, a hypothesis supported by longitudinal studies, because of the greater costs they sustain to obtain the rewards of economic security (Belsky, Spanier, 8tRovine, 1983).

Conflict Analysis Higher divorce rates, the women's rights movement, and the revelation of the extent of child abuse and marital violence have led scholars to focus on the management of conflict in family interaction (Morgan, 1985; Steinmetz, 1987). Characterized by concepts such as oppression, exploitation, and aliena­ tion, drawn from the theories of Karl Marx, the conflict perspective points to the darker side of family life. It is concerned with mem­ bers' confrontations over scarce resources, incompatible goals or conflicting means to such goals, and the combinations of these that underlie much family behavior. The approach assumes the following. Notice that change appears in these assumptions, as

PERSPECTIVE

in those of family development, but is not applied specifically to families: 1. Persons are concerned with their own selfinterest even at the expense of others. 2. All societies experience a scarcity of most necessary resources. 3. The ongoing confrontations between and within social groups provoke most social change. (Sprey, 1979, p. 132) The conflict perspective emphasizes the dif­ ferential perception of family arrangements that members in the various family positions possess. Built-in family inequalities with respect to age and gender can lead to exploita­ tion by the more powerful members, simmer­ ing struggles, and the alienation of members. Child abuse is only an extreme instance of parents' power to control their children, a power recognized by church and state alike. In addition, many persons, including women as well as men, continue to accept the 19th­ century belief that husbands have the right to enforce obedience from their wives, by physical violence if necessary. Only recendy have law enforcement officers begun to inter­ vene in domestic violence cases to prevent wife battering. Take the situation of Tracey Thurman who lived in a small Connecticut town. As reported in a newspaper article (Kurtz, 1988, p. 10), she called the police on June 10,1983, because her 350-pound husband was threaten­ ing her. By the time the police officer arrived 25 minutes later, Charles Thurman was holding a bloody knife. This officer waited several minutes to arrest Thurman, and in these minutes, Thurman kicked his wife in the head repeatedly. The failure of the law en­ forcement officers to protect Mrs. Thurman on this and other occasions, a failure consis­ tent with traditional beliefs, led her to sue the town, and she won a substantial settlement. Even in cohesive families, however, although family conflict is managed before physical vio­ lence enters the picture, disagreements exist that affect members' interactions. CONFLICT ANALYSIS AND FAMILY DEVELOPMENT

Family careers, with its temporal perspec­ tive, looks at conflicts that occur at expectable

19

FOLLOWING FAMILY CAREERS

periods. Transitions between qualitatively dif­ ferent stages in family lives are likely to create stresses and produce conflicts. Demands of family members for change or pressure from external events at these times cause disrup­ tion of family routines. The working out of new routines create situations ripe for mis­ understandings and arguments. Depending on their resources and their interpretation of how well the tentative behavior patterns suit them, family members respond with varying degrees of stress and conflict Stages vary as to the number of stressors, the degrees of stress, and the conflict members experience. One national cross-sectional survey of fam­ ilies at different stages of the family career showed that husbands and wives saw the periods when children were present as most stressful. These years so high in conflict po­ tential were also the ones in which parents' feelings of marital satisfaction and family well­ being were lowest. Comparisons among the periods when children were present showed that families with adolescents had signifi­ cantly lower levels of well-being than other families (Olson, Lavee, & McCubbin, 1988). It is not surprising that the transition period when children are entering adolescence and the stage when they are in it are difficult for family members. As you probably remember from your own home life as a teenager, oppor­ tunities abound for family conflicts to arise. Adolescents see their bodies taking on adult size, shape, and reproductive capacities. These bodily changes have social meaning. Adoles­ cents are convinced they should have greater autonomy and adult privileges, although they are not always ready to accept adult respon­ sibilities. Youths are developing their own iden­ tities, which, they insist, include the ability to decide what behavior the situation they are in calls for. To parents, these changes have different meanings. Their children are getting bigger while the parents are becoming acutely aware that they are smaller and older. Moreover, these clumsy youths, who seem to be half adults and half children, often do not appear to be wiser. Good sense, the older generation may feel, is not necessarily measured in increased weight, height, and interest in sex. Consequently, they can have trouble trusting youthful judg­ ments. Intergenerational conflict is common during this period, with both parents and youths feeling unhappy and ill used.

Life Course Analysis

and Family Development

In contrasting other approaches to studying families with family development, it is good to include the life course perspective. Despite its focus on individuals, it has a number of similarities with a family careers analysis. The life course perspective is concerned with how events individuals experience in families, in school, and on the job provide structure to their lives. These events in sequence create expectations in people and provide choices as to how their lives will go. As in family development, there is a focus on expectable shifts over time within historical periods, but the emphasis is on the individual, not on families. The events occur and the transi­ tions they usher in signal stages in the course of persons' lives. Life course analysis brings together the three metrics of individual lives— social time, which includes family time and historical time (Aldous, 1990; Elder, 1985). The social clocks set behavioral expectations associated with particular ages. Family event sequences are linked to age markers. They provide the individual a standard as to whether she or he is "on or off time" in mar­ rying, becoming a parent, or seeing children leave home (Hill, Foote, Aldous, Carlson, 8c McDonald, 1970). How old individuals are when they live through particular historical periods affects both the timing and how well they will be able to meet the demands of families and other social groups. The Great Depression of the 1930s varied in its effects on children, depend­ ing on how old they were then. A comparison of the lives of males in two California birth cohorts, one born in Oakland in 1920-1921 and the other born in Berkeley in 1928-1929, indicates these differential effects. In both groups, some families experienced substan­ tial economic loss. The older boys, however, were better able to escape the marital con­ flicts, parental irritability, and erratic disci­ pline that parents displayed due to job loss and money worries. These youths were often able to obtain work that took them out of their homes and gave them some independence. The younger boys were dependent on paren­ tal caretaking and so more vulnerable to the disruptive family relationships their worried parents created. The prosperity ushered in by World War II enabled both groups to better

20

T H E FAMILY CAREERS

themselves through education, occupational mobility, and marriage. The younger cohort, however, more affected by their families' dif­ ficulties, were less likely as adults to have had as high self-esteem or to be as assertive as the older group (Elder, Modell, & Parke, 1993). Life course, like family development, is con­ cerned with tracing both expectable events over time in a social context and how in­ dividuals live through them. But to repeat an earlier statement, the individual and not the family is the focus. Family development is concerned with individuals as incumbents of family positions and how their lives in school and on the job affect their interactions with other family members. Unlike that of the life course perspective, its emphasis is on the family unit and how families organize themselves. Life course events based on the social mean­ ings attached to members' chronological ages are important sources of family change. An­ alysis of these expectable temporal shifts in family patterns is central to family develop­ ment, but not individual changes that do not have an impact on families. Summary The purpose of this chapter was to intro­ duce you to the distinctive nature of the fami­ ly development approach as a means for understanding families. Through applying it to a family case history, I showed that the approach is concerned with fairly expectable changes over time in family careers. These changes come from events both within and outside the family, and there may be social class and ethnic differences in family bio-

PERSPECTIVE

graphies. The timing and content of past events that affect present member interactions are other elements of the conceptual framework, as is a study of the special characteristics of particular stages. The discussion showed why family develop­ ment is often called a conceptual framework. It highlighted several of the important con­ cepts in the approach. Its creators borrowed concepts from other perspectives that were useful for a static analysis of families. In their abstract examination of the family as an in­ stitution, they modified the concepts to in­ corporate the change emphasis of family development. I compared family development with exchange theory and the conflict and life course frameworks. The purpose was to point up the distinctive character of family development, despite its containing concepts and issues drawn from other perspectives. It gives them its own particular slant. The remainder of the book is devoted to putting some flesh on the bones of family analysis delineated here. I shall continue to use quotes from persons living in families or in the minds of creative writers to illustrate the discussions. There will also be reviews of research relevant to the family development approach and its application to increase your understanding of it. Family development is not a theory in the sense of a set of related hypotheses that have survived empirical test. Yet as I have shown in the illustrations of family development in this chapter, the ap­ proach will help you make sense of a great deal of family behavior and its predictable change over time. Thus, family development can serve as a powerful analytical device for studying families.

APPENDIX A

Family Development Methodology

Now that you have some knowledge of the essentials concerning family development, it is necessary to consider the information it takes to find out about family careers. The approach ideally demands special data collec­ tion methods. Scanning their catalogue will emphasize the demands required by particu­ lar methods and will supply yet another oppor­ tunity to examine the content of family careers. To keep the discussion from being so abstract, let us apply the various methods to some important family study topic. One such topic concerns the variation in couples' mari­ tal satisfaction over their lifetimes. Newly­ weds are often euphoric about their shared lives. But wives may find so many things on their domestic schedules when children come that they become less happy with the marital state. Couples with adult children, however, often report they have never been more com­ patible with each other. Based on these per­ sonal observations, we decide, as others have in the past, to investigate how marital satisfac­ tion varies with stages in family time (Nock, 1979; Rollins & Cannon, 1974). The question then becomes one of what kind of research

design would be most appropriate for collect­ ing the data we need to study the issue.

Multicontact Designs Glancing through the methods catalogue, you may think the research design choice is obvious. We should choose a longitudinal design. With it, the researcher contacts a rep­ resentative group of couples at set intervals. For our study, we would keep in touch with them periodically throughout the time from the partners' first coming together to their last separation due to departure, death, or divorce. There have been such longitudinal re­ searches in the past. In the late 1930s, family sociologist Ernest W. Burgess contacted and questioned a sample of 1,000 engaged couples. Three years after their marriages, Burgess and his associates talked again with those couples they could contact (Burgess & Wallin, 1953). The third interviews occurred 20 years later, when the couples were still mostly in their child-rearing years (Dizard, 1968). Thus, there 21

22 was information from the couples on their lives together at three different times. Despite the obvious appeal of this longi­ tudinal method, so clearly designed for inves­ tigations of expectable family changes over time, problems and costs have restricted its use. The aging of the original research team is one problem. The expense of repeated con­ tacts, keeping tabs on sample families as they move from place to place, and trying to main­ tain the cooperation of busy participants are other disadvantages. In the later stages, the families are biased toward the middle class, because sample dropouts are more likely to be low-income and less-educated couples. Couple loss due to divorce also leaves more satisfied couples to answer questions. In addition to researcher and sample at­ trition, longitudinal research produces in­ terviewer effects. Couples become wise to questions about how satisfied they are, and this knowledge can affect their answers and their behavior. Finally, cohort effects would restrict generalizing from the sample to couples mar­ ried at other times. The findings are limited to one cohort who experienced societal events at a particular period in their family careers. COHORT A N D PERIOD EFFECTS IN LONGITUDINAL RESEARCH

An instructive example of the difference between period and cohort effects on families comes from the unusual period of the 1950s. To an extent not seen in the years before or since, peoples' lives were centered on families. Not only were they marrying and staying mar­ ried in record numbers, but they were also having more children than in the immediate past. In 1957, the birth rate reached its peak. At this level, the average woman would have had about four children before completing her childbearing period. Presently, the rate is about half that number. A period explanation for these events would be that there was a historical shift in values affecting everyone in U.S. society. According to this view, people of all ages and walks of life, perhaps due to the relative calm and prosperity of the decade following the tumul­ tuous periods of the Great Depression and World War II, gave higher priority to home and family. This changed attitude climate en­ couraged youths to marry in greater numbers and to have more children (Cherlin, 1992).

T H E FAMILY CAREERS

PERSPECTIVE

The cohort explanation, in contrast to the period explanation, emphasizes the unique experience of the cohort marrying in the 1950s. Growing up in the Great Depression years of the 1930s, described previously in the discus­ sion of the life course perspective, they had seen the importance of strong family ties for economic survival. Their own small earnings helped keep the family financially afloat and showed that children were a wise investment (Elder, 1978). In addition, this Depression cohort was small in size, so jobs in the ex­ panding economy after World War II were plentiful. Used to a modest or low level of living in their growing up years, the newly prosperous youths in this cohort opted for early marriage and large numbers of children (Easterlin, 1978). After reviewing the evidence, demographer Andrew Cherlin (1992) concludes that it is difficult to disentangle cohort and period effects on the behaviors of families. Each gen­ eration is shaped by historical events in par­ ticular ways. It is hard to tell whether family change is due to unique cohort experiences (in the example, growing up in hard times and in a small cohort) or to societywide chang­ es affecting every person, regardless of age, in the period in question. In our own hypo­ thetical research, to try to decide whether all cohorts go through the same changes in mari­ tal satisfaction over time or whether they dif­ fer by historical era or by birth date, we would need to follow couples married at different times. Such a strategy, of course, would mul­ tiply the problems with longitudinal studies already described. Longitudinal Design Modifications Studies based on U.S. census data are an exception to this generally negative evalua­ tion of the feasibility of the repeated cohort longitudinal design. The investigator can fol­ low the family event sequences of cohorts born at different periods if their histories have been recorded in the national censuses every 10 years or in current population surveys. With these data, we can see temporal variations in the frequency and timing of events such as marriage, divorce, and childbearing, but we cannot investigate our marital satisfaction issue with these data. We are limited in our study to the questions the Bureau of the Cen­

23

FOLLOWING FAMILY CAREERS

sus asks. Marital satisfaction and many other issues critical to the stability of family careers are not among them. Moreover, the same per­ sons are not followed over time. Thus, we have to turn to other means for determining the changes different families encounter over time. If longitudinal designs requiring multiple follow-ups are laden with pitfalls, a feasible alternative is the segmented longitudinal panel (Hill, 1964). With it, we retain our marital satisfaction topic but focus only on a few theoretically interesting stages, including the transitions linking the periods. For example, we might look at what happens to couples with the arrival of children. One such study sampled a panel of couples expecting their first child. They completed separate spousal questionnaires on the quality of their mar­ riages in the last trimester and at 3 and 9 months postpartum (Belsky, Lang, & Rovine, 1985). The investigators did point out a weak­ ness of this relatively inexpensive version of the longitudinal design: There is no control group of childless couples married the same number of years. Consequently, we cannot be sure whether couple changes in marital satis­ faction are due to the onset of the childbear­ ing period or to the effect of being married a certain number of years. We need a segmented longitudinal design with controlsto determine more convincingly what factors affect marital satisfaction over time. Some years ago, a panel design in a marital satisfaction study included interviews with 400 expectant parents about their mari­ tal satisfaction in the second trimester and twice after the birth of their children, the last time when the infants were 5 months old. In addition, 40 childless couples, married the same number of years, reported on their marital sat­ isfaction at the same intervals (Feldman, 1971). These data permitted conclusions as to whether it was the effect of the arrival of children or marital duration that led to less marital satis­ faction. In this research, it was becoming parents that appeared to be the major factor. Pseudo Multicontact Designs If the short-term segmental design presents difficulties, we need not give up our research project. There are other strategies for obtaining marital satisfaction data across time, one of which is to do a cross-sectional study.

This is the design investigators have most often used to gather information on marital satisfaction over the couple career. They will contact a cross section of couples in various family stages just once and from their respon­ ses draw the course of marital health over the family life cycle. The trend line is "synthetic." The charted line of marital satisfaction over family stages from these studies is based on the assumption that the younger couples, if their marriages continue, will be like the presentday older couples. Another assumption is that couples who go through the same family stages and their associated interaction patterns, regardless of historical period, will experi­ ence similar shifts in their marital satisfaction. Because the design is so much less costly in money and effort for the researcher, it is a pity that the findings are flawed (Hill, 1964; Klein 8c Aldous, 1979). Consider the cross-sectional finding, from the study cited above, that couples with adult children living on their own tend to be more satisfied than couples with children at home (Olson et al., 1988). We cannot assume that when their children are gone, these younger couples will necessarily have a level of marital happiness similar to that of the older couples. For that matter, there is no evidence that the latter, who pre­ viously had children at home, were less satis­ fied then. Historical events apart from stage effects may well have intervened at various periods in couples' family careers to affect their marital satisfaction. Older couples were more apt to have been influenced by the prosperity and emphasis on families of the midcentury era. They may have been happier in their marriages over their marital careers, with less of a decline when children were present, than today's younger couples, married in a less family-conscious era. Also, unhappy couples, whose reports lower the marital satisfaction scores of persons in earlier stages, are more apt to drop out and divorce, leaving only the more satisfied sur­ vivors at later stages. For these reasons, crosssectional studies have received a bad press. Retrospective Designs This method is a somewhat better strategy for studying some family time issues. The time period persons in the sample are questioned about needs to be fairly short; otherwise, they

24 are likely to have memory problems. Couples whose adult children have left home, for ex­ ample, may not remember how their current marital satisfaction compares with what it was when their children were preschoolers. They would probably be more successful in making a comparison of the present period with the immediately previous period, when their children were in the process of leaving home. If recall is likely to be a problem, the re­ searcher is wise to settle for reports in which the respondents present generalities (Larzelere & Klein, 1987). Consequently, we should be aware that what we maybe getting in couples' comparisons of their present marital satisfac­ tion, when adult children have left home, with that in their early childbearing stage are edu­ cated guesses. Couples may also falsify past events to present a particular picture of the current situation. They might want their marriages to appear better at the present time to maintain their own morale, to assure themselves they have been right to stay in their marriages, and to let the interviewer know that they are

T H E FAMILY CAREERS

PERSPECTIVE

not a family with problems. By asking for details, such as specific instances of couple events that led to feelings of marital satisfac­ tion, researchers can try to minimize couples' deliberate falsification of their feelings for social desirability reasons. To conclude, this discussion of the research designs available to family development scholars points up the perspective's focus on change and the expectable breaks in family time it creates. As we have seen, obtaining information on these matters is no easy task. Some designs are more useful than others, just as some create more difficulties. Because the content of this book largely comes from research based on these designs, we research consumers are well-advised to be alert to their limitations. Remember, what we know depends on the state of the family research art, and no design is without flaw. I have tried to find materials for the following chapters that come from the best available studies cover­ ing relevant issues and a variety of family types. I also attempt to alert you to findings where small samples and design flaws suggest that they should be seen as tentative.

APPENDIX Β

A Touch of Class

One last matter needs to be discussed before we go on to the next chapter. It has to do with a characteristic affecting family careers that was referred to throughout this chapter. Vari­ ation in family lives stems in part from social class as well as ethnic and religious differen­ ces. In fact, these differences are often inter­ twined. Much of the research I will be drawing on to support the family development analysis comes from families of different social classes. It is useful, therefore, to have some under­ standing about this important concept. Social classes are present because we live in a stratified society. People are evaluated as being higher or lower in prestige, wealth, and power. The simplest form of stratification is based on age and gender and appears within families. Adults are ranked higher than chil­ dren, and men in most groups continue to outrank women. Family members, however, share a number of features, usually including a name and a home, and are evaluated by outsiders as a unit. A social class is composed of a large num­ ber of individuals who are roughly equal in rank and are clearly distinctive from persons in other social classes. Societies vary on how differentiated their classes are and how much mobility there is from one class to another within one person's lifetime or across the gen­ erations (Gilbert & Kahl, 1982, pp. 17-18). Persons can be ranked on a number of criteria. Max Weber (1947, pp. 425-429) distin­ guished the economic, prestige, and political characteristics of the class system, and Karl

Marx emphasized relations to the means of production. For the economic aspect of social class, we usually inquire about the occupations of the family adults. We hope they will also tell us their incomes from working and about any financial assets they may have, such as their homes and automobiles, savings, stocks and bonds. The prestige aspect has to do with the respect or deference given people. The social honor families are accorded relates to the people they associate with, and researchers ask about this. That birds of a feather flock together is widely accepted. Persons develop similarities in beliefs and behaviors because their contacts are with their equals, not with persons higher or lower in social class status. They live in the same neighborhoods, attend the same schools, and party with the same people. Parents socialize their children into these different class commonalities so that social classes as communities of like-minded people continue over the generations. Social classes also differ in their ability to carry out their will despite opposition (Weber, 1947, p. 180). This differential political power relates to different class consciousness. Mem­ bers of the social classes vary in how aware they are of their own group's self-interest. This variation affects the likelihood of par­ ticular classes organizing to advance their wel­ fare. Those with wealth are more likely to be big contributors to political parties. The well-off are aware, through their tax accoun­ tants, of laws that benefit them. They generally 25

26

T H E FAMILY CAREERS

want to see that the legislators elected will not raise income tax or capital gains rates that work to their benefit. In contrast, the less affluent lack persons who tell them that their self-interest lies in organizing to get out the vote for sympathetic candidates. They are less able to make financial contributions to help political candidates sympathetic to their well-being win elections. Also, because news­ papers and other media tend to be large busi­ nesses, the "litde people" are less apt to have their interests advocated there. Families and Classes What can social class membership tell us about families? It supplies us with useful leads about their characteristics. Here I shall give a short summary of class differences to provide a basic understanding for the later family re­ searches I review that show class differences. The number of classes sociologists demarcate differs. I will cover the often used classifica­ tion that distinguishes the upper class, the upper-middle and lower-middle classes, and the working and lower classes. Like other con­ ceptualizations of class, this one is abstracted from observations. It helps to organize a great deal of data on family behaviors and attitudes. This classification is not "real" in the sense that all families would either agree to the class in which outsiders place them or display the be­ haviors associated with a particular class. These social class categories do represent hypotheses that can be tested by seeing how well these class placements conform to reality (Gilbert & Kahl, 1982, p. 29). I draw on Langman (1987, pp. 222-234) for my brief descriptions. Only the most salient family characteristics appear. They represent a general picture that can capture most families within its frame.

PERSPECTIVE

really at the heights, the upper-uppers, general­ ly have money dating from earlier generations, and they look down on the newly rich. Family lineage provides a source of satisfaction and extensive kinship ties for this first group. Marriages represent the coming together of individuals from families whose ancestors most likely include U.S. senators, early real estate speculators, robber barons, and company founders. Sociologist George C. Homans (1984) pro­ vides a good example of one branch of a particularly distinguished lineage. "My grand­ father," he writes, "John Quincy Adams II, was the eldest of the four sons of Charles Francis Adams, minister to the Court of St. James during the Civil War, and the only one who was not a writer. Charles II (who was also a railroad magnate), Henry, and Brooks all wrote like mad, but my grandfather not a word more than he could help.... Because he was a prominent and able northern Demo­ crat, President Cleveland sounded him out in succession for the secretaryship of the Navy and the ambassadorship to Russia." He turned them down, in part Homans speculates, be­ cause he may not have had "as his namesake and grandfather, John Quincy Adams, con­ spicuously did not, a certain toughness" (pp. 7-8). Whether from the old or newly rich, chil­ dren pair off after meeting at exclusive preparatory schools or Ivy League colleges. Nannies and other paid servants fill in for career-oriented mothers or those who serve as patrons of the arts. Two-parent families are common because property considerations dis­ courage divorce. Wives are especially impor­ tant for hardworking arrivistes. They provide emotional support, cultivate social ties with others of the recently wealthy, and attempt to be included socially with the longtime moneyed families.

THE UPPER CRUST

Let us start at the top of the social class hierarchy with upper-class families. With their large investment-based incomes and positions in the upper echelons of corporations, govern­ ment, and philanthropic organizations, these persons with predominantly white faces can usually afford to keep intrusive investigators away. Thus, we know less about their ways than those of persons from other classes. Those

THE STEADY MIDDLE CLASS

Upper-middle-class families owe their status to occupational achievement. These lawyers, accountants, and doctors, along with middle managers and entrepreneurs, have made good due to college degrees, often in­ cluding postgraduate work. Both spouses are increasingly likely to have careers. They value self-discipline, planning, and com­

27

FOLLOWING FAMILY CAREERS

petence, because their own achievements stem from these qualities. This is the social class where egalitarian marriages, characterized by shared interests, open communication, and marital satisfaction, thrive. As in all the classes, however, more families than in the past are headed by single parents, most often women. Middle-class incomes provide the discretion­ ary income necessary for enhancing family status. This includes good schools for parents' carefully spaced and reared offspring. Chil­ dren's educational achievements are impor­ tant to parents, who are conscious that their own success is based on it. Lower-middle-class families also value achievement in the context of respectability. These small business people, civÜ servants, salespersons, and other lower-white-collar functionaries tend to be traditionalists in gender attitudes, patriotism, and religion. Not completely successful themselves in their own eyes, they iook to their children to make good, according to the American dream, through obtaining advanced education. Families are child centered, and joint fami­ ly activities are common. Wives defer to hus­ bands but retain control over family and personal matters. Less apt to be geographically mobile than upper-middle-class families, they maintain close ties with kin in visiting and helping activities. Parents' concern that their children develop sound characters and get ahead leads them to be involved, often with upper-middle-class parents, in groups such as scouting, PTA, and Little League. HARD WORKERS

Working-class families depend on service or production skills to keep themselves finan­ cially afloat. Theirs are the blue-collar jobs that factory operatives, construction, repair, and maintenance workers hold. Blue-collar workers are proud of their job stability, al­ though seasonal layoffs and unemployment are not uncommon. As one working-class woman reported, " 'My father was always proud of the fact that he never missed a day's work and was never late. I mean it doesn't count when he was laid off. He brought us up to respect work, too, and to be responsible and reliable' " (Rubin, 1976, p. 32). Some working-class families may have the income and education of Iower-middle-class 3

people, but they expect less of their children in the way of social mobility. Adult relations are more important than parent-child rela­ tions. The latter fall within the province of women. Social life is organized around kin­ ship networks, neighbors, and old friends, often from high school. The traditional gender role patterns in bluecollar marriages seem to break down among younger, better-educated couples. This is par­ ticularly true when wives are employed, as more than half of them now are. Exposed to middle-class ideas of marital communication and intimacy, they are often frustrated by their husbands, who retain the traditional male values of reticence and emotional control. Con­ flicts over gender roles in marriage ("Why should I cook and clean when you don't even thank me? And I'm bringing in money, too, you know.") contribute to couples divorcing. THE BOTTOM LAYER

Lower-class families are continually faced with poverty. Parents are often in minimumwage occupations, such as fast-food workers, dishwashers, washroom attendants, and domestics. With less education and chancy employment, they have an intimate acquain­ tance with welfare assistance, hard times, and couple breakups. As a consequence, lives of lower-class families center on making a pre­ carious living. Here is a description of the job history of a lower-class man," 'My father did so many things, I can't just tell you his oc­ cupation. I guess he was a painter, but he did a lot of other stuff, too. It seemed like more of the time, he was out of work' " (Rubin, 1976, p. 32). Due to the continuing effects of racism, people of color disproportionately appear in this social class. The majority of its members, however, are white. Family structure is not based on the conjugal relation. Poverty, with the attendant cramped quarters and arguments over money, contributes to the unstable, un­ happy character of male-female relations. Exchanges among women linked through kinship or friendship, along with welfare checks in hard times, enable mother-children units to survive. Men drift into and out of the lives of women, depending on whether they have a little money to give in payment for domestic and sexual favors. Children look to their

28

T H E FAMILY CAREERS

mothers as the stable elements in their family lives. Mothers are the ones who see to their care and rearing. Men and women do little together because they share few interests.

PERSPECTIVE

concerned about their children's higher edu­ cation than some lower-class families. But these sketches do give a sense of why families may vary according to membership in dif­ ferent social classes.

Summary I end this digest of families and class status with a reminder. These brief sketches of the characteristics of families in different classes are just that—sketches. They describe ten­ dencies, not clear-cut divisions of families. There can be overlap in the behaviors of families in the different classes, just as families within the same class may not share all charac­ teristics usually associated with it. Some middle-class families, for example, are less

Notes 1. FromLibov( 1986).Copyright© 1986byTheNew York Times Company, Reprinted by permission. 2. From Landers (1984). Permission granted by Ann Landers and Creators Syndicate. 3. From Worlds of Pain: Life in the Working-Class Familybyl. B. Rubin (1976). Copyright © 1976 by Lillian Breslow Rubin. This and all subsequent excerpts reprinted by permission of Basic Books, a division of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.

2

Family Time and Its Divisions

Family Lives in Family Development This chapter is concerned with the altera­ tions in family life that characterize the family development framework. These marker events, the transitions involving them, and the chang­ es they bring constitute the analytical ele­ ments that differentiate the framework from other approaches to studying families. Such events include those expectable occurrences experienced by large numbers of families with the passage of time. The discussion begins with a consideration of key concepts in family development related to demarcating periods in family histories. The sequences, followed by a number of different family composition types, come next in the chapter. It concludes with a section on why family career analysis is useful for understanding families. Central to the approach are the terms family career and family life cycle. They both refer to the lifelines of family units from their incep­ tion to their dissolution. As we saw in Chapter 1, the concept emphasizes the interaction of family members over time. Because their lives are led in school and work as well as in families (Färber, 1961; Rodgers, 1964), the interchanges they have outside the family af­ fect what they do within it. At the same time,

what goes on there plays a part in member behaviors in other settings. If we view the family as beginning with the couple relation and later adding the parentchild and sibling subsystems, the use of the term family life cycle is misleading. A cycle, after all, is a repeated sequence of events. The family members before the end of the tradi­ tional family career are the same couple who began the family's existence. Existence over time, however, does not constitute a cycle because the events of a newlywed couple are not repeated by an aging couple. Nontraditional family forms, interestingly enough, offer better examples of family life cycles. Persons who remarry after divorce are said to be "recycling the family" (Furstenberg & Spanier, 1984). They are going to repeat fami­ ly stages, but these differ from the previous time around. Memories, and children, con­ stitute lasting legacies from former marriages, and as a result make the term family life cycle, with its denotation of recurring events, not strictly correct. In answer to an interviewer's question, a man and woman, talking about their decision to remarry, describe how past family events affected the present: Husband: We talked about everything, any possible problems that could come up 29

30

T H E FAMILY CAREERS

over the next so many years. What hap­ pens if... or when if... Interviewer: Were there any discussions with Marge and you about the boys? Were the boys brought in from time to time? Husband: Oh yes. This was something else too that the boys and I, like I said earlier, well, I don't know if I said it, I said I was very fond of the kids but I've always been very close to them and we had discussed a lot of times, should we get married again. Wife: Well, they all asked me to marry them, (quoted in Furstenberg & Spanier, 1984, p. 59) I use the term family life cycle, having warned you of its shortcomings, as an alter­ nate to family career to lessen the monotony of referring to such a central concept by only one name. With either term, I am also much aware that family time is not the same as individual time. The family, unlike the indi­ vidual, is not an organism. It does not have a life lasting from birth to death. A family exists only as long as there are members to fulfill family tasks, whose importance and content vary according to what time it is on the family clock. The member interchanges and their outcomes, which compose a family's career, are on a different level of analysis from an individual member's actions and their conse­ quences. Family careers and their temporal alterations are the result of interactions among members that restructure the family. Stages and Role Transitions The concept of stage will enable us to sep­ arate the family career into the time periods that families may experience. A stage is a division within the lifetime of a family that is distinctive enough, in its cluster of interac­ tion patterns, from those that precede and follow it to constitute a separate period. This sort of difference underlies the use of stage to describe divisions in a sequential process (Brainerd, 1978; Flavell, 1982). The use of the term indicates that the framework does not specifically handle short episodes encom­ passing a limited number of interactions. These shifts are caught up in such concepts as role sequence, defmed in Chapter 1 as the changes

PERSPECTIVE

in the content of a role over time. Family career stages cover sizable time spans, and although transitions link one stage to the other, there are breaks or discontinuities between them that give each stage its distinctive character. The alterations in family organization that characterize each new stage produce qualita­ tively different periods. Families in the same stage are organized to face similar problems in fulfilling the tasks that keep them functioning. These problems differ from those of previous stages and re­ quire different family interaction patterns to meet them. There are similarities that show up in the content of the roles in the family positions and the resultant interactions of members of families in the same stage, despite ethnic, class, and compositional differences. It is this commonality that makes the family developmental approach and its emphasis on stage analysis of the family career useful in understanding families. Here, again, as with the term family life cycle, I want to emphasize that family stages are not like the developmental stages of organ­ isms. They are not invariant or irreversible (Rodgers, 1962). There is nothing inevitable about a particular sequence of family stages. And unlike the use of stage in connection with the maturation of individuals, its use in connection with families does not connote an idea of progression (Levinson, 1986). Periods in family development do not necessarily rep­ resent improvement in family interactions. Cohabitation, births outside of marriage, di­ vorce, and remarriage are events that create different models of family development. For this reason, I shall use the terms category, period, and stage interchangeably to signify that family stages do not have the properties usually associated with developmental stages in an organism. ROLE TRANSITIONS INTRODUCE FAMILY STAGES

To determine where to make stage di­ visions, the concept of role transition is help­ ful (Rapoport, 1964). These transitions mark discontinuities sufficiently great in the be­ haviors of individuals and families to cause alterations in family structures. Pressure for change comes from individual family mem­ bers or outsiders, who, in interacting with

FAMILY TIME AND ITS DIVISIONS

members, force breaks in existing behavior patterns so that a new family stage occurs. Role transitions can be used to delineate the family career stages for two reasons. First, a number of family members are direcdy in­ volved, and second, because of family inter­ dependencies, those not directly experiencing the role transitions are soon caught up in the behavioral restructuring. The role changes result in new social contexts within which family members interact. They have different expectations of themselves and others as a result of shifts in self-concepts brought about by the new roles. When the family is in a new stage, the roles in each family position are significantly changed in content Thus, the positional roles of the family members tend to be qualitatively different at each stage in the family career. The label role transition suggests that specific events do not separate one family period from another. Rather, the event instituting the change represents a period of transition in which families are developing new routines to replace those disrupted by it (Borne, Jache, Sederberg, & Klein, 1979). New patterns are not established immediately, just as old ways do not cease all at once. There is a period when families flounder, search for, and try out new ways before remaking their roles and "set­ tling" into new behavior patterns. The role transition period links stages and represents the discontinuities in behaviors that individ­ uals and groups usually experience at certain intervals of their existence. It is these "inter­ missions" that allow us to tell time on the family clock. In most societies, getting married, having children, seeing them leave as adults, divorcing, remarrying, and experiencing a spouse's dying constitute such critical turning points in the positional careers of family mem­ bers. These events disrupt behavioral regular­ ities that have to be reconstructed. People expect this with some transitions, such as marriage and parenthood, and usually have a choice in going through them. They can pre­ pare themselves for the interaction restruc­ turing involved. But other breaks in family careers, such as the untimely loss of a partner through divorce or death, can create more upheaval and longer transitions before new family structures are negotiated. Regardless of how much prior expectation, preparation, and role rehearsal there may have

31 been for changes, the individuals and groups affected encounter the experience with some uncertainty. This is particularly true in our own society, where social change has been rapid and where there is questioning of tradi­ tional role prescriptions. These transitions do open the way for individuals to make new roles. The positive aspect of these transitions, however, is often hard to see. Divorce is an example. Because in the present era between two fifths and one half of 25- to 29-year-olds who marry will eventually divorce, it is not an uncommon event (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1992a, p. 5, Table C). Yet if one of the partners continues to love the other, divorce consti­ tutes a crisis for the partner despite knowl­ edge of the spouse's discontent. The mate who gets left has no choice in the transition that breaks off the marriage. Critical role transition points may also be characterized as "points of no return." Other people redefine individuals as they do them­ selves so that once they have passed the transition point, they are never the same. The divorced individual, for example, cannot recover the never-married status. As the British sociologist Rhona Rapoport (1964, p. 42) pointed out some years ago, once married, the woman loses for alltimesher culturally defined virginal status, and the man cannot again regain the position of never-married bachelor. For this reason, custom-conscious observers frown on pregnant or previously married brides wearing white. Along the same lines, partners may choose to leave a marriage, but they will not lose the label ex-spouse. If they marry again, their previous status intrudes. They do not marry; they remarry. And when we talk of the individual man or woman divorcing, if they have children, each continues to be caught up in intermeshing first-marriage family ties. Getting married for the first time is a good example of a critical role transition period. The new spouses have moved from the son or daughter positions, in their families of orien­ tation, to spousal positions in the new family of procreation that they create by their mar­ riage. Substantial shifts occur in the couple relation. New living arrangements on a neolocal basis and new relational patterns dif­ ferentiate the social context of marriage from what went before. Parents and sibs must cope with these changes in their kindred's affection patterns and in their living arrangements.

32 The behavior structures of new couples must also develop to accomplish marital tasks. Previous arrangements are no longer sufficient, and every couple has to create comfortable ways of getting along. Couple interaction is tentative, because spouses try out new ways of getting along and experience conflicting expectations and disagreements. Communication and power patterns have to be worked out so that mutual socialization into marital roles can occur. Domestic task arrangements within the home and demands of the occupational world must be integrated to facilitate family tasks of physical main­ tenance. Fortunately, the honeymoon period of being in love often keeps morale high as the couple searches for mutually satisfactory routines. Remarriage, too, can constitute a critical role transition point for the partners involved. True, they had previously added partner, and often parental, roles to their family positions, but in subtracting partner roles through divorce, they established different interaction regular­ ities with parents, peers, and children. These postdivorce adaptations will be disrupted with the remarriage, just as at least one partner will have to change addresses. The remarried couple must also work out new routines. This process is complicated by one or both partners' consciousness of failure in the previous venture and fear of a repeat experience. In some cases, the presence of children who per­ ceive the new partner as a threat to parentchild closeness is an added complication. These carryovers from the past increase ten­ sion in the role making demanded by the remarried stage. Some of the flavor of the stress involved in the remarriage transition is caught in this couple's conversation: Wife: He said, and I've said this many times, I'm willing to go through another di­ vorce but I'm not willing to go through another bad marriage. The divorce isn't half as bad as a bad marriage. Husband: That's right. Wife: So we're both committed to that and we're also committed to working at this one. I think the thing that I've learned is to be myself and not to be somebody different because somebody else expects that of me. (quoted in Furstenberg & Spanier, 1984, pp. 62-63)

T H E FAMILY CAREERS

PERSPECTIVE

Getting married or remarried as critical role transitions for demarcating family stages have to do with events in the positional careers of persons as spouses. Their roles in school and work life also contain critical role transi­ tion periods. Such occupational changes as demotions, promotions, and unemployment represent such periods in the job world. With respect to education, entry into and gradua­ tion from school at various levels can be criti­ cal role transition periods. The individual in­ volved in these family, work life, and school careers has to synchronize their demands, just as the various career changes of other mem­ bers have to be reconciled. They all lead to the family's development over time. Accordingly, the crafting of family interdependencies and their modification with the onset of different stages is affected both by events in these ex­ trafamilial careers of members and by family happenings. THE TIMING OF ROLE TRANSITIONS

When people go through family event tran­ sitions varies by age cohort, ethnicity, and social class. The timing of marriage and first births has fluctuated in this century according to when individuals were born. The median age for marriage falls within a narrow range of years in the early 20s for women and some 2 to 3 years later for men. Birth of the first child follows in around 2 years. U.S. census data show that the median age at marriage dropped from 22.1 for women born early in the cen­ tury (1910-1919) to 20.7 for those born in the 1940s (Norton, 1983,p. 269,Table 2) and rose again to 24.4 in the early 1990s (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1992c). Historical events affect this variation. Hard times in the Great Depression years of the 1930s forced young people to postpone mar­ rying. Better economic circumstances in the 1950s enabled young people to marry earlier. The later trend toward more women pursu­ ing college educations and their greater par­ ticipation in the labor force presented women with alternatives to marrying. As a conse­ quence, they postponed doing it. But within these broad timing variations in family events associated with historical events, ethnic factors play a part. The cohort of women born during the 1930s, who were old enough by the 1980s to have completed their marrying and childbearing, provide an

FAMILY ΉΜΕΑΝΏ

ITS DIVISIONS

example. White and black women tended to have married at about the same median age of somewhat before 21 years, and Hispanic women married 1 year later. But African American women began childbearing more than 1 year earlier than the other two ethnic groups and had more children on average. The median ages at marriage were 20.6 years for white women, 20.9 years for black women, and 21.7 years for Hispanic women. The median ages at first births for the same three groups were 22.5 years, 20.9 years, and 23 years, respectively. The median number of children for black women was 4.46, 3.25 for white women, and 3.8 for Hispanic women. Social class reflected in ethnic differences also affects family event timing. Advantages in in­ come or education that women possess give them alternative roles to marriage. They tend to be older when they marry. Poorer and lesseducated women who marry earlier have more children on average (Norton, 1983, p. 271, Table 8). The family career events of divorce and remarriage are also affected by social class factors. We have just seen that the higher the income and education level, the older women are when they marry. In turn, the older they are when they marry, the less likely they are to divorce and remarry (Bumpass, Sweet, 8c Cherlin, 1991). People who put off marrying appear to be more satisfied with their choices. They have had more opportunity to survey the field, along with greater maturity and resources to make the relationship they finally establish work. So timing of marriage is re­ lated to the likelihood of the transition out of it through divorce. Historical events also affect the prevalence of this transition. Changing values leading to greater public acceptance of divorce, the higher proportion of women in the labor market, and smaller families are factors that make divorce today less a last-ditch alternative than it used to be. Divorce rates are consequently up in cohorts coming of age since the 1960s (Cherlin, 1992). Dividing the Family Career Having looked at ethnic and social class variations in the timing of family events in this century, we are now ready to see how family careers can be divided into segments.

33 Families experience a number of critical tran­ sitions over time that force them to modify the way they are organized. In fact, one can say that family ties are never static but always under construction. The scripts that are pre­ pared, played out, and reshaped in intimate relations are affected by member interdepen­ dencies and by the environing world in which members participate. Major changes occur in family size, age composition, and status as with cohabitation, marriage, and parenthood. Members' job and school involvements and their participation in other outside organizations can also force family restructuring. Some of these altera­ tions are so disruptive to established routines that they constitute critical transitions. Other less major changes encourage family reor­ ganization only if they occur together in a relatively brief period. A parent's job change requiring the family's relocation and an ado­ lescent's entering high school are examples of coinciding events that would disrupt cus­ tomary family routines. Researchers have looked for those family transitions in areas of interest to them. Con­ sequently, their stage schemes have categories that provide answers to the researchers' ques­ tions. These different timetables for dividing family careers point up their arbitrary nature. There is nothing inevitable about the ways in which persons divide family time. True, some events create such turning points from what went before that most schemes include them. Marriage, the arrival of children, and their later departure from parental families are ex­ amples of such events. But there are other family clocks. If the purpose of the family development researcher is to focus on the couple relation, he or she may add to a cate­ gory of married couples with children, cohabitants (perhaps homosexual as well as heterosexual couples) and childless couples. Family stages, however, are not just useful for researchers. We all recognize and come to count on the sequence of family events that con­ stitutes family careers. It provides a life script that serves three functions for us (Hagestad, 1986). It gives us a comfortable sense of pre­ dictability in our sense of what makes up life. For many years, persons counted on the large portion of the sequence devoted to families to follow the order of marriage, parenthood, children leaving home, and finally, death of the spouse.

34 Family careers also give us standards of comparison. There is a saying that every man in his lifetime should take a wife, have a child, plant a tree, and build a house. This saying captures the flavor of family event sequences. We can gauge our progress through life by using such standards to compare how far we have come and where we have yet to go in our own family pilgrimages. Last, by following the expected order of events, the breaks between stages are less stressful, less crisislike. We can call on the experience of our forebears or that of peers who are proceeding with us through family careers to help us make sense of the family calendar. The importance of the support and pre­ dictability that orderly family careers give to life appears when sequences are thrown into disarray. Divorce at middle age can produce such a disorder in family lives. Interviews with nearly 100 couples who had divorced after 20 or more years of marriage and about 40 college students whose parents had recent­ ly divorced showed just how much upset this late break in the family life cycle created in the lives of its members (Hagestad, 1986, p. 689). The words of one man expressed his dismay at the breaking off of his family career:" 'Just as I was getting ready to spend time with my family, I found that I didn't have one.' " And a male student pointed up the loss of personal security his parents' divorce created when he said," 'If things didn't work out [at college] I could have always gone home. Where [now] I don't have a home to come home t o ' " (Hagestad, 1986, p. 690). Most persons, throughfolkknowledge, have been aware of there being an expectable se­ quence of family events. The first individuals to use the family development approach sys­ tematically to make sense of family behavior were concerned with the incidence of poverty over family lives. Following the early work on the poor of London around the turn of the century (Rowntree, 1906), researchers during the Great Depression of the 1930s looked at how changes in family size and composition affected the economic status of families (Loomis, 1936). The first stage they singled out for their family career model was that of the childless couple in their first jobs, whose finances are adequate but low. In the growing family stage, the married couple is dogged by financial difficulties as children arrive and

T H E FAMILY CAREERS

PERSPECTIVE

must be fed and clothed. There are fewer financial problems in the contracting family stage that follows. Children become wage earners, who contribute to the family purse, or they leave home. The final stage is that of the aging family. With no family breadwinner, finances are once again low. Changes in the nuclear family's ties to the economy continue to influence students examining family change over time. More recent studies again docu­ ment how family size and composition affect liability to poverty. Families headed by single mothers and those with more children are particularly likely to be poor (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1993b). Stage models possess a number of similar characteristics. Each stage is qualitatively dif­ ferent from the preceding and succeeding one. Stages can also be repeated. The transitions that separate stages when new structures are being worked out affect all family members. Even when only one family member seems to be directly involved, as in a child's entering school, the intercontingency of member careers leads to a spillover of behavioral chang­ es affecting the whole family. Moreover, whether the stages involve two-parent or other family forms, stage divisions maybe ushered in by several transitions. The oldest child's entrance into primary school, for example, might be associated with the birth of the last child, residential changes to accommodate the growing family, and a job change for one parent. Table 2.1 indicates, using a traditional fami­ ly life cycle model, why new stages are charac­ terized by qualitative breaks in behavior from what went before. They require transitions in between them when members are adding new roles or modifying the content of existing roles. Sociologists Helen Mederer and Reuben Hill (1983, p. 53) label as the family role complex the totality of roles being reworked and con­ tinued in the family positions involving the partner-parents, children, and siblings during the turning point and stage period. Family Career Models TRADITIONAL FAMILY CAREERS

The main focus of family development analysis has been on significant alterations in

35

FAMILY TIME AND JTS DIVISIONS

TABLE 2.1 Sequences of Critical Transitions Generated by Changes in a Two-Parent Family Role Complex Possible Role Complex Changes Disengaging from sibling and filial roles Leaving parental residence Leaving school Taking job

Type of Critical

Transition

1. Getting married

Taking o n marital status Changing friendship network Taking o n an in-law status Arrival of infant member changes family dyad to triad Taking o n parental status with father and mother roles activated Kinship network reactivated (grandparents, aunts, and uncles) Residential change to accommodate infant needs

2. First parenthood

Oldest child enters school Youngest child born Residential changes to accommodate growing children's needs

3. Transactions with schools and neighbors

Oldest child shifts orientation to peers, disengagement from family Youngest child enters school Life cycle squeeze of deficit financing

4. Disengagement of children from parental family

Oldest child leaves school, enters labor force Oldest child leaves home Oldest child marries Youngest child disengages from parents and shifts to peers for behavior guides Parents become in-laws

5. Children leaving home and entering jobs and marriage

Change in residence to smaller quarters Return to dyadic pattern Retirement from active parenthood Taking o n roles of grandparenthood

6. Companionate marriage and grandparenthood

Retirement from labor force Couple more interdependent Residential status change to nursing home resident

7. Retirement

SOURCE: Based o n Mederer a n d Hill (1983, p . S3). Copyright Ο 19S3 b y Haworth Press. Adapted with permission.

the internal organization of married couples who, at some time in their marriages, are engaged in bearing and rearing children. The stages of this model have centered on the parental career within the context of mar­ riage. I shall begin my discussion of family life cycle models with a look at the widely used stage classification of Duvall and Hill to see how the flexible rationale works out for tradi­ tional stable first-marriage, two-parent families. The criteria Duvall and Hill (1948) first suggested for establishing stages were

three in number: (a) change in family compo­ sition, (b) developmental stage of the oldest child, and (c) retirement status of the hus­ band-father. The first criterion refers to period altera­ tions that come with the establishment of the couple relation and the arrival and departure of children. Earlier, we saw some of the changes that marriage brings. There is also a sizable literature on the family restructuring that occurs with the first baby's arrival. When children leave home, wives and husbands

36 develop different relationship patterns to com­ pensate for the vacant positions in the inter­ action structures. The second criterion has to do with the transitions arising from the age and associ­ ated status changes of the oldest child. These include the busy child-rearing years. They cover the period with preschoolers, the time when primary school-aged children are present, and the stage with one or more adolescents. These stages stem from the social meaning we give to age. It is not their age but rather our chang­ ing normative expectations of children as they mature that have much to do with what we expect of them, the skills they will learn, and the behaviors they display in the roles they play. Role prescriptions associated with chil­ dren's ages, which are coupled in some cases with biological changes, produce critical role transitions and lead to family alterations. As the child experiences the critical role transition of school entry, to take one example, parents not only must conform to school scheduling demands but also must accept the influence of teachers and peers on their child's thinking and behavior. Parents have to modify expecta­ tions, reallocate role tasks, and change sociali­ zation attempts in response to the child's new learning and greater autonomy. Duvall and Hill's third stage criterion is based on family states resulting from the en­ ding of the work life career of the spouses. This role transition serves to divide the period after children leave home into the middle and aging phases of a couple's life, the last period lasting from retirement until the death of one spouse. The critical role transition point of job retirement of a husband, a wife, or both, ushers in sharp changes. Lower income affects consumer patterns. More time at home for a couple brings extension of leisure activities and reallocation of household tasks. Because such family events as childbirth can be repeated, stage classifications based on status changes of the oldest child may obscure other critical role transitions. Thus, Rodgers (1962), in an early study using the Duvall and Hill (1948) criteria, found that after 21 years of marriage, some couples in a Minnesota three-generation sample had not only mar­ ried children but also infants. The traditional classification also does not take into account the youngest child's career, which may have a major disruptive effect on family interaction

T H E FAMILY CAREERS

PERSPECTIVE

structures. This critique again emphasizes that stage classifications are guides to family career changes of interest to the user. Families cate­ gorized together by one family stage model may well differ on other characteristics. The advantage of such simplified family career models is that they point to a number of families who share significant similarities that affect their behaviors in substantial ways. THE NEED FOR OTHER MODELS

In the past several decades, there has been a proliferation of nontraditional family forms that require other than the traditional family life cycle models. There has been such an upheaval in the patterns of family formation that individuals are experiencing many more transitions over their family careers than in the past. To quote demographer Arthur J. Norton, of the U.S. Bureau of the Census, "What were once considered to be excep­ tional circumstances are now quite common" (Norton, 1983, p. 274). One family formation alternative associ­ ated with falling marriage rates is increased cohabitation outside of marriage. The num­ ber of individuals who were living with a partner before marriage increased from 11% around 1970 to nearly half for first marriages in the 1990s (Bumpass et al., 1991, p. 914). Divorce has also become a common family transition. Just 15% of persons between 65 and 74 years old in 1980 had divorced follow­ ing their first marriages, and more than 80% of these divorced persons had remarried. In contrast, between 40% and 50% of today's young people in their mid-20s and late 20s will divorce (Schoen 8c Weinick, 1993). Some­ what fewer than in previous decades will re­ marry; currently, it is about two thirds of divorced and separated women and about three fourths of men of the same status. The cor­ responding figures in 1960 were three fourths and four fifths (Cherlin 8c Furstenberg, 1994). Families nowadays, in comparison to the traditional sequence, can be out of se­ quence, truncated, or recycled (Furstenberg 8c Spanier, 1984; Kerkhoff, 1978). Out-of­ sequence families do not pass through stages in the traditional order. They include the sizable number initiated through childbirth and not marriage. Truncated families skip stages. Some couples remain childless; others with children

37

FAMILY ΉΜΕ AND ITS DIVISIONS

TABLE 2.2 The Family Careers of Once-Married Parents Stage Stage Stage Stage Stage Stage

1 2 3 4 5 6

Newly established couple Families with preschoolers Families with primary school children Families with adolescents Families in the middle years Families following retirement

are disrupted by separation and divorce. In these situations, there are missing positions, compared with the traditional family with its married couple and offspring. Recycled families are those who repeat stages. Remarriage can result in the family clock's being turned back. The mix of her children and his that the partners bring into the marriage creates the blended family. As­ similating stepchildren within the new family unit can be complicated even more when the partners relive stages and have a child of their own. As one upset husband graphically described such a situation to his wife, "Your daughter is beating hell out of our son." Demographer Paul Glick (1947,1988), who in 1947 created a typology of the family event sequence in the lives of married women, has warned that these different family types re­ quire their own time schedules. He notes that a German demographer, Charlotte Hohn (1987), believes it requires at least 12 different family life cycle models to encompass the cur­ rent variety of family types. These models take into account whether marriage has occurred in families with differing numbers of chil­ dren and, if it has, its stability as well as the presence and number of stepchildren. Cer­ tainly, no one can criticize the logic of such models, but the existence of actual families that fit them in sufficient numbers to warrant study is problematic. Hohn, for example, presents no research using her typology and is aware that some of her types, due to lack of examples, may have to be categorized together. One such rationale for demarcating the periods on the family clock is to use a con­ tinuous time, discrete-state model. Based on a Markov model, the occurrence of a new stage, as defined in this rationale, is more probable the longer the family has been in the previous state. Sociologist James M. White (1991) has been an advocate for the application of the model; however, he has noted its problems.

To take the example he gives (p. 61), the prob­ ability of a married couple's having a baby increases over time, but beyond a certain time limit, the probability decreases. White places this definition in a larger context while re­ taining it. Such timetables are tentative and subject to modification as we learn more about them. A General Model Another model, the one that I shall use, is based on major status alterations due to the following: (a) individuals' establishing part­ ner relations through cohabiting, marrying, divorcing, and remarrying; (b) taking on parental, stepparent, grandparent roles or re­ maining childless; and (c) playing school and occupational roles, with their possible entranc­ es, exits, and loss over time. These alterations involve changes in family composition num­ bers and the changing normative expectations of family members, particularly children, as they age (Mederer 8c Hill, 1983, pp. 51-52). Derived from the Duvall-Hill scheme, this model will serve as a general guide for the analysis of family careers. As Table 2.2 indi­ cates with respect to two-parent families, I use broader stage categories than their original model demarcated. In this way, I can build in the flexibility today's diversity in family types demands. Moreover, by using fewer criteria for setting off family stages, I ensure that researchers have enough families to study in each category. The criteria of major status alterations that establish partner relations, create offspring, and involve the role shifts in members' school and work careers set off the stages. In addition to intimate cohabitation and the arrival and departure of children, the school careers of the oldest child and the job histories of parents, with their associated expectations and family interaction patterns, provide rough stage criteria. I will also discuss

38 the family careers of families that encounter somewhat different stages. The oldest child is the family pioneer in linking family and school and the associated stage divisions. The oldest child introduces the alterations in states that provide a guide for those affecting younger sibs. Parents can an­ ticipate the latters' associated role changes so that they do not constitute such stage breaks. The oldest child provides a role model for younger siblings in their educational careers. In addition, he or she introduces parents to the requirements school personnel hold for the progress of children through school. Younger children's school transitions, therefore, may represent a repetition or recycling of events to which parents were introduced by their oldest child. Also, the oldest child's school career often coincides with changes in the work careers of parents. They may be receiv­ ing higher hourly wages or a job promotion when Junior goes off to elementary school. Children's middle school graduations maybe the impetus that leads mothers to start look­ ing for better-paying jobs that will cover their offsprings' going to college. THE FAMILY CAREERS OF THE CHILDLESS

We know relatively little about, the trun­ cated family life cycle of childless couples. In the traditional view, they are not considered to be families. Only with the arrival of children do many people, particularly potential grand­ parents, consider adults to have established their families. This belief is reflected in the com­ mon statement, "We are thinking of starting our family," that prefaces an announcement of pregnancy. Most people, when questioned, do not con­ sider childlessness to be a real alternative to a couple's having children. Surveys show that in the popular view, child-free couples have several undesirable qualities. They have often been considered selfish, immature, and irre­ sponsible (Houseknecht, 1987, p. 385). Some of these beliefs were expressed by this person's comments about a childless couple: " O h , they're too selfish, they're too interested in going on fancy holidays. Material things, that's why they're not having children* * (Miall, 1985, p. 277). Such a view overlooks the fact that being childless is not always a chosen status. The some 14% of couples with fertility

T H E FAMILY CAREERS

PERSPECTIVE

problems often go to great emotional and financial expense to become parents through medical procedures (Matthews & Matthews, 1986). One woman described her frustration when one procedure did not work:" Ί cried. I couldn't keep from crying when I was talk­ ing to my doctor. I kept thinking this was the last-ditch attempt—there's nothing I could do to have a child'" (Swiercz, 1988, p. B2). There is some suggestion that more couples will remain childless than wasformerlythe case. In 1976,10.2% of 40- to 44-year-old women had no children. By 1992, this figure had risen to 15.7% (Bachu, 1993, p. xii, Table E). None of thesefigures,you should note, differentiate the voluntarily from involuntarily childless. 1

To obtain some clues as to marker events that would divide the family careers of the child free, let us look at some of their particular characteristics, especially those of women. There is some suggestion that women, whose identities are more centrally related to child­ bearing, have more to do with initiating the couple's decision to remain child free (Houseknecht, 1987, p. 384). It also appears that childless women marry later than others and tend to divorce slightly more often than mothers do (Norton, 1983, p. 273). According to sociologist Sharon K. Houseknecht's (1987) useful research review, achievement through occupational careers is important for many of these independent women. They have the ad­ vanced educational credentials they need for the high-status jobs they often hold. Center­ ing their lives on the occupational world is consistent with the less traditional views of gender roles that they express. Moreover, these living styles fit in with the reasons for being childless that both they and their husbands most often give. A second reason child-free couples gave is the importance of their marital relation, which could be weakened by a third family member. One or both partners might also come from unhappy homes and fear repeating the situation themselves. Finally, both partners express the wish to be free of child care responsibilities and to opt for the greater self-fulfillment opportunities such a status provides. Based on these clues, we can predict that major divisions in the family time of childless couples who stay married would have to do with their jobs. Their family career transi­

FAMILY TIME AND ITS DIVISIONS

tions would include such events as occupa­ tion changes, promotions, transfers, and job losses. The breaks in customary routines such occurrences create would be particularly pronounced if the demands of one partner's career threatened the achievements of the other. His or her job transfer can mean a commuter marriage when the other partner is in a favorable work setup. The alternative of giving up one's career advantage to follow the partner to a different location might threaten the more satisfactory marital rela­ tion couples give as their second most fre­ quent reason for remaining childless. STAGES FOR ONE-PARENT FAMILIES

This group brings together families that occur either because of being out of se­ quence or because of departures from the social clock of traditional, once-married, twoparent families. One-parent families include those of unwed mothers and of divorced par­ ents and involve a large number of children. Estimates are that close to one half of children born in the early 1990s will be in such families at least 1 year before reaching 18 years of age (Bumpass, 1990). Some 85% of such fam­ ilies are headed by women, a figure somewhat lower than the 9 of 10 such families in the 1970s and early 1980s (Meyer & Garasky, 1993). Fathers appear more often to be the parent in residence when child care costs and social con­ trol responsibilities mount. Older children, with their lesser need for physical looking after but higher financial demands, are more likely to live with them (Meyer 8c Garasky, 1993). Sons are also more difficult for mothers to raise alone, so twice as many sons as daughters between the ages of 15 and 17 live with their fathers (Norton 8cGlide, 1986,p. 10). The number of one-parent families due to out-of-sequence patterns, in which childbirth comes before or without marriage, has in­ creased dramatically in recentyears. The pro­ portion of children born to unwed mothers is up 500% over the past two decades. This star­ tling change in family formation patterns is associated with a decline in the marriage rate along with a rise in the median age at mar­ riage. There are ethnic differences in this change. Black women are more likely to be single mothers than are white women. More than three fifths of blackbirths and somewhat

39 less than one fifth of white births in the early 1990s were to unwed mothers (Bachu, 1993). Because childbirth did not follow marriage, stage criteria for these families would depend on the following: (a) the oldest child's school career and (b) the mother's partnership careers —that is, whether she marries or cohabits in a relation of some duration. The criteria it seems reasonable to use in dividing the family careers of one-parent families due to divorce, as shown in Table 2.3, include the partner career of the parent and the school and occupational career of the family members. Because half of all persons who divorce do so within the first 7 years of marriage, the oldest child tends to be of an age to enter primary school at the separation transition. Consequently, the change in fami­ ly routines that this new extrafamilial career demands adds to the reorganization of family structures made necessary by the absence of one spouse-parent. The loss of the other spouse position during the divorce transition leads to considerable family efforts to develop new patterns of power, communication, and af­ fection. Child-rearing patterns are disrupted in the initial period of parental separation. Residential parents are less affectionate and more inconsistent in their discipline, al­ though they make fewer maturity demands. Parents' sociability networks are also dis­ membered, and mothers may well miss the support of friends they had when married as well as the intimacy and companionship of the marriage. The mother's breadwinning responsibilities without a spouse's substantial contributions, or his aid with domestic ar­ rangements and support for her emotional needs, mean she has less energy to devote to her children. The opportunities offered by the workplace for performing the provider role, as well as for seeing people and making friends, however, may provide a boost to the mother's self-esteem that can contribute to her feeling of being able to handle family responsibilities. The parents' employment status immedi­ ately affects the stages of truncated families if the residential mother enters the labor market for the first time during the divorce transition. This entry, if it coincides with the new stage initiated by the child's school career, thereby relieving the parent of some child care responsibility, may be less difficult for

40

T H E FAMILY CAREERS

PERSPECTIVE

TABLE 2.3 Family Careers of Divorced Parents Stage 1 Stage 2 Stage 3 Stage 4 Stage 5 Stage 6 Stage 7

The divorce transition and establishment of the single-parent family Parents continue, institute, or reinstitute their work life career Families with primary-aged children Families with adolescents Families with young adults leaving home Parents in the middle years The retirement of parents from work life career or their responsibilities for their parents

mothers. Women's employment, however, rarely compensates for the loss of the hus­ bands' incomes, because women's yearly earnings on average continue to be some 70% of what men earn (Reskin & Padavic, 1994, p. 104). Wives who have custody experience an average fall in income of 30% in the first year, which often forces women not already in the labor force to obtain jobs. Former husbands without child custody generally see their in­ come increase by 15% in the same period following divorce (Hoffman & Duncan, 1988). Nor do all fathers contribute to the physical maintenance of their families through child support. Only about half the mothers in oneparent families received the full amount of court-approved child support due, with about one fourth more receiving some payment in the early 1990s (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1992d). Thus, mothers and children often have to create new interaction structures within economic constraints. Aside from finances, men generally are more disadvantaged than women in handling child rearing alone, because they have less often had to take major responsibility for playing these roles. The insecurities and in­ adequacies single parents feel are caught in these comments of a widower. Answering a question as to when he would have some time for himself, he said," 'One of these days, I will maybe. Maybe 18 years from now.'" He added that before his wife died, " Ί never even thought about what girls go through as far as taking care of the house and all that' " (Darvas, 1994, p. IF). If a divorced custodial parent remarries, this starting of another marital career con­ stitutes another critical role transition. After the upheavals associated with beginning the new marital career and getting the children and the stepparent somewhat accustomed to 2

each other, the birth of children and/or the stages in the child-rearing period would demarcate the stepfamily career. Approximately 9% of mother-child fam­ ilies are headed by widows (Norton & Glick, 1986). These women tend to have married later than divorced women, and their mar­ riages are broken on average some 5 years later than occurs with divorced women. The oldest children in families of widows are likely to be halfway through primary school when the two-parent family career ends. Widows and their children are less likely to face the pileup of new beginnings that divorced mothers and their children must surmount. Also, there is greater public sympathy for families divided from a parent by death than for those either separated by divorce or founded by unwed mothers. HARDSHIPS IN THE CAREERS OF SINGLE MOTHERS

One shared similarity of single mothers, whether due to divorce or to unwed child­ birth, can be summed up in the generali­ zation, "the fewer years of school a parent has completed, the greater the likelihood the parent is maintaining a one-parent family" (Norton 8c Glick, 1986, p. 11). This helps account for the well-known impoverishment of such households, both financially and emotionally. One divorced woman's comments are applicable to never-married mothers as well as to those with broken marriages: "As far as I can tell from what I see around me, being divorced means you're poor and you're lonely. At least that's the way my divorced friends look to me. Oh, not the men—the women, I mean. The guys make out all right." (Rubin, 1979, p. 133)

41

FAMILY TIME AND ITS DIVISIONS

Divorced mothers, however, tend to be in the labor force more often than nevermarried mothers, 73.8% compared with 44%. Divorced women, being older, generally have more education and job experience, which makes it easier for them to obtain work. Residential fathers are somewhat more like­ ly to be in the labor force. More than three fourths (77.1%) of divorced fathers and 73.5% of unmarried fathers are employed (Hayghe, 1994). You will remember that they tended to have custody of older children, who would require less parental care. There are also ethnic differences in labor force participation among one-parent house­ hold heads. Black single mothers have lower employment rates than white single mothers, with Hispanic single mothers having the lowest rates of all. The latter are handicapped in finding jobs by lower education levels, more children to care for, and cultural norms that discourage women working outside the home (Norton 8c Glick, 1986). These different rates of labor force participation, along with the types of jobs the single mothers with their relative lack of education credentials can ob­ tain, help to explain the higher poverty rates in Hispanic and African American families headed by women. Further complicating the family careers of single mothers is their greater residential mobility than other families. Divorced women, because of lower incomes, often have to change addresses. They, along with other single mothers, are less likely to own their own homes. According to one study, one third of single mothers are home owners, compared to three fourths of two-parent families. Two thirds of the mothers who rent receive rent subsidies. This was true of a bare 2% of units rented by single fathers (Norton 8c Glick, 1986). A STAGE CLASSIFICATION FOR REMARRIED FAMILIES

Due to divorced parents remarrying, more than one third of all children, according to estimates, will live with a stepparent and a biological parent some time while they are growing up (Glick, 1989, p. 26). There are gender, social class, and ethnic differences in these remarriage roles. As has been the case

since the Republic's founding, men remarry more often than women. This is especially true when they have child custody and see a need for child care help. Those in higher social classes are more likely to remarry (Ihinger-Tallman 8c Pasley, 1987). Their rela­ tive affluence enables them to take on the financial support of a wife who can meet their domestic needs. In contrast to the situation of men, the higher the social class (some years of college and higher incomes), the lower the rate of women's remarriage or the more time they take to do it. These divorcers have the competencies to earn their own livings and enough income not to feel forced to remarry. When one looks at the ethnicity factor, African American women below the age of 40, despite their generally lower educational levels, are much less likely to remarry than are whites. The lower incomes of black males also make them less able to marry or remarry (Cherlin, 1992, p. 28). The empty purses that single mothers with little education have to draw on to support their children make remarriage an attractive alternative. Some women also feel inadequate in trying to bring up children alone. Listen to this mother: "It w a s hard n o t t o b e i n a m a r r i a g e w h e n t h e children were smaller. D u r i n g t h o s e years, I felt it w a s i n c u m b e n t o n m e t o p r o v i d e a full f a m i l y life for t h e m — I m e a n , t o p r o v i d e t h e m w i t h a two-parent h o m e where there w a s at least a s u b ­ stitute father. I g u e s s I b l e w that o n e b e c a u s e I didn't remarry, a n d felt pretty g u i l t y a n d u n ­ c o m f o r t a b l e a b o u t it for years." ( R u b i n , 1 9 7 9 , p. 18)

The criteria for a stage classification of remarried families with children can be the following: (a) marital status of the residential parent, (b) the older child's school progress, and (c) the parents' employment careers. After the marriage and childbearing stages in the first marriage would come the divorce and the postdivorce period of adjustment. During this time, on average, the oldest child may be entering school. The median interval for the timing of remarriage after divorce is 3 years. This follows the median duration of first marriages prior to divorce, which is 7 years, so the oldest child from the previous marriage

42 of either the wife or the husband in the re­ cycled marriage is well launched in his or her primary school career. The remarriage stage has some elements similar to the just-married stage of the first marriage. Adults have to work out interaction patterns to accomplish family tasks in ways tolerable to both. But the presence of children from previous marriages, who are anxious spectators to the new partnership and must fit themselves into the developing family struc­ tures, ensure that the blended family career will not be a reliving of the first-marriage stages. Further complicating the family situa­ tion is the possibility that the couple will later add their own children to the family. In addi­ tion to preadolescents from previous unions, there may well be infants in these families. Consequently, the period when children leave home for higher education, jobs, or marriage can extend over 13 years, compared with 4 years for single parents who do not remarry (Hill, 1986, p. 27). If the second marriage lasts, the couple's work careers provide stage markers after children leave. There is a somewhat higher probability, however, that divorce will terminate remarriages. One estimate is that 30% of women in first marriages tend to divorce within a decade, but this figure in­ creases to 37% of remarried women (Cherlin, 1992, p. 29). According to sociologist Reuben Hill (1986, p. 26), one reason for this greater proneness of the remarried to divorce is that they do not generally enjoy the "time out" stage from family role making that two-parent families with school-aged children enjoy. During this child-rearing period, traditional families are more settled in their routines and more liv­ able in terms of getting along. The children's rates of growth have slowed down in norm­ ative terms, so there is less pressure for change due to different age expectations. Com­ munication between parents and children is more adequate than in preceding or following stages. The divorce transition and the oneparent stage it ushers in, along with remar­ riage, all add to the complexities of stepparenthood. The sequence of stressful transitions is so timed as to largely eliminate the "oasis of developmental stability" traditional families with school-aged children enjoy. Remarried couples share similar experien­ ces that override class and ethnic differences.

T H E FAMILY CAREERS

PERSPECTIVE

Parent-child conflicts affect marital relations. Adults are torn between parental and marital ties. Because remarried persons tend to place high priority on family closeness and shared time, their expectations for blended families are high (Ihinger-Tallman 8c Pasley, 1987). They are apt to be disappointed when blend­ ed families have difficulty negotiating the routines and cohesiveness common in stable first-marriage families. Only later, when the new members have established their identity as a family unit, does the remarried period end. The children's school progress and the couple's occupational histories can then form the basis for the family careers of those in­ volved in the stops and restarts of more than one marriage. The Value of Family Career Analysis MAKING PREDICTIONS ABOUT FAMILY BEHAVIORS

Stage is one of the few concepts in the family development framework that can be tied directly to observable behaviors. Thus, its definition, although dependent on the type of family career in question, is relatively clear. More important, the stages in the family life career permit the practitioner or researcher to gain some idea of the particular vulner­ abilities of a family, or families, by knowing the time on the family clock they are in. The children's and the parents' developmental tasks are more complementary at some periods than at others. In contrast to the stage with primary school children, interactions in families with adolescents are less likely to be synchronized. The demands of youths for greater freedom from family rules and respon­ sibilities can create difficulties. Besides the fact that the individual de­ velopmental tasks of family members do not fit well together in some periods, the de­ mands made on the family's resources at particular stages peak at the same time as do the obligations of extrafamilial careers. The childbearing years are such a period for many parents. The financial drain resulting from the growing family comes before the period of top earnings for men and women and at a time when women may be employed only part-time because of child care responsibil­

FAMILY TIME AND ITS DIVISIONS

ities. At the same time, the occupational de­ mands on parents, who are struggling to ad­ vance their positions, lower the energy and time they have for their families. When wives are employed, husbands rarely share house­ hold tasks. Consequendy, women are forced to work two shifts, one at home and one on the job (Hochschild, 1989). Marital disenchantment becomes pronounced during these deficit periods because of the high potential for financial problems and conflict over the household division of labor. Compared to these periods of greatest family vulnerability, the high morale stages are those when partnerships are initiated and before children arrive, and the financial recovery period in the couples' middle years after children have departed. During the es­ tablishment phase, both mates have incomes, the relationship has not yet lost the charm of newness, and no child care responsibilities threaten the priority of the marital dyad. By the middle years, parents' incomes are higher and the financial drain of children has de­ creased. As a result, something of a second honeymoon occurs. If the spouses have not become irremediably estranged as a result of the hectic child-rearing years, there is the pos­ sibility of an increase in marital satisfaction, along with a more healthy bank account. The value of stages in family career an­ alysis, therefore, lies in their usefulness to us in making predictions about the behaviors of families. Although the initial stage model an­ alysis was in terms of two-parent families of some duration, later discussion in the chapter has demonstrated how stage behaviors hold for a variety of families, taking into account their composition, social class, and ethnic dif­ ferences. By knowing what stage a family is in, we have well-grounded expectations con­ cerning such characteristics as the relative in­ come level, the propensity of a mother to work full-time outside the home, the level of marital satisfaction, and the degree of parentchild conflict, to mention only a few aspects of family living. HISTORICAL CHANGES IN FAMILY CAREERS

An examination of variations in the timing of critical family role transitions can also tell

43 us how influential various periods will be in the family career. A graphic illustration of these differences comes from Table 2.4, in which data on married women living at dif­ ferent historical periods appear. They include a sample of Quaker wives, born before 1786, whose family careers were roughly similar to those of their contemporaries (Wells, 1971) and cohorts of women born during the 1880s, the 1920s, and the 1960s (Duvall & Miller, 1985, p. 30, Table 2.2; Glick, 1977). The table shows the great changes that have occurred over the centuries in the timetables of family events. Age at marriage increased between the late 18th century and the years past the mid­ point of the 20th century. Although, in all three centuries, the first child usually arrived within the first 2 years of marriage, differen­ ces in fertility patterns over the centuries drastically changed the length of the child­ bearing periods. For the Quaker wives of the 18th century, it was 17.4 years. They had a median age of 60.2 when their last child left home. This fact, coupled with earlier ages at death—69% of the Quaker marriages were of shorter dura­ tion than the child-rearing period—meant that marital life coincided with the bearing and rearing of children. There was no childfree stage in these families. The median length of marriage was 30.4 years so that young children rarely had two parents when they reached their majority. The widow or widower of the 18th century could expect to have chil­ dren at home for a median period of 4.3 years after the death of a spouse. In contrast, 20th-century wives had chil­ dren at planned intervals, and these children would live to maturity. The period between the birth of their first and last children has a median length of some 7 years. With shorter childbearing spans, present-day wives would be in their early 50s when their children had all left home. They could expect some 17 additional years of marriage. For the first time in history, this century has seen family life add a stage to marriage that begins when the last child becomes independent. The importance of the marital career in the family lives of individuals has increased, because couples are able to spend more years of their life alone together. The threat of death to family stability in the colonial period has been replaced in the

THE FAMILY CAREERS

44

PERSPECTIVE

TABLE 2.4 Median Age of Wives at Stages of the Life Cycle of the Family Stage of the Life Cycle of the Family A, Age at first marriage B. Age at birth of last child C. Age at marriage of last child 0 . Age at death of first spouse to die

Wives Born Before 1786 (U.S. Quakers)

Wives Born 1880-1889* (U.S.)

Wives Born 1920-1927 (U.S.)

20.5 37.9 60.2

21.4 32.9 55.4

21.3 31.8° 53.2

23.0 25.0 56.0

50.9

57.0

64.4

67.0

1

C

b

b

Wives Bom 1960-1969* (U.S.)

NOTE: Stages are based o n data for once-married mothers Instead of ever-married wives, Ages for events beginning with birth of last child for recent cohorts are projections based o n the ages at childbearing completion of older cohorts of w o m e n in the light of the experiences of younger cohorts. a. Modification of Wells, 1971, p. 2 8 1 , Table 1. b. Glick, 1977, p. 6, Table 1. c. N o r t o n , 1983, p . 269, Table 3 . d. Approximate ages from Duvall & Miller, 1985, p. 30, Figure 2.2.

present era by divorce. Because longer lives enable couples to remain together longer, they have more opportunity to become unhappy and decide to divorce. Children today, there­ fore, are much more likely to have both a step­ parent and a natural parent due to divorce than were Quaker children of the 18th century. Longer lives also mean that middle-aged children, unlike those in past centuries, have responsibility for both aging parents and for young adult children. In 1900, 24% of chil­ dren lost a parent to death before they were 15. For women born in the 1970s, 90% will have their mothers still living when they are 40; at age 60, half will continue to have them present (Winsborough, 1980). To put these figures in a different perspective, daughters can expect to have about two decades in their lives with one or both parents over 65 years of age (Watkins, Menken, 8c Bongaarts, 1987). Better government social insurance policies and workplace pension programs have largely freed children from the task offinanciallysup­ porting the elderly. But arranging for care­ takers or taking on these tasks themselves, when aged parents become physically or men­ tally disabled, is a task that many daughters in their middle years must now assume. Based on data from the 1990s, it appears that young people in their mid- to late 20s will have family careers fairly different from those of their parents. Although only 3% to 4% of their parents' generation will not even­ tually marry, some two to three times as many of their children may remain single

(U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1992c). More­ over, as we saw earlier, somewhat fewer of today's women, 85% compared with 90% of older women, are likely to have children (Bachu, 1993). About one half (46.4%) of 25­ to 29-year-oid women in 1990 had either broken off their first marriages or could be expected to do so in their lifetimes. In con­ trast, just 32% of 50- to 54-year-olds in 1990 had divorced or would divorce. But as noted above, a sizable proportion of the younger cohorts reenter marriage. It appears, there­ fore, that today's young people are willing to give marriage several tries. In contrast to marital roles, however, they are more likely to play parent and child roles for longer periods in their family careers. Summary This chapter has introduced the concepts that give the family development framework its change perspective. It was necessary first to differentiate the use of stage and life cycles in families from their more familiar meaning as applied to individual time. The discussion then covered the wide recognition of the ex­ istence of an order in the affairs of families and possible criteria for dividing family careers. The ongoing changes in family forms, sum­ marized in the terms truncated, recycled, and out-of-sequence stages, point up the necessity for alternative timetables to those suited to two-parent, first-marriage families. In look­

45

FAMILY TIME AND ITS DIVISIONS

ing at divisions for different family careers, I have used criteria that include changes in family membership and the starting, stop­ ping, and restarting of marital and parental sequences, as well as status changes in indi­ viduals due to their participation in occu­ pational and educational groups. We saw how the careers of single-parent, blended, and traditional family forms can tell us a number of things about the internal interac­ tions of families. By comparing family careers over historical time, I showed how stage se­ quences and their timing are different now, due to longer lives, smaller families, and higher rates of divorce. The various family stages serve to suggest the periods, problems, and behaviors that most families are likely to experience. Family clock times provide both a backdrop for predict­ ing family interaction and a standard for judging family change. Historical events, such

as war separations, hard economic times, or happenings specific to particular families like jobs in different places that separate spouses for sizable periods, may constitute quali­ tative breaks in family structures within the broad periods demarcated in the usual family development classifications. Investigators of these issues will necessarily use different stage breaks. But their importance as turning points for family functioning can be evalu­ ated in terms of the divisions in expectable family structures emphasized in the present discussion.

Notes 1. of the 2. of the

From Swiercz (1988). Reprinted with permission South Bend Tribune. From Darvas (1994). Reprinted with permission South Bend Tribune.

3 The Family as

An Introductory Question To begin this chapter, I want to pose a hypothetical question: What do the human body, the power lines that make up an elec­ tricity network, the weather pattern in north­ ern Montana, and a family have in common? To answer it, you may take a cue from the chapter title, figure it out, or depend on me to provide the answer. In any case, the correct response is that they all are systems. This great variety of things, ranging in size from small enough to be portable to the gigantic, includ­ ing inanimate and living objects and stem­ ming from natural and artificial sources, can be classified together under the system con­ cept. Each is made up of elements that are so related that a change in one affects other elements and eventually the entire unit. De­ spite continuing and sometimes fundamental changes in the elements making up the body, a television network, a weather pattern, or a family, each phenomenon maintains its iden­ tity as an interrelated unit. How families manage to keep all of their cooperative and conflicting activities to­ gether when their members are constantly modifying them is hard to explain. But this chapter will attempt to do just that. The characteristics of families that make them so46

Social System

cial systems will be covered. This discussion will include the insights of modern systems theory, which incorporates ideas from com­ munication technology and cybernetics. The chapter concludes with an examination of how the system characteristics are interre­ lated. Putting a system model in a family careers context is one more illustration of the eclectic nature of the approach. It is a sharper analytic instrument because of this borrowing. The use of the system concept clarifies the ticklish question of how something that is in constant flux can maintain enough continuity to con­ stitute the group we call a family.

Families as Social Systems Before beginning the discussion of how the social system concept helps in family an­ alysis, a definition of it is in order. A system is a causal network of elements that are inter­ related in a more or less stable fashion within any particular time period (Buckley, 1967, p. 41; Rapoport, 1976, p. 47). The family fits this definition nicely (Broderick & Smith, 1979; R. Hill, 1971; Speer, 1970). Consider these family characteristics: (a) The positions occupied by family mem­

47

THE FAMILY AS A SOCIAL SYSTEM

bers, the elements of the family system, are to varying degrees interrelated and interdepen­ dent, (b) The family also, through selective boundary maintenance, constitutes a unit, (c) The family modifies its structure of inter­ action networks, (d) The family is a task per­ formance group that meets the demands of other societal groups and those of its mem­ bers. And because family members are in as­ sociation with each other, we can tack the word social onto the term system, thereby categorizing families as social systems. Note that these system characteristics of the family suggest not only its stable elements (b and d) but also its potential for change (a and c). The interrelated elements that make fami­ lies identifiable groups in Western societies traditionally have included the positions of husband-father, wife-mother, daughter-sister, and son-brother. These positions are filled by individuals who, in their interaction with other family members, create the structural framework that makes the family a system. But it is important to remember that not all these positions are found in every family, and some family positions found in other societies are missing from the roster. Japanese farm families provide examples of both points. Like other societies in which agriculture continues to be an important oc­ cupation, these families keep their holdings intact by passing on the land to one child in the next generation. The heir, customarily the oldest son, continues to live with his parents even after he is married. For the portion of his married life when they are living, the household constituted a stem family (Peter­ sen, Lee, & Ellis, 1982). The structure in this family social system contains the following positions, depending on the gender of the son's children: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

Grandfather-husband-father Grandmother-wife-mother Father-husband-son Mother-wife-daughter-in-law Granddaughter-daughter-sister Grandson-son-brother

Sometimes, however, economic needs lead the young man to leave home to find con­ struction work in cities such as Yokohama or Tokyo. He and his wife are often in the

childbearing and child-rearing stages of the family career, but he returns home only to help with the rice harvest or at the New Year's holiday time. The consequence of his absence indicates the interdependence of positions in the family system. His departure leaves the husband-father-son position empty. For most of the year, his father (the children's grand­ father) will have to fill in for the son. He, not his son, will perform the roles customarily attached to the younger man's position, such as farm worker and farm manager. Given the interrelation of positions in the family system, this substitution of the senior male for the junior male has family conse­ quences. Here, I draw on relevant research findings, as I will do throughout the book, to document my discussion. According to a study a Japanese colleague and I did some years ago (Aldous & Kamiko, 1972), kindergarten children in these stem families tend quite realistically to view their grandfathers as more powerful and more often the breadwinner than their fathers. The latter lose power and prestige through their failure to perform parental roles, such as disciplinarian and rule setter. The children are too young to perceive the absence of their fathers as being caused by their performing the breadwinner role in another location. The stem family with its system interdependencies affects members' performances and perceptions of family roles. When family interactions change, so do the perceptions. SOME U.S. DEMOGRAPHICS

Our own society, where the nuclear family has historically been the standard family form, has increasing numbers of families with a missing family position according to its stan­ dard composition. Due to high divorce rates and premarital birthrates, it has been esti­ mated that before reaching the age of 18, half the young children in the early 1990s will spend some time in a one-parent family due to divorce or unwed parenthood. Most will remain in mother-only families for the rest of their childhoods (Bumpass, 1990). We also cannot overlook the couples who do not have children. In these families, per­ sons are present only in the spousal positions. Recent trends show childlessness increasing. Estimates of lifetime childlessness for women

48 35 to 44 years of age in 1982 was 12.9% (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1984). A decade later, it was 17.3% for women of the same late childbearing ages (Bachu, 1993). Taken to­ gether, these statistics show that a fairly sizable number of U.S. families in the late 20th cen­ tury do not have the total complement of nuclear family positions. The family development approach ap­ peared originally in the 1950s, the golden age of the nuclear family, when both marriage and fertility rates were high. The approach has sometimes been criticized for its seeming concentration on nuclear families. Its utility, however, is not limited to this family type (R. Hill, 1986), as I will show in ongoing discus­ sions of changes in nonnuclear families. FAMILY INTERDEPENDENCES

The positions in the family system have been specified. Now we need to give them some life. This can be done through a consideration of how family members are affected by their interactions with each other. A clinical case of a postdivorce family demonstrates the process. The fact that it concerns a divorced couple and their child underlines the strengths of family relationships. They continue even after the couple unit has split. We meet the father, mother, and child at a tense moment. The father had forgotten to get his child at the agreed-on time. His tardiness forced the mother to give up her plans. She is angry and has words with her ex-husband. The child sees the conflict and is torn between competing loyalties. He sides finally with his major caretaker, the mother. The next time the father comes for him, the son refuses to go. He says the father is not a nice person. The father is hurt, blames the mother, and is 2 weeks late with his next child support check (Goldsmith, 1982, p. 301). In this instance, the consequences of the parents' squabble af­ fected a third party, their son. His reaction, in turn, fed back on the parents' interactions. The interdependencies illustrated in the example include more than role complemen­ tarity. The latter concept refers to situations such as when a husband, in his role as bread­ winner, depends on his wife, in her role as housekeeper, to maintain his lodging and see that he is fed and his clothes are cared for. She in turn is dependent on him for financial

T H E FAMILY CAREERS

PERSPECTIVE

support. The situation could be reversed, with the wife as the wage earner and the husband as the housekeeper, but in both cases the par­ ties are mutually dependent. Even when both hold jobs, the man may depend on his wife for physical care, and she may depend on him for looking after car maintenance, both ac­ tivities being traditional gender roles. Our concept of interdependence, however, is of broader scope. Besides their physical and emotional dependencies, it covers specific behaviors of family members that influence others. In addition, our concept does not presuppose that the behaviors mesh, as is the case with role complementarity. Interdepen­ dence, as shown in the above postdivorce example, signifies both conflict and coopera­ tion. Members may engage in the same be­ haviors, as in giving advice or affection. In similar fashion, interdependence includes the family's emotional ties, the feelings of love and liking along with the feelings of hatred and loathing that galvanize family interchanges. TEMPORAL CHANGES IN FAMILY INTERDEPENDENCIES

The regularities in family development over time, captured in the concept of stage se­ quence, can be viewed as oscillating between centripetal periods, when the members come together in close and intimate relations, and centrifugal periods, when family members are separating to follow their own interests (Combrinck-Graham, 1985, p. 143). Changes in family composition, such as the coming of children and their early rearing, is usually a centripetal period, when members' concerns and loyalties in both generations center on the family. In contrast is the centrifugal period when members are leaving. Then, adolescents are trying to establish their independence outside the family boundaries. Their ties to siblings and to parents weaken. They take on the interests and views of peers and persons they meet in nonfamily situations. Their com­ mitment shifts from maintaining close family ties to assuming obligations to nonfamily groups. This can be a painful process for parents who view with alarm these outside influences. William Shakespeare voiced some of their concerns over three centuries ago in The Winter's Tale. He has a character com­ plain, "I would there was no age between ten

49

THE FAMILY AS A SOCIAL SYSTEM

and three and twenty, or that youth would sleep out the rest; for there is nothing in the between but getting wenches with child, wronging the ancestry, stealing, fighting..." All of us have personally experienced birth, childhood, and adolescence, and many of us will again participate in the family events as­ sociated with these ages one and two genera­ tions removed, as parents and grandparents. These periods provide opportunities for members at different maturity levels to create or re-create intimate relations during the close family stages and to be concerned with per­ sonal achievements during the separation stages (Combrinck-Graham, 1985). The dissolution of one partnership and its reestablishment with a different individual is another example of departures in family careers followed by a new intimacy structure. Remarriage and a new baby, for example, can give the couple another chance to create the closeness ties that keep families together. Fathers, especially, may enjoy the parent-child enmeshment the second time around that they missed in their first marital ventures (Combrinck-Graham, 1985). Even in periods when families are charac­ terized more by separateness than together­ ness, both the carryover of good feelings from the past and the present continuing efforts to maintain them can ease the wrench of loosening interdependencies. A study of in­ tergenerational relations with respect to drug use indicated that when there are close ties, parents continue to influence the behavior of youths. Both grade school children and high school youths who got along well with their parents and wanted to be like them were less apt to use drugs or alcohol, or to use them less frequentiy, than youths having less satisfactory parental relations (Coombs & Landsverk, 1988). Shifts in family interdependencies affect both members in the same generation and intergenerational relations. Marital inter­ dependencies vary over time. The posited closeness of couples united through their mutual concern about a new baby can mask the differential responsibilities the arrival brings to husbands and wives. The role of child caretaker is still normatively attached to the maternal position. Fathers help out more than share the role. As we saw in the last chapter, mothers of young children may be­

come more economically dependent on their husbands. Husbands, in turn, gain power in the marital relation in the sense that they can affect the "intended behavior or outcomes" of their wives (Szinovacz, 1987, p. 654). Many women welcome the opportunity to decrease their dependency as time goes on. They turn outside to kin and friends for emo­ tional satisfaction and to the job market for monetary rewards. A woman, who recently began earning enough to be financially inde­ pendent, expressed the feelings of others con­ cerning changing interdependencies: "Before this, there were times when things were hard between us when I thought, 'My God, what'll I do without him?' And it wasn't just emotionally that I meant it. I mean, sure I'm dependent on him emotionally, too—I am, I know that. But the big one was that financial dependence and the awful fear you have with it." (Rubin, 1983, p. 1 4 3 ) 1

Although women find that the young child years tie them closely to the family, men often turn inward to the family in their postretire­ ment years. Without work to involve them in the community, their sociability ties outside the family dwindle. Thus, their participa­ tion in the family increases, as does their emotional dependence on their wives. Wives, however, being involved over the years with relatives and friends on the job, are more likely, through their children and voluntary activities, to have sources of emotional sup­ port besides that of their husbands. Given the demographics of marriage, this seems wise. The tendency of women to live longer and to marry men somewhat older than themselves means that their marital in­ terdependencies are more likely to be broken by death. Though widowers do not lack for opportunities to remarry younger women, widows customarily must look to a shrinking number of older potential partners. Many draw on close ties with children, and others they have cultivated over the years, to keep loneliness away. FAMILY SUBSYSTEMS

The interdependencies of family members vary in degree as well over time. Yet between

T H E FAMILY CAREERS

50

PERSPECTIVE

TABLE 3.1 Subsystems in the Family 1. The marital relation 2. Sibling relations

3. Parent-child relations

Husband-wife Brother-sister Sister-sister Brother-brother Father-daughter Father-son Mother-daughter Mother-son

some family positions, interchanges are so built-in that they constitute subsystems in the family. The roles that define the positions are composed of shared behavioral expectations of their incumbents. It is impossible to speak of one without calling up at least implicitly the counter or paired position (Stryker, 1980, p. 58). A man, for example, cannot occupy the position of husband and play roles directed to a wife unless there is a woman in the position of wife who will play the associated roles. The nuclear family operates with a limited number of paired positions, as detailed in Table 3.1. Each of these subsystems can become independent to the degree that the indi­ viduals isolate themselves from the influence of the broader family unit. They can serve as coalitions to wrest concessions and to force changes in other family members. This practice is legitimated for husband and wife in both conservative and liberal family ide­ ologies. Traditionalists admonish them to maintain a united front in socializing chil­ dren, and liberals warn the couple to beware of the children's threat to their affection bond. But children can also play the coalition game. Siblings seek from each other the com­ fort and understanding that indifferent or uncomprehending parents fail to provide. Children as young as 3 years old try to help and comfort siblings (Dunn, 1983). In so doing, they lessen their emotional depen­ dency on parents and increase their own power. Parents are adept at using a divideand-conquer strategy, but a general protest from all the children, rather than complaints from a single child, is more difficult to handle. In one-parent families, parents may be de­ pendent on children for emotional support, which gives siblings who complain or make a demand together an even greater probability of getting their way.

Persons in the marital, parent-child, and sibling subsystems are able to maintain vary­ ing degrees of insulation from one another. Events in one subsystem are not immediately or not always felt in the others. Children can be unaware of marital happenings, as parents can be ignorant of goings-on among siblings. The presence of subsystem differentiation within the family system suggests that the analogy of a threshold rather than a ripple effect is appropriate for considering family interdependencies. Only role changes reach­ ing a certain threshold of magnitude will in­ fluence all family positions, rather than each change in a subsystem eventually rippling out to affect others in varying ways (R. Hill, 1976). The analysis in the second half of this book traces expectable changes in various types of families through the subsystems, considered one at a time. This strategy enables the discus­ sion to focus on a more manageable number of positions, and the interdependencies of persons in the subsystems can be examined from their different perspectives. INTERDEPENDENCE A N D CHANGE

The variation in interdependencies among family members can be a source of change due to their arrivals or departures from families. The strategy of closing ranks and excluding members in the latter case appears whenever individuals become too autonomous. Into this class fall diverse cases such as spouses away on military service or serving time in prison; adolescents departing for college, job, or marriage; spouses preparing for divorce or separation; and individuals who are drug de­ pendent. Through choice or exigency, they have all cut family commitments.

THE FAMILY AS A SOCIAL SYSTEM

With maturing adolescents, disaffected spouses, and other potential dropouts, family members may attempt to retain their unity and reclaim the estranged member. The mem­ ber can then use his or her relative freedom to press for reorganization of the relation­ ships. Before they agree to rejoin the family system, these individuals may demand not only a greater voice in decisions but also modifica­ tions in expectations and behaviors that are sources of friction. Least effective of the strategies families use to reinvolve the member in family affairs is force. Listen to George Wade, a black 18-year­ old, who ran away from home during the Great Depression years of the 1930s because of his stepfather's treatment. He explained why to a sociologist, Charles S. Johnson (1941): "I just couldn't get along with him. He made me do a lot of work and I couldn't get my hands on any money and I needed clothes. He was mean, too. He'd fuss at me, whip me, and make me do a heap of work. One day he started to whip me, and I left. Mama didn't want me to leave, but she couldn't stop me then." (p. 61) If these strategies to keep the person active in the family prove ineffective or the depar­ ture is inevitable, then the role responsibil­ ities of the recalcitrant or absent member must be assumed by others. Younger siblings take over the home tasks of departing adoles­ cents, wives change from part-time to fulltime work to offset the failure of disaffected husband-fathers, and friends and relatives outside the family circle provide emotional support and assistance when husband-fathers are absent.

Selective Boundary Maintenance Family members may vary in the degree to which they are interdependent, but as long as they are part of the group, they maintain a distinct family identity. There is a sense of being set apart as Smiths, Contrerases, or Szopskis and a feeling that this special family will continue despite changes in its composi­ tion or members' interaction. The father in Pat Conroy's (1976) The Great Santini, who happens to be a U.S. Marine Corps officer,

51 gives his children a clear picture of what be­ longing to the Meecham family means: You hogs have one more advantage that I have not mentioned, but I will mention at this time. It gives you the advantage over even Marine kids and that advantage is this. You are Meechams. Now a Meecham has got more goin' for him than any other animal I know. A Meecham is a thoroughbred, a winner all the way. A Meecham gets the best grades, wins the most awards, excels in sports, is the most popular, and is always found near the top no matter what endeavor he undertakes. A Meecham never gives up, never surrenders, never sticks his tail between his legs, never gets weepy, never gets his nose out of joint, and never, never, never under any circumstance loses sight of the fact that it is the Meecham family that he represents, whose honor he is upholding, (p. 66) It is this enduring context of belonging to a certain family that gives meaning and under­ standing to what goes on in the marital, parent-child, and sibling subsystems. The sense of being a family supplies the experiential core for interpreting whatever actions and events occur. Members share a frame of reference on the "underlying struc­ ture" of their world. It provides a common meaning of events that is acquired from the "delicate coordination" of member activities at home and in other groups that affect family interdependencies (Reiss, 1981). Family frames of reference determine what aspects of the family and community setting members choose to agree or disagree about. These shared perspectives contribute to their sense of a common identity that endures over time. Family problems and how they are hand­ led are part of this reference frame. Take as an example the contrasting ways two families dealt with the birth of a child with severe birth defects (Reiss, 1981, pp. 192-195). The Roberts were two professionals with a healthy 2-year-old son. Their second child was born with severe damage to the heart and respiratory system. Caring for her was very difficult and created deep strains in the family interdependencies. The Roberts's sleep was interrupted, and the sexual relations of the mother and father were hampered. Their frame of reference led them to emphasize

52 family boundaries by insisting on doing all the child care themselves, while slighting the needs of their son. They made hardly any visits outside the home, and friends and rela­ tives either became overinvolved or with­ drew. Eventually, the couple dealt with the crisis by learning more about the child's defects, and the ability of health professionals to treat them. The parents were also able to face their own strengths and limitations in caring for the child and to accept her with her limita­ tions. At this point, their shared view of the world permitted the united couple to reach out to other families with similar children to seek comfort. Compare the Roberts family and their way of defining and handling the problem as a cohesive unit with the Weavers. They were in their early 40s with two adolescent daughters. Mr. Weaver was employed by a large company, and Mrs. Weaver had returned to school parttime hoping to obtain the degree she had left uncompleted at the birth of her first daughter. After starting again on her educational career, an unplanned pregnancy left Mrs. Weaver with a daughter who had defects like those of the Roberts's child. The effects of the infant on the Weavers's interactions were along the same lines as the Roberts's experience. Be­ cause of their continuous care responsi­ bilities for their sick child, there was the same emotional stress, changed relations with out­ siders, and ignoring of the adolescent daughters' needs. Their family frame of reference for inter­ preting the crisis, however, led to a different response than the Roberts's. The Weavers in­ terpreted the birth as in some way being fore­ ordained. Mrs. Weaver believed she was destined not to complete her schooling and to remain like her mother, a full-time, frustrated housewife. All the Weavers felt there was some symbolic linkage between the birth and an unseen force behind the events. This feeling may have come from the family's ini­ tial surprise at the unexpected pregnancy. Their belief that events were out of control was confirmed by the birth of a handicapped child. Rather than attempting to experience the crisis directly, the Weavers distanced themselves from the child. They depended on one nurse to give them information on the infant during the months she was in the hospital. They paid few visits to the child.

T H E FAMILY CAREERS

PERSPECTIVE

Their frame of reference for interpreting the event led the Weavers to see themselves as being the somewhat passive victims of an unpleasant event whose course was beyond their influence. The Roberts perceived the same event as something they could take action to adjust to, and eventually they gained a sense of competence in handling it. Each family's common perspective on events gave rise to shared family situational definitions and their sense of being distinctive groups. Thus, families create their own histories, first by living through happenings, and then by placing their own interpretive stamp on them. Other characteristics besides a consensus on interpreting events contribute to the boun­ daries that set the family apart. Most apparent are the physical barriers to outsiders that families erect through their living quarters. Be it ever so humble, the family home sup­ plies some continuity, even if the family members inside have changed considerably. Family members set boundaries when they come home, close the door, and take off their public selves. The privileged nature of family life, the intimacies shared only by fam­ ily members—Dad kissing Mom, 11 -year-old Jane pounding on the door of the bathroom occupied by 16-year-old Tim, Mom's slapping 2-year-old Ben for putting his wet fingers into an electric outlet—all appear during the repeated and lengthy periods of family inter­ action. Common mispronunciations, color­ ful swearwords, expressions that carry over from past family experiences and symbolize them all remind outsiders that they are, in­ deed, not one of the family with all its distinc­ tive traits and tastes. Kinship terminologyalso creates boundaries. There are many alternate terms for the actors in family positions, as the following brief catalogue suggests: hubby, the mister, himself, the missus, dad, mum, mommy, daddy, pop, sis, the kid brother, the old lady, the old man. These terms, it should be noted, and the formal ones of father, mother, husband, wife, sister, and brother, are limited to nuclear family mem­ bers and do not refer to outside kindred (Schneider & Homans, 1955, p. 1204). In societies in which extended family rela­ tives are more important, the child may use the same term in addressing the father and the father's brothers, and another common term in addressing the mother and the mother's

53

THE FAMILY AS A SOCIAL SYSTEM

sisters. The child is thus not taught to set boundaries between these relatives and his or her parents through terms of address. They enable the child to recognize differences in both rights from and obligations to relatives and parents. Families tend to set boundaries through their member interactions. The Bible admon­ ishes the new husband and wife to forsake all others, and this pattern is supported in Western societies by the love for each other that a couple is expected to develop prior to marriage. The romantic sentiments that es­ tablish the initial solidarity of a couple are supplemented by shared values and expecta­ tions that develop after marriage. These grow out of interdependencies based on mutual responsibilities for sexual relations, child care, and physical maintenance. The bond between parents and children supplements and can substitute for marital solidarity in holding families together. Couples may decide to break off their connection, but the parent status continues. Even when chil­ dren have become taller than their parents and have their own homes and offspring, they have not outgrown speaking of Mom or Dad. Special ways of relating continue to give them and their aging parents a special relation even though it extends beyond present residential boundaries. When parents provide room and board for offspring, they have resources to force con­ formity to their ideas. The result can be intergenerational conflicts, especially at the stage when there are adolescents in the family. Because of touchy teenagers' demands for more independence, supported by outside friends and authorities, parents sometimes unwillingly yield decision-making power. The two generations painfully work out new arrangements. Finally, there are the unchanging pro­ cedures that are the "right" ways to greet Sun­ day morning or the "correct" time to open Christmas gifts that are subsumed under the concept of ritual. They also contribute to a family's solidarity and to its maintenance as an entity over time (Bossard & Boll, 1950; Caplow, Bahr, Chadwick, Hill, & Williamson, 1982). Rituals bring family members together to interact in habitual ways. These ways reaf­ firm their unity. Only they know the proper procedures. Consequently, they have strong

emotions about their being performed ac­ cording to family traditions. These rituals remind them of their distinctive identity as family members and the common values they share. Parents putting children to bed is a good example of a ritual. The similarity in rituals over historical time is shown by this example of a bedtime ritual from several generations ago that continues to be repeated in today's families. A Mrs. Adams is talking about her memories: "While we were very small, Daddy came after we were ready for bed and sang to us. After that, he read to us till we fell asleep. If he was forced to be away from home, Mother told us stories. And we all remember how upset we became if our parent did not read the stories in the time honored way and attempted to skip pages or summarize plot lines." (Bossard & Boll, 1950, p. 167) FAMILY INTERDEPENDENCIES AND BOUNDARY MAINTENANCE

Because of variations in family inter­ dependencies, the permeability of family boundaries also varies. In a provocative study of London families some years ago, anthro­ pologist Elizabeth Bott suggested how the sociability networks of husband and wife could affect their interdependency (Bott, 1971). Where there are close-knit networks composed of kin and friends, the friends of each partner are mutually acquainted and are linked by sentimental ties and shared values. Spouses can turn to their respective friends and relatives for counsel and aid with problems. There is little overlap in the mem­ bership of each partner's social networks. Persons with such friendship webs often live in stable neighborhoods where people share similar occupations. Because everyone knows everyone else, frequent meetings are possible. These buddies maintain common values of mutual assistance, especially among women and their relatives. One working-class Lon­ doner described the members of her social network this way: " 'Women don't have friends. They have Mum' "(Bott, 1971,p. 69). Bott found that couples with such close-knit social networks followed a traditional pattern of "segregated conjugal role organization," in

54 which there was little emotional and task shar­ ing interdependency. Contrast the open family boundaries of the close-knit social network situation and its gender separated worlds of leisure, work, and affection with the relations of couples pos­ sessing loose-knit networks. Here, the mem­ bers of the sociability groups of husband and wife are not mutually acquainted. They all know one or both spouses but generally not each other. The quality of relation is more casual. There is less value consensus on ex­ changing services and support. Husband and wife are thus more dependent on each other for help and comfort. Such couples might develop a "joint con­ jugal role organization," in which both look to each other for help with problems and emotional support. Leisure times are shared. The mutual interchange of affection and ser­ vices and the shared activities generate com­ mon values, with litde influence of competing values from members in the social net­ works. For these couples, loose-knit social networks, with their casual friendship ties, are related to the closed boundaries of the family organization. This thinking can be applied to families with young children. Because of time short­ ages, they often have to center their concerns on family matters. There is little time to culti­ vate sociability ties with friends or relatives, even if they lived nearby. Yet these couples may have to call on outsiders for aid at the child-rearing stage in the family career. Child care arrangements can break down, and chil­ dren do get sick. In these cases, there is a conflict between the need to establish family boundaries and the need to seek extrafamily contacts for help in emergencies. One re­ searcher, after interviewing 140 workingclass wives in a midsized Pennsylvania city, found that close-knit kinship networks were associated with a segregated conjugal role organization. Sociologist Malcolm D. Hill (1988, p. 739), however, concluded that few factors do more to undermine marital inte­ gration than the presence of young children. This child-rearing period is one when couples turn to outsiders for help. Because willing kin substitute for spousal help, conjugal role shar­ ing becomes less and conjugal role segrega­ tion greater.

T H E FAMILY CAREERS

PERSPECTIVE

Such research based on Bott's analysis sug­ gests that there can be too much openness of family boundaries to friends and kin. These extramarital ties can weaken family solidarity. The pattern of dependence on friends and kin in the closed social networks common among the less geographically mobile, lowerclass families may contribute to their greater proneness not to marry, or if married, to di­ vorce (Langman, 1987, p. 233). Each partner retains close ties to kin, former schoolmates, and work associates as a sort of insurance system for financial or housing aid in times of crisis. To give up these ties for conjugal inter­ dependencies is to court disaster. The prob­ ability of the partner's being able to assist when funds are low is less than that of the group of persons in the network. The aid these outsiders provide keeps lower-class families going when erratically employed husbands or lovers cannot contribute to family support. But such strong network ties constitute a threat to strong couple loyalties. For example, because a high proportion of African American men are out of the labor force due to unemployment or underemploy­ ment, young people cannot afford to marry. If cohabiting or married, conflicts over finan­ ces contribute to their higher breakup rates. Consequently, black women are largely de­ pendent on their own earnings or assistance from outsiders, whether government welfare payments or help from friends and kin, to support their families. This situation may be one factor in the declining proportion of twoparent families and the increase in house­ holds headed by women among blacks. Fewer black women are marrying, and more black children are being born out of wedlock (Cherlin, 1992; Staples, 1985). THE PARADOX OF BOUNDARY MAINTENANCE

It is important to point out that just as too little boundary maintenance can weaken families, those who can afford its contribu­ tion to present family solidarity may choose to reach out selectively to persons beyond the family. Anthropologist Margaret Mead (1971), for example, argued several decades ago that, as with lower-class families, all families at times

THE FAMILY AS A SOCIAL SYSTEM

need to have more people around for help in emergencies, for companions, and for role models. There is good evidence that adults are better parents when they can turn to persons beyond the family boundaries for informa­ tion and advice. Divorced mothers do better in handling the disobedience of their pre­ schoolers when they have such contacts (Hetherington, Cox, & Cox, 1982). Abusive parents appear to be isolated from the rela­ tives and friends who could serve as advisers on how to rear children (Gelles &Straus, 1988). The mutual matching of husband and wife in phase of development may be encouraged by the selective opening of boundaries. Friend­ ships with persons of both sexes can con­ tribute to the viability of the husband-wife relation. They supply new ideas, permit a release of family tensions, and decrease bore­ dom. To go beyond the initial affection, shared interests, and information inventory that led to the couple's cohabiting, there must be a mutual ability to adapt to the range of situations and relationships that appears later. Otherwise, one partner is likely to outgrow the other, with resultant mismatching. A good way to put it is that there is a lack of fit between the spouses. They no longer have a lot in common (Foote, 1956). Contacts out­ side the couple can keep partners from get­ ting in such a rut that they take each other for granted. Paradoxically, new interests and ideas from persons not in the family can keep partners looking to each other for com­ panionship and understanding. The wise mate serves as a guide to new opportunities and as a constructive critic to encourage and set standards for new role performances. Therefore, maintenance of the comfortable predictability of couple inter­ dependencies may demand a number of other meaningful relationships. Partners with ideas to share require input from outsiders. In the past, this was particularly important for women not in the labor market who had young chil­ dren. Their outside contacts might be limited to fellow homemakers. Through lack of time and opportunity to keep up with outside events, they were often thought to be limited to toilet training and other domestic concerns for conversational topics. Prodding a spouse to develop new inter­ ests is not always easy. George Babbitt found

55 this to be true with his wife Myra's proposal to go beyond the ordinary to broader con­ cerns, in this excerpt from Sinclair Lewis's Babbitt (1922/1950). It is set in the 1920s, when middle-class husbands were the bread­ winners and their wives the homemakers. George begins the conversation by criticizing his wife for being a nag. She retorts, Don't you think I ever get tired of fussing? I get so bored with ordering three meals a day, three hundred and sixty-five days a year, and ruining my eyes over that horrible sewing machine, and looking after your clothes and Rone's and Ted's and Linda's and everybody's, and the laun­ dry, and darning, and going down to the Piggly Wiggly to market, and bringing my basket home to save money on the cash-and-carry and— everything. George is surprised and somewhat indig­ nant: "Here I have to be in the office every single day, while you can go out every after­ noon and see folks and visit with the neigh­ bors and do any 'blinking' thing you want to!" That view of her life does not sit well with Myra: "Yes, and a fine lot of good that does me! Just talking over the same old things with the same old crowd, while you have all sorts of interesting people coming in to see you at the office." And then George recognizes he and Myra are growing apart: "I didn't mean to sound cranky, but gosh, it makes me sore to get the blame because you don't keep up with things." Myra seizes the opportunity: "I'm going to. Will you help me?" "Sure, anything I can do to help you in the matter-grabbing line—yours to oblige, G. F. Babbitt." And George is committed to helping his wife develop interests beyond her domestic duties. Myra then tells him how: "Very well, then. I want you to go to Mrs. Mudge's New Thoughts meeting with me, next Sunday after­ noon" (pp. 353-355). Although, as in this instance, partners may not always be aware of how they can en­ courage their mates to look beyond the daily routine, listening to the other's discontents may provide clues. They may not always be enthusiastic about the direction the mate's interests take, but the payoff for the family is

56

T H E FAMILY CAREERS

the couples' preserving their solidarity and their continuance as a partnership. THE CONTINUING TRANSACTIONS WITH OUTSIDERS

Families are always involved in transac­ tions with outsiders. As in the past, families welcome the services and contacts provided by kindred, especially in times of crisis. But families have always been selectively open to nonmembers. The counsel and comfort of religious functionaries, for example, have traditionally been important in family life, and since the 19th century, families have had to accept the influence of schoolteachers oper­ ating through their contacts with children. More demanding and less willingly accepted are transactions with the world of the job. Its time and energy specifications both determine meal and leisure time schedules and create child care problems. Many couples must ad­ just work shifts so that one parent is available for child care (Presser, 1986). Lack of job security creates the financial problems that undermine couple and parent-child relations in working- and lower-class families. Professionals and managers may find their occupational roles more salient than their fami­ ly roles. In these cases, families are co-opted to serve career interests, and it is usually wifemothers who must assume major responsi­ bility for the family. One man described such a situation: "The family would like more time. 1 count on their understanding the problems that I'm strug­ gling with. My wife says, 'When are you going to get unburied?' It's a problem for her, the lack of the husband and father. There are questions, particularly if it's on a weekend. 'Where were you?'... There are hard feelings." (Weiss, 1990, p. 1 0 2 ) 2

The competing occupational demands of the two partners can also strain marital ties. Because of the priority that husbands' gen­ erally greater earnings give their occupational careers, employed wives often have to leave stimulating jobs when husbands receive as­ signments elsewhere. Even though all families are open to exter­ nal influences, they vary both in the degree to

PERSPECTIVE

which these influences have been ones of the family's own choice and in the degree to which the external influences operate. Having the money to choose a residential area is cor­ related with the power to choose friends and kin contacts and to control those of one's children. The effects of historical events such as wars, depressions, and periods of inflation affect all families, regardless of the strength of their boundaries. But the more affluent have a greater range of occupational choices, less fear of unemployment, more flexibility in working hours, and greater freedom from the unwanted intrusions of nonfamily members. The well-off can keep policemen, welfare workers, and bill collectors at arm's length through expensive legal talent, if necessary. Thus, the greater the income of a family, the greater its ability to control who crosses the boundaries; the less the income of a fami­ ly, the less its ability to control who enters into family matters. This difference is exempli­ fied in a well-off couple's choosing to go to a counseling specialist for marital or parental problems before they get out of control. An impoverished couple with like difficulties has little choice in calling on outside aid, aside from being assigned to an overworked wel­ fare worker or having a police officer intervene in an emergency. Consequently, the partners must live through periods of heightened con­ flict, see the family unit destroyed, or both. A summary of the discussion of selective boundary maintenance emphasizes the para­ doxical nature of the concept. Separate residences, kinship terminology, shared ex­ periences and intimacies, and periodic rituals encourage families to set boundaries. At the same time, there are necessary breaches in the boundaries occurring from the members' choice or from the coercion generated by ex­ ternal agencies. External agencies determine the family's income and thereby the ease with which it lives. Their influence is also particularly great on those family members who are less in­ volved in the interdependencies of the family. But family members, especially the adults, can use these outside contacts to supply the resources that permit them to interact more harmoniously and thus strengthen their soli­ darity as a family unit. We might well predict that the system characteristics of boundary maintenance are

THE FAMILY AS A SOCIAL SYSTEM

most problematic during certain periods. These would include the initial stage of family lives, when the cohabiting couple is attempt­ ing to establish its identity as a family unit. Traditionally, parents have been admonished not to interfere with newly marrieds but to respect the boundaries of the new unit. Families are necessarily less closed to outside influences when there are youngsters ready to enter school or adolescent members prepar­ ing to leave home. In old age, infirm couples again must depend on outsiders to help them maintain their identity as a unit. When family units are formed through the birth of an infant to a single mother, their well-being may depend on child care assis­ tance and financial help from parents or wel­ fare payments from the government. Studies indicate that parental aid to the new fam­ ilies is more likely to encourage these young women to become self-supporting and estab­ lish their families' independence. Thus, African American mothers who had given birth as teenagers were better-off 10 years later, ac­ cording to a longitudinal study, when they came from parents who were not in financial difficulties. If their parents had not been on welfare when the young women were growing up, and the parents had more than a ninthgrade education, they were presumably more able to give some direct aid (Furstenberg, Brooks-Gunn, 8c Morgan, 1987a, p. 142). Divorce or remarriage that changes the composition of the family unit is also a time when its boundaries are in flux. These are especially problematic periods. With divorce, old ties are being broken or weakened due to the redrawn boundaries. With remarriage, they are being reconstructed to incorporate members whose ties to children in the origi­ nal unit may be quite tenuous.

Adaptability to

Change and Change Initiation

The third characteristic of the family as a system is its adaptability to internal and ex­ ternal change. The nuciear family system is perhaps more subject to organizational insta­ bility than other organizations because of its rapidly changing age composition and frequently changing plurality patterns. Its

57 leaders customarily are relatively inexperi­ enced amateurs who have taken on the roles associated with being a partner and a parent. They must work with a succession of fol­ lowers having few skills and lacking in judg­ ment, under conditions that appear never to remain stable enough long enough to allow the family to get organized. The family has hardly established one set of relations based on mutual, normative expectations and agree­ ments when some child begins demanding a reinterpretation of the rights and duties built into his or her roles. Despite these disruptive factors, which are part of standard operating procedures, families in a majority of cases somehow manage to maintain the structured interaction patterns that enable them to con­ tinue as organized entities. There is enough continuity in many areas of members' inter­ changes to give a family the stability and the conservative quality observers often associate with families. The varying interdependencies of family members and the web of relationships main­ tained with outsiders provide a never-ending flow of information input to the family. It includes the demands of the members and happenings in the family's physical and social environments. In system terms, there is usually some family output in response to these de­ mands and events. The transmission of infor­ mation from outsiders and family members, and the family's responses as well as the ac­ tivities the family and its members initiate, have been conceptualized in systems theory as feedback processes. Some families react to this information from each other and outsiders without consideration of family goals. A higher level of feedback occurs when families not only develop communication pat­ terns to receive and transmit information but also develop patterns for interpreting their meaning in relation to their ongoing activ­ ities. Family members, in Buckley's (1967) terms, "map" or monitor the changes through comparing where they are with where they want to be. Rules of transformation (family rules) govern the family responses to the changes, whether within the family or in its environment (Broderick 8c Smith, 1979, p. 114). One family may have the goal of being able to meet food and housing needs before the cupboard is bare and the rent is due. Another family maybe concerned with saving

58 for the children's college educations and seeing that the children's secondary school grades are good enough to admit them to a college of their choice. A third family may have as its goal keeping the conflict between husband and wife from ending in the husband's leav­ ing home. The comparison between where families are with where they want to be may reveal a discrepancy. At this point, family members can change their goals. If they have a set of behaviors they can choose among, members may instead institute changes to enable the family to better meet its goals. The family response to the lack of correspondence be­ tween its current state and its desired condi­ tion is labeled its feedback. The members as­ sess current behaviors, and this assessment "feeds back" and affects their later behaviors. NEGATIVE FEEDBACK

Traditionally, maintaining stability or homeostasis in the unit was thought to be the major characteristic of systems. They were conceptualized in organic terms as having only a limited repertoire of responses to adapt to change. In this view, families, when viewed as systems, attempted to maintain their equi­ librium through an accumulation of small changes. If the changes were minor enough, the family responded to mismatches between the information the members receive as to where they are and where they want to be by countering deviations from established patterns. This is called a negative feedback process. A negative feedback sequence might be the following: 1. T h e family as a s y s t e m o f i n t e r d e p e n d e n t actors has developed a network of interaction patterns in c o n f o r m i t y t o shared n o r m s . T h r o u g h these patterns, it performs the tasks that enable it to m e e t family a n d individual goals a n d t o fulfill the r e q u i r e m e n t s o f o t h e r g r o u p s w i t h w h i c h family m e m b e r s have dealings. 2. Because o f these c o n t a c t s a n d the different role d e f i n i t i o n s resulting f r o m m a t u r a t i o n ­ al c h a n g e s , n o t all family m e m b e r s are satis­ fied w i t h existing i n t e r a c t i o n patterns in the family. 3 . T h e dissatisfied m e m b e r s o f a family make n e w d e m a n d s o n it, which m a y be s u p p o r t e d

T H E FAMILY CAREERS

PERSPECTIVE

by pressures from outside agencies, such as teachers, peers, and employers. 4. Attempts to accommodate the new demands to existing patterns prove inadequate, and conflict and tension result. 5. The family uses a number of techniques to handle the conflict situation. These include avoiding the problem, arguing about it in emotional exchanges, and trying to coerce recalcitrant members into conformity with existing patterns. 6. If these strategies are not successful, the family may modify to some extent its family rules and the behaviors they govern. These small changes feed back on and affect other inter­ action behaviors. 7. As new behaviors are repeated, the existing pattern is modified, producing another ten­ tative equilibrium in the family system. Let us apply this abstract analysis, of the on­ going change families incorporate while main­ taining a degree of stability, to an honestto-goodness family with an 18-year-old daughter (Bavelas 8c Segal, 1982, p. 104). The daughter argues strongly and emotionally that she is old enough to leave the family and take an apartment with a friend. With her allowance, savings from her summer job, and a little extra from her parents, she thinks she could manage. Her departure would jeopar­ dize the family goal of being able to send the children to a local college by having them live at home. Some families might institute negative feed­ back processes to maintain the status quo. They would try to discourage her by pointing out that they could not pay for her college if she moved out. There would also be dangers from moving into her own apartment. She has never been on her own before. The apartment she and her friend are thinking of renting is in a high crime area. As a last resort, her par­ ents might threaten to cut off her allowance, so she could not afford to move. They could compromise, however, and allow her greater freedom to come and go from home as she pleases. The final result is that she does remain at home. Existing inter­ action patterns are modified but not drasti­ cally changed. The family remains relatively stable in its interdependencies. Thus, the par­ ents took account of the threat to the family's goal and, through negative feedback, coun­ tered the attempted system disruption.

THE FAMILY AS A SOCIAL SYSTEM POSITIVE FEEDBACK

The family as a stable system in which change is slow to occur and limited in its extent is clearly not an accurate characteriza­ tion of its career. The behavioral changes— one might also say upheaval—that accompany the life course events of marriage, the arrival of the first child, her or his entry into school, and final departure from home, demarcate stages. The qualitative changes setting them apart, whether due to family composition changes or member's involvement with other social organizations associated with chrono­ logical age, result from positive feedback (Maruyama, 1963). Instead of keeping the family's changes within a narrow range set by existing behavioral patterns, the family at times may create or innovate different ways. The family can initiate fundamental change, not simply react to it. The information from the communica­ tions of outsiders or family members signals a mismatch between the state of the family and current family goals. Unlike the situation of negative feedback, the family does not at­ tempt to smother the deviation. The mem­ bers develop new family rules as members realize the old alternatives they have tried have proved unacceptable. Different outputs are necessary. The family sets in motion processes of positive feedback or morphogenesis. This con­ cept, borrowed from biology, means "form­ or structure-changing process." In positive feedback, family members seek out alternative responses that are definite departures from past behaviors. Some may observe or consult with friends, relatives, bartenders, and thera­ pists as to what they would do in similar circumstances. Others take courses or read books (Broderick & Smith, 1979, p. 122).There may be families, particularly those where adults are well educated and financially secure, whose norms encourage change. When a family decides to modify its customary ways, its members try out different behaviors and eventually establishes new behavioral routines. New family rules that prescribe family responses to change replace the old ones. The information inputs concerning the changes are then matched with the new fami­ ly structures. When there is a fit, the family search for new structures ceases. The family's

59 identify as a boundary maintaining unit en­ ables it to live through these breaks in estab­ lished patterns and to develop new ones while still preserving its continuity. If the family decides to change its goals itself, the reorien­ tation would constitute a still higher level of feedback. We can return to the family with the 18­ year-old daughter to demonstrate how a posi­ tive feedback process might occur. The family sees the discrepancy between the existing family goal of putting the daughter through college by having her live at home and her desire for independence. Instead of trying to dissuade her from moving out (negative feed­ back), however, parents and siblings might en­ courage her to explore alternate housing arrangements that they approve and where she could earn her keep. Family goals, thereby, would be preserved. They could point to an elderly family friend who wants company and light house­ keeping help in exchange for a room with kitchen privileges. The daughter accepts the offer, moves from home, and the family is delighted that she can both attend college and achieve her own goal of independence. New family interaction patterns develop that are definite breaks with the past. The family as a system has been changed. It would be even more fundamentally changed if parents and siblings institute new goals. They might decide children should be­ come independent of the family, both finan­ cially and residentially, when each graduates from high school. They would abandon the goal of financing college educations for their children. With this new goal, the daughter would be encouraged to move from home and be on her own. The family might help her to find a suitable location and a job to pay for it, but how she lived afterward would basically be left up to her. The terms positive feedback and negative feedback do not include value judgments. Some structural changes resulting from posi­ tive feedback, such as a divorce or a child's leaving home early, may be seen as un­ desirable to outsiders and family members. But minimal family modifications in behavior that smother structural changes through negative feedback can also be seen as undesir­ able, as when unhappy, older adolescents are prevented from leaving home. Most people

60 prefer to rock along with minor variations in their usual routines. They dislike the difficul­ ties involved in disruptive change and fear the unknown of new arrangements. For this un­ derstandable reason, so-called negative feed­ back may seem more positive than the fun­ damental change labeled positive. But these qualitative breaks in routine interactions are inevitable, given family composition shifts, transactions with outside agencies, and the aging of family members and their associated demands. THE TIMING OF POSITIVE FEEDBACK

Families cannot always modify existing structures to maintain stability. As we saw in Chapter 2, changes in personnel and their participation in school and on the job serve as criteria for demarcating periods in the career of a family. These periods are dis­ similar enough that one must use positive feedback to explain what accounts for the observed differences in family interactions among them. Family composition shifts brought on by the arrival of children, and their eventual departures when adults, disrupt existing inter­ action patterns and force members to work out new strategies to reach family goals. Other family membership changes, such as the up­ heavals due to the departure of a spouseparent through divorce, result in positive feedback. Pressures resulting from actions in outside agencies, such as job changes or a spouse's retirement, also bring new demands that existing interaction patterns cannot meet. The formation of a new family unit is another occurrence requiring fundamental modifica­ tion in the relations of the new couple. Families can develop "anticipatory norms," norms that encourage them to anticipate change inside and outside the family. With expectancies of change and sufficient lead time to cope with coming variations, families can do a better job of developing new ways or new goals. Such families are also better prepared to explore structure modification goals. These experimental families are toler­ ant of deviation from accepted ways and reward new behaviors that promise payoffs for other family members and for the in­ novating person.

T H E FAMILY CAREERS

PERSPECTIVE

Families who do not cling to existing inter­ action patterns, but who are willing to try out fundamentally different ways, maybe looking for better ways of getting along. Certainly, persons rarely undergo the breaks in estab­ lished routines and relationships cohabita­ tion brings unless they expect their lives to be better. One of the major reasons planned off­ spring create less stress for their parents than the unexpected arrival is that parents have assessed the consequences and judged the necessary fundamental family changes as not only possible but desirable. During the transition when the family is innovating new ways, members may con­ sciously use various safety valves to lessen the pressures arising from conflicting behavioral expectations. Taking a walk, getting a beer at the local bar, packing the children off to visit grandmother, or letting Joey go to the local teen hangout are all "time-out" periods that lower stress. But most of these strategies require money, so low-income families have more difficulty getting through the disruptive tran­ sitions that separate stages and force positive feedback. The kinds of relations ex-mates develop after the partnership has gone sour are inter­ esting examples of positive feedback. In some cases, the individuals may resolve never to see each other again. This is easier to do if there are no children from the failed family career. When there are, the parents, in the interest of these potent reminders of their past intimacy, must develop new ways of getting along. To negotiate these different interaction patterns, they may have to call on professionals to help in the role-making process. One woman who had remarried told what she and her former spouse had gotten out of such sessions. It appeared that the major idea had been simply getting together with her former husband to talk about what was going on. Both had to put aside the bitterness from the failed marriage and talk as individuals without this previous history influencing their decisions concern­ ing its heritage, their children (Kroeger, 1988). The greater the variety of ideas the family possesses, the greater its ability to adapt to altered circumstances or to initiate them. Attempts to handle pressures for change in­ novatively depend on the family's store of information. Extrafamilial contacts that tap knowledge from a variety of social class,

THE FAMILY AS A SOCIAL SYSTEM

religious, and ethnic groups increase the range of available ideas. The communication network in the family determines how the information is used. If the family members are organized into mari­ tal, sibling, or parent-child subsystems with little interchange among them, only a limited portion of the family's total information input is available for coping with its problems. Moreover, such families are organized neither to receive signals from members or outsiders nor to analyze their judgments on the current state of the family. Discord can fester and misunderstandings mount if communication barriers prevent the flow of information and feelings to and from all family members. Evidence concerning the importance of extrafamilial contacts and intrafamilial inter­ dependencies for positive feedback in families comes from a laboratory study of family problem solving. The 115 families who were drawn from junior high school districts in a midwestern city had to adapt to unan­ nounced changes in the rules of a game they were playing. The father, the mother, and the 12- to 14-year-old sons were pressing hard to develop new behavior structures that would enable them to triumph over the scores of other family triads. In this situation, the nega­ tive effect of restricted communication net­ works was apparent. Families did less well when all members, particularly children, did not present their hunches. The most successful families were those with two contrasting organization forms. In the first type, the three family members ex­ changed suggestions on possible strategies for playing the game. One person, usually the father, evaluated the information and came to a decision about the best interaction strategy. The family then carried it out. The second successful organization centered on the father as the source of information, but the mother and son were also active in evaluating and decision making (Tallman & Miller, 1974). Both types of family organization pos­ sessed open communication channels among the members at one or more stages of the problem-solving sequence. A more recent laboratory study of family problem solving in the same tradition con­ cerned the extent to which members' defined problematic situations before trying to do something to solve them. Drawing from the

61 same population as in the previous study, there were 48 white families in the research, composed of both parents and their ninthgrade children. The research showed that solutions are better when persons think about problem characteristics and do not focus on strategies for removing the problem. This problem definition research also showed the importance of good interpersonal feelings that encourage the sharing of information. Fathers with higher marital satisfaction and whose adolescents reported good relations with them made more attempts to define the situations before suggesting solutions. Mothers who had more power in their marriages also spent more time speaking in the research setting and did more problem defining (Aldous 8c Ganey, 1989). The studies also showed that middle-class families usually do better than workingclass families. Presumably, the greater educa­ tion of middle-class parents, their greater adherence to egalitarian values, and their approval of the children's demands for autonomy all encourage a diversity of idea input from members and more interdepen­ dence in its processing. Children can con­ tribute to the solutions so that the adults do not have to bear the burden of problem solv­ ing alone. Middle-class families also have the monetary and information resources that permit them to be experimental families who plan for and initiate change. To summarize this discussion of the family's change characteristics, the family sets goals for itself that enable it to meet the individual demands of members and the requirements of external agencies. Family members, through their selective maintenance of boundaries and their interdependencies, collect informa­ tion to see whether there is a match between the family's current condition and the tasks they must perform to meet its goals. When a mismatch exists, the family institutes feedback processes. These can be stabilizing. In this case, change is countered by members' fol­ lowing one of the established interaction alternatives for negative feedback. If the resulting responses prove to be at odds with cherished family goals, the family institutes more drastic change at a higher feedback level. The painful work of developing and getting used to new interaction structures through positive feedback follows repeated failure of

62

T H E FAMILY CAREERS

the members' customary repertoire of inter­ action patterns to meet their goals. Through negative and positive feedback processes, the family adapts to change or sets it in motion (Broderick 8c Smith, 1979, p. 122). The Family as a Task

Performance Group

In assessingwhether they are meeting their goals, families examine how well members are performing certain tasks, which are based on members' needs. Their accomplishment en­ ables the members not only to fulfill these needs and reach family goals but also to meet the requirements of extrafamilial insti­ tutions. Families are generally free from un­ wanted intrusions, provided they are able to accomplish the following tasks: 1. Physical maintenance of family members 2. Socialization of family members for roles in the family and other groups 3. Maintenance of family members' motiva­ tion to perform familial and other roles 4. Maintenance of social control within the family and between family members and outsiders 5. Addition of family members through adop­ tion or reproduction and their release when mature PHYSICAL MAINTENANCE

A good place to begin a discussion of the tasks families perform is with physical main­ tenance. It generally requires adults to both work within the home to see to the well-being of members and work outside the family in exchange for wages. This money enables the family to buy the means for physical main­ tenance. Because members have little control over whether there are jobs available, getting one depends to a great extent on the employ­ ment situation in the broader society as well as their own qualifications. When families are unable to perform this physical maintenance task, they may seek assistance from outside. Help from kin and friends can be insufficient, so the family turns to governmental welfare agencies. At such times, families' attempts at boundary main­ tenance often fail. Welfare regulations require

PERSPECTIVE

families to take such actions as disclosure of finances, canvassing of aid from close kin, or the employment of adults in available but undesirable jobs—actions that families not subject to welfare would reject as invasions of privacy. The U.S. Bureau of the Census (1993b) continues to document that a sizable number of families in the United States are not able to fulfill the physical maintenance task for their offspring. These include a disproportionate number of families with children under age 18. Children in families headed by single mothers are also especially likely to be poor. The situation is even worse for black and Hispanic children, whether they are members of one- or two-parent families. The family's ability to fulfill its physical maintenance task critically affects its perfor­ mance of other tasks. Divorce rates, which are higher among the poor, indicate the corrosive effects of poverty on morale maintenance among couples. Strained finances and unhap­ py family relations also lead to the premature release of adolescents from the family and their entrance into marriage or parenthood. The early formation of family units in the younger generation short-circuits the sociali­ zation process in which they prepare for fami­ ly and occupational roles. A longitudinal study of some 2,500 youths, interviewed first when they were 14 to 24 and then 12 to 14 years later, showed the educa­ tional handicap the poor can experience. Youths from poor and single-parent families achieved fewer years of schooling than their peers from more well-fixed backgrounds. Males from broken homes were especially af­ fected (Krein 8c Beller, 1988). Women who became parents while in high school or after dropping out are also less likely to obtain their high school diplomas than are women who do not become parents until their 20s (Mott 8c Marsiglio, 1985). Lack of education limits these young family heads to unemployment, welfare, or poorer paying jobs that are inade­ quate to meet their newly acquired family responsibilities. Thus, they have difficulty es­ caping from the lower-class living patterns of the families they came from. Gender and ethnic differences in family formation patterns affect education possi­ bilities. Females take on the adult family roles at younger ages than do males, and compared

63

THE FAMILY AS A SOCIAL SYSTEM

with whites, blacks tend to enter marriage less rapidly but parenthood more rapidly (Cherlin, 1992). Hispanics assume both posi­ tions more rapidly than Anglos (Bachu, 1993; U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1992a). Trends in social mobility beginning in the late 1970s suggest that not only a high school diploma but also a college degree is essential for lower- or working-class persons wanting to improve their lot. Chrysler worker Jerry Hammer and his wife had been laid off from their assembly line jobs for 6 months. Their three children joined the armed forces, partly to get education credits. Hammer explained to a reporter that the automobile industry was employing fewer workers: " 'That's why our children can't look forward to a job in the industry—unless they're engineers. There's no good, decent-paying jobs out there with­ out education' " (Rich, 1988, p. 7). To summarize the relation of education and the accomplishment of the physical main­ tenance task, youths from better-off and more stable families are less likely to enter parenthood or marriage as teenagers. With parental aid, scholarships, or governmental assistance, they can obtain the college creden­ tials necessary for getting better-paying jobs. This financial security, in turn, contributes to their own marital stability when they do take on family responsibilities. 3

SOCIALIZATION

The socialization task requires family mem­ bers to teach each other the appropriate skills, knowledge, and values underlying the reper­ toire of roles each plays at home and in society. Because children are generally born into families, parents have first crack at en­ couraging these new citizens to follow ways of behavior set by their fellows. Although we customarily think of parents as socializing children, the reverse process also occurs. No functioning family member, regardless of age, ever stops learning. Older children receive socialization in the formal school setting. They often become acquainted with new technol­ ogies through teachers and from peers. They pass on what they learn to parents and ease their elders' encounters with a changing world. Parents can continue to be sources of in­ formation for their offspring, especially when they work along with children on some activ­

ity. A news story about a Mennonite farm family provides a good example. The parents began inculcating this occupational tradition with their young son, Neil, at an early age (Miller, 1988). When he was an infant, they took him along to the barn for the evening milking, and at 6 months old, he was going with his father on the tractor. At 4 years of age, when the article was written, Neil's job in the growing family, already enlarged by a brother and a sister, was to push the youngest in his stroller when he started crying. But Neil, every once in a while, had the task of pushing manure off the center aisles of the dairy barn and into the gutters behind the rows of cows. Neil was also ready to operate the tractor, thanks to his father's teaching, when someone would just push a certain lever for him. No wonder he liked farm life and wanted to "drive tractor" when he grew up. Notice that Neil was learning child care as well as occupational skills. This is important, because gender continues to have a strong effect on socialization. Most of us have seen at least one newspaper article detailing how the women's movement has not reached into the toy box. Despite efforts of leaders working for equal opportunities in jobs, education, and politics, it is the rare child who is exposed to a wide range of toys, with no account taken of the child's gender. Instead, little girls play dating games with dolls designed to empha­ size physical features supposedly attractive to men. Little boys have armed forces toys and games where conquering a treacherous op­ ponent is the goal. Toy manufacturers say the continuing status quo is the result of the different futures girls and boys face. Girls, through their dolls, rehearse behaviors such as going out with boys, getting married, and other roles centering on the family. Boys learn the leadership and competitive skills called for in the labor force. Child development experts note that toy advertisements encourage sex stereotypes. They also point to the widespread fear, for which there is no research support, linking childhood toys with later homosexuality. The mother of a 6-year-old son voiced, in an ar­ ticle in the New York Times, the lesser value many parents place on characteristics as­ sociated with females: " 'It's okay for girls to be tomboys,' " she said," 'but I don't want my son to develop feminine traits' " (Lawson,

64 1989, pp. CI, CIO). Child psychologists, however, report that there is no innate need based on their gender for children to play with gender-stereotyped toys. They argue that, in a world in which men and women work out­ side the home and must care for persons within it, children require the freedom to play with any toys they want. Otherwise, they will feel uncomfortable when they must depart from the stereotyped activities that playing with toys as youngsters encouraged. Adults also socialize each other in various family roles. Only after a couple cohabits do they learn many roles and marital behaviors. Parents often perform marital roles behind closed doors. Even when they interact as spouses in front of children, the latter are only observers and not participants. After coming together as a family unit, each partner serves as a model and teacher for the other. This socialization extends beyond that of family roles. Rehearsals for job interviews, discussions of occupational problems, and decisions to start new careers and preparations to leave them can all occur in the family, benefiting both oldsters and youngsters. SOCIAL CONTROL

The task of social control refers to the attempts of family members to avoid the dis­ ruption of established behavioral patterns and prevent harm to persons and to property. The intimate and enduring qualities of family in­ teraction, coupled with the sheer length of time spent at home, mean that emotions run high in the domestic setting. In addition, the younger generation may not know the be­ haviors required for the group's continued functioning. Thus, the family has to establish some methods of social control. Whenever formal control agencies intervene to quiet violent domestic quarrels or to adjudicate youthful misdeeds, the family is failing in its task of social control. Socialization and social control are closely related. Parental discipline and rewards not only socialize children into new ways of be­ havior but also are social control devices. If they are also warm and affectionate, parents can set a variety of restrictions and insist that children conform to them. Under these circumstances, children tend to be obedient

T H E FAMILY CAREERS

PERSPECTIVE

and minimally aggressive. Low restrictiveness coupled with parental hostility is associated with low self-esteem in children who are also more likely to be aggressive and noncompliant. Such children are the most likely to create control problems for parents and outsiders. Parents who show low restrictiveness and high warmth seem to have children who are friendly, creative, and independent in peer groups but also aggressive. The aggressiveness of these children, at least in preschools, is accepted by their age-mates, which is not true of the aggressive behavior of children from hostile, low restrictive homes. Finally, chil­ dren from high restrictive, hostile homes are withdrawn, quarrel with their peers, and show self-aggression. Thus, children who have trouble getting along with peers and engage in activities that lead to encounters with authorities seem to come disproportionately from homes where parents are hostile. These generalizations, drawn from a series of early studies by sociologist Darwin Thomas and associates (Thomas, Gecas, Weigert, 8c Rooney, 1974), can be applied to young people's use of drugs and alcohol in the present era. As I noted above, the Coombs and Landsverk (1988) study showed that grade­ schoolers and youths in high school who felt close to their parents were less likely to be drug users and, presumably, were less subject to peer pressures. These young people who were on good terms with their parents were more likely to say that their parents, and especially their mothers, trusted them. Their parents were apt to let the youngsters know, through praise and encouragement, that they were doing well in life. Does this mean that these parents use no control or discipline for the young people? Not at all. Parents of abstainers or infrequent drug users had very clear restrictions on the use of drugs and alcohol. These rules covered other aspects of the youths' lives, including their dating, homework, television viewing, and time to be in at night. But their strictness in enforcing these rules had less to do with physical punishment than praise and en­ couragement for children who followed the rules. Parents who were involved with their children and clear about the behaviors they expected were generally successful in their social control measures. Permissive, unin­

65

THE FAMILY AS A SOCIAL SYSTEM

volved parents whose children felt neglected were less successful in preventing substance abuse among their youngsters. As I shall show in the chapters on the parent-child subsystem, parents influence the socialization of their children through the content of their rules and regulations and how they go about monitoring children's conformity to them. Too much parental in­ terference coupled with high control or too litde parental concern along with uncaring permissiveness are less effective in socializing children than a middle ground strategy of warmth combined with rule enforcement. Of course, we cannot overlook the influ­ ence children's behaviors have on adults. Regrettable cycles of feedback processes can get started if obstreperous youths contest the limits and parents administer force instead of favor to counter the disobedience. Its likely continuance under these circumstances can lead to parents' giving up completely and re­ moving all restrictions in a parody of positive feedback. But regardless of the initiating fac­ tor, youngsters' behaviors and their parents' socialization tactics are interdependent.

sympathetic urging to get started and patient understanding when learning proves diffi­ cult. At such times, the application of praise and affection by others, when coupled with their insistence on the value of the learning, keeps the individual going. The more autono­ mous a person is in the family and the stronger the ties with outsiders, the more central is the task's fulfillment if the family wishes him or her to remain a member. The centrality of morale maintenance for family life is pointed up in those instances when former spouses retain good relations with one another. This morale maintenance among the several parents in a child's life pays off in the greater probability of their working together. Children are less likely to experience conflicts of loyalty when natural parents and step­ parents are able to function as a team on the youngsters' behalf. One 13-year-old girl gave this judgment: " 'If parents are going to get divorced in the first place, they should expect to pay the consequences, which include talk­ ing directly to each other—even if they hate each other. The kids shouldn't be dragged into their problems' "(Krementz, 1984, p. 106).

MORALE MAINTENANCE

REPRODUCTION

The above discussion points up the impor­ tance of members' having high morale if they are to perform roles inside and outside the family. Other societal agencies, such as schools, law enforcement units, and business firms, are dependent on the family to keep people in good enough physical and mental condition to perform their daily ro und of activ­ ities. These are all too often dull, demeaning, and lacking in intrinsic rewards. Customary role performances, therefore, tend to con­ tinue because members are caught up in a web of mutual interchanges. At times of low energy levels or conflicting demands, indi­ viduals may not live up to role expectations without a heavy infusion of positive senti­ ments. We have already seen that parents whose offspring resist peer pressures to use drugs or alcohol are not hesitant to give a lot of en­ couragement and positive support to back up their rules.

For centuries, having children to replace the present population has been seen as one of the major functions of families. Some religious denominations have discouraged childlessness for theological reasons and the need to maintain membership numbers. The influence of organized religion on childbear­ ing is suggested by the finding that those without children surveyed in the National Survey of Families and Households were less likely to attend church (Jacobson 8t Heaton, 1991). Not only businesses seeking growing markets for their products but also govern­ ments wanting large military forces have con­ tributed to the traditional thinking that the responsibility of couples is to have offspring. The pronatalism values stemming from all these factors are so strong that partners without children are often accused of being selfish and uncaring.

In learning new behaviors demanded by the family or external agencies and performing self-imposed tasks, the individual requires both

If one takes the viewpoint of the welfare of one's neighbors locally, nationally, and on a world basis, childlessness is a positive contribu­ tion. Newspaper headlines and television

66 news stories report population growth out­ stripping food increases. According to a news story, the Worldwatch Institute reports that even if the world's supply of meat, fish, and grain were distributed equally in 1993, each individual would have less to eat than as recent­ ly as 4 years previously. Food supplies are fall­ ing. The cause lies mainly in record population growth, with 91 million persons added to the existing world's people each year. Conse­ quently, the world's population is expected to double from its some 5.5 billion in the early 1990s to 11 billion by 2030 (Briscoe, 1993). The United States also faces the problems of a growing population. It grew in numbers by 176% in the 45 years from 1930 to 1975, from some 123 million to 216 million. Projec­ tions in the 1980s showed it climbing by an­ other 80% to 267 million by the turn of the century (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1987), and in 1993 this projected figure was in­ creased to 275 million (Day, 1993). The United States is also responsible for more than its share of environmental destruction. Our population consumes more of the world's limited supplies of resources than other people and thus disproportionately contributes to the fouling of the oceans, air, and land through the despoiling of nature from this consump­ tion. As a result, individuals who buck the traditional prochild value pressures are con­ tributing, even if unknowingly, to the general population's well-being. It is hard for individuals to see how such population facts should affect their own fer­ tility decisions. Most couples continue to see childbearing as one of the main reasons for family life, even if children nowadays are sel­ dom contributors to the family purse. Their economic value is largely nonexistent; how­ ever, in emotional terms, they are priceless. Children provide a meaning for existence that takes individuals beyond narrow self-interest. Children symbolize the couple's shared com­ mitment and provide a new common interest. Children give couples a stake in the future. Childbearing can also be a young woman's way of announcing that she is now an adult, just as offspring can make young males feel successful. This is particularly true of teen­ age women and men from disadvantaged back­ grounds. They often are doing poorly in school and may have an unhappy home life.

T H E FAMILY CAREERS

PERSPECTIVE

Finishing school and getting a good job seem unrealistic when unemployment is high and the adolescent lacks role models and the necessary skills. A baby is another way of indi­ cating adult status, and the unloved adoles­ cent may look to her child as a source of love. Many young women do not seek mother­ hood. But flattering attention from male peers and their pressures to engage in inter­ course can lead to unexpected and unwanted pregnancies. For the males unlikely to achieve on the job, sexual prowess can be a substitute measure of success. The young woman still in her teens generally has difficulty taking on the respon­ sibilities single motherhood entails. The new mother-child unit lacks the means for physi­ cal maintenance. The long-term consequen­ ces for the poorly timed birth can be poverty for mother and child and a continuance over time of family hardships. Thus, for some indi­ viduals as for the broader society, the family's task of procreation may not always have posi­ tive consequences. This is what one working-class man had to say about the arrival of his first child: "Unfortunately, Ellen was pregnant when we got married andfivemonths after, ourfirstkid was born. That was when things really sort of collapsed around me. I was filled with resentment of him because then I didn't have someone who just cared about me anymore. There I was, just a kid myself, and I finally had someone to take care of me. Then suddenly, I had to take care of a kid, and she was too busy with him to take care of me. The whole thing didn't make sense." (Rubin, 1976, p. 84) Yet traditional rearing beliefs emphasize maternal roles for little girls and occupational roles for little boys. National probability sur­ veys show that although stereotypes in house­ hold task assignments may be lessening, they are stronger when the sex balance in families between daughters and sons allows it. The more daughters respondents had, the more likely they were to endorse girls doing central household maintenance tasks, such as cook­ ing, cleaning, making beds, and other tradi­ tional female duties. Only when they had no sons did they favor girls doing male sextyped chores like taking out the garbage and

67

THE FAMILY AS A SOCIAL SYSTEM

TABLE 3.2 Family Stage Task Priorities Stage 1. Formation 2. Childbearing/ child-rearing years 3. Children leaving home 4. The middle years 5. Final years

Task Priorities Morale maintenance Social control Reproduction Physical maintenance Socialization Social control Morale maintenance Morale maintenance Physical maintenance Morale maintenance

mowing the lawn. The concern that little girls, but not little boys, center their attention on the household is especially likely among males and the less educated (Brody & Steelman, 1985). The number and timing of children in most U.S. families suggest that women will experience only a limited number of years in the family life cycle when they will be en­ gaged in active mothering. For a longer period they are likely to be holding a job. Men also come out on the short end when they are reared to avoid domestic duties. As poorly prepared and unwilling participants in house­ hold concerns, they truly can miss out on the pleasures that come from assisting children to realize their potential or making the house a home for family members. To summarize the discussion of the family tasks, it shows that they are interrelated. Some, such as social control, socialization, and morale maintenance, are so intertwined that it was difficult to disentangle them for discussion purposes. If physical maintenance has been problematic over some period of time, morale in families usually suffers, and the addition and departure of members, as in­ fants arrive and adolescents leave home, affect the self-worth of family members. Women may start to panic at the thought that they remain childless while their biological clocks tick on. They continue to experience social pressure from parents and partners to be­ come mothers, and we return again to the task of physical maintenance in the family, be­ cause its performance affects the preparation and timing of the departure of offspring from home and their own performance of the task.

Task Performance

Over the Family Life Cycle

The importance of the various tasks waxes and wanes over the family life cycle and so does the difficulty of fulfilling them (Aldous, 1994). Table 3.2 shows what tasks take pri­ ority during the periods in family lives. The family formation stage centers on morale maintenance and social control. Cohabiting partners are having to adjust individual ways to a couple regimen while retaining the sen­ timents of love and affection that brought them together initially. The good feelings that can ease them over the rough transition to the comfortable routine of interaction patterns are also linked to the creation of family boundaries. Forsaking all others is a means to establishing the new unit's identity as a family. This requires less involvement in the friend­ ship and kin networks in which spouses were previously caught up. Encouraging, urging, or pressuring partners to loosen their ties with outsiders, in the interest of firming up the couple boundaries, are social control techniques designed to set the family apart as a separate entity. The task of reproduction is the focus of the childbearing years. But physical maintenance is especially problematical during the child­ bearing and child-rearing years. Families with young children, particularly single-parent families, often experience problems making ends meet. The cost of placing youths in decent paying occupations sufficient to support mar­ riage and parenthood includes at least high school and, if possible, a college education.

68 Many parents are unable to afford their chil­ dren's receiving these education credentials. Socialization also receives high priority during the childbearing years, when parents are teaching their youngsters the ways neces­ sary for social living. Such basic skills as dress­ ing, eating, and toileting are left to parents and to siblings to transmit. How to compete or to cooperate and when to do so are social skills children acquire at home by observation, ex­ ample, and training. Even being able to sit still and listen to the teacher when children venture into the broader society for formal education is affected by family practices. Families with adolescents getting ready to leave home may be most concerned with the social control task. Youths are becoming less subject to parental monitoring, but families are still held responsible by community agencies for their young people's behavior. With the increasing emphasis on youth as a mora­ torium period from adult responsibilities, this is the time when individuals either try out new behaviors and roles or try to live up to the ideals they have been taught in home and in church. Experimentation in some areas can lead to police intervention, with resultant possible legal costs and prison records. The social control task ties into the tasks of socialization and release of mature adults. Where the young person has long been a part of the family's communication network, parents and sibs have had time to become acquainted with her or his thinking, to in­ fluence it and be influenced by it. This twoway socialization increases the likelihood that parents will know what to expect from their children. Yet when youths engage in what parents see as sexual adventures, many par­ ents may still be surprised and disappointed. Maintaining the morale of family members is critical at this period, because parents must somehow keep members' emotions on an even keel despite adolescents' precipitous mood changes. At times, teenagers are eager to assert their independence, and at others, they retreat back to their families for comfort and counsel. Morale maintenance continues to take priority in the years after adult children have left home. The partners who are either still together in original marriages or have formed new family arrangements after divorce are now alone. The still-married childless have preserved their intimate relation based on

T H E FAMILY CAREERS

PERSPECTIVE

mutual attraction over the preceding years. Partners with children, either their own or their mate's, have had competing concerns from the younger generation to take their attention away from each other. Now, for the first time in years, they can focus on the part­ ner to see if the two still share something in common other than the former routines revolving around the demands of offspring. When companionship continues to join the couple, the partners can look to each other for support in times of stress. For women who have remained at home during the years when children were present, an understand­ ing mate can ease the void in activities that the youths' departure brings. Women can also look to friends and relatives across family boundaries, whose ties they have preserved even during the hectic child-rearing years. Men are more likely to have restricted their confidences to their wives over the years, fear­ ing they would appear weak if they confided in outsiders. Physical maintenance joins morale main­ tenance as important tasks in the final period of the family career. The toll aging exerts on the ability to perform formerly simple selfcare tasks makes some elderly dependent on others. Fortunate are those who have loving spouses or children to assist them with daily living chores and who make the recipients of their care feel good about themselves.

Summary This chapter dealt with the family concep­ tualized as a social system. As such, its mem­ bers are linked through their interdependen­ cies. What affects one has repercussions for the others. Over the family career, couple in­ terdependency based on sentimental passion is highest during the newlywed period, before the erosion of the conjugal bond brought about by the cares of earning a living and the competition from the parent-child subsystem occurs. The close web of parent interrelations that dependent children demand is torn as they grow older and develop contacts outside the family. The conjugal couple is then left alone to rediscover each other and to enjoy comfortable interactions—or to drift apart if the shared routines, common interests, and

69

THE FAMILY AS A SOCIAL SYSTEM

complementary skills that create interdepen­ dency are lacking. Selective boundary maintenance, the second characteristic of the family as a system, indi­ cates that even as families attempt to set themselves apart, they either welcome or must accept the influence of outsiders. The latter often make their presence felt through those least involved in the network of family interdependencies, the disaffected and those ready to go off on their own. Family boun­ daries are most problematic when progeny begin to leave. The family is able to maintain itself as an entity only through its capacity to counter or amplify changes. The family, through negative feedback, seeks to preserve customary inter­ action structures with little modification. The events that lead to family formation, the ad­ dition of members, their passage through the educational system, and their eventual depar­ ture, as well as divorce and remarriage, all require the family, through positive feedback, to fill in the gaps left by those who have gone or to meet the different demands of its mem­ bers and of society. More well-off families can anticipate the need to change, and they can plan for and try out the required new di­ visions of labor, different power relations, and varied communication patterns. Finally, the family as a system sets goals and performs tasks that enable its members to maintain their daily activities and the family to continue as a group. Some tasks, such as physical maintenance, are monitored by societal agencies that will set in motion positive feedback processes when the family's present organization is not fulfilling them. If physical maintenance tasks are carried out effectively, it is easier for families not only to accomplish morale maintenance and sociali­ zation tasks but also to anticipate change. Physical maintenance and social control tasks are less problematic in the middle years, when rearing children is largely completed and the couple relation has shaken down to an enduring bond. More stormy for morale

maintenance are the initial years of marriage, when couples are exploring whether they will continue as a couple. Problems of getting along are exacerbated by low finances, with indi­ viduals just beginning jobs and women often cutting their hours of paid employment at the onset of childbearing. When children reach adolescence, it becomes particularly apparent whether a family can anticipate change and institute positive feedback to deal with it. Adolescents' orderly departure from the family unit, prepared to fulfill adult responsibilities, depends on parents having fulfilled sociali­ zation, morale maintenance, and physical maintenance tasks. It should be apparent from the chapter discussion that properties of systems are in­ terrelated. Each property affects the others and is affected by them. Families jog along from day to day as their members fulfill the domestic activities called for in their family roles. External influences that cross the fam­ ily boundaries also play a part in family functioning. These influences ease or com­ plicate task performance; they demand or discourage change. Whether tasks can be per­ formed according to the usual interdepen­ dency patterns depends on the expectations of both outsiders and family members, and mutual interdependencies within the family affect how well tasks are performed and how external influences affect family members.

Notes 1. From Intimate Strangers: Men and Women Together, by L. B. Rubin (1983). Copyright © 1983 by Lillian B. Rubin. This and all subsequent excerpts reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publisher, Inc. 2. From Staying the Course: The Emotional and Social Lives of Men Who Do Well at Work, by R. S. Weiss. Copy­ right © 1990 by Robert S. Weiss. This and all subsequent excerpts reprinted with permission of The Free Press, a division of Simon 8c Schuster Inc. 3. From Rich (1988). Copyright © 1988 The Wash­ ington Post. Reprinted with permission.

4 The Making o f Family Roles

Family Interaction Structures The concept of social system described in the previous chapter permitted us to view the family as a unit. In the present chapter, we will go within the family unit and look at the interactions of family members. We will be concerned with the relatively lasting behavior interchanges, or structures that arise from the roles family members play. The concept struc­ ture refers to the habitual interrelationships that join the members of the family. These, you will remember from the last chapter, gen­ erally occupy the following possible positions in the family system: wife-mother, husbandfather, daughter-sister, or son-brother. Vari­ ations from this nuclear family most often stem from the absence of a parent or children. The persons in these positions are linked by a network of enduring interaction patterns. These structures develop from the family mem­ bers' attempts to fulfdl family tasks and indi­ vidual goals. Interactions that are customary make family life more predictable. Members know what to expect of each other, a great necessity in the close emotional quarters of the family. This chapter will begin with a discussion of family composition variables that affect inter­ action patterns, regardless of the personal 70

characteristics of individual family members. These variables include family size, its age, and sex composition. I will show how each one sets limits on the kinds of routines family members develop for getting along and the outcomes. Individuals, however, are able to "make" their roles within these broad con­ straints and influence family structures. The discussion includes an examination of this change process as well as the interaction struc­ tures and their interrelation. Family Composition Variables FAMILY SIZE

The first composition factor we will ex­ amine that sets limits on member interaction patterns is family size. At any one point in time, the number of members and the result­ ant number of possible interpersonal rela­ tionships between positions determines the possibilities for interpersonal linkages. The family begins with two members—for ex­ ample, a woman and a man or a mother and a child—and so, one interpersonal relation. The effect of an increase in family members on the number of reciprocal dyadic relations can be demonstrated by using the formula in

71

THE MAKING OF FAMILY ROLES

TABLE 4.1 Formula for Determining the Number of Two-Person Relationships in a Family and Its Application Y = X(X-l) 2 X 2 3 4 5

X = the number of persons in the family Y = the number of personal interrelationships Y 1 3 6 10

Table 4.1. With the addition of a child, the number of dyadic relations goes up 300% in a nuclear family from one—husband-wife— to three—husband-wife, father-child, and mother-child. In a three-child, one-parent family, the oldest child's leaving home means a decrease from four to three family members and a decrease in two-person relations by 50%, from six to three (Broderick & Smith, 1979, p. 113). Because each new family member results in a disproportionate increase in the number of interpersonal relations, families face work­ ing out a number of new behavior structures. The presence of the newcomer does not en­ sure that other family members will always interact with her or him, particularly in large families. (John F. Kennedy once remarked that he was 10 years old before he became aware of his brother Robert's existence.) One can assume, however, that in the interdepen­ dent family system, each person's presence has an effect on the others. Few people have studied how size and the resultant number of interactions differentiate families over time. It is difficult to control for factors associated with family size, such as social class, the spacing of children, and their gender composition, which may mask the effects of size alone. Take, for example, our beliefs as opposed to the reality of only chil­ dren. Most Americans tend to think that they are at a disadvantage when compared with other children. They are supposedly more self­ ish, spoiled, wanting to have their own way, lonely, and quarrelsome. The family back­ grounds of such children suggest how family composition, race, and economic well-being apart from their being only children may affect their behavior. The demographer Judith Blake (1987, 1989), who has done research on the effects of family size on children, finds that only

children are more likely to come from singleparent homes, often resulting from divorce. Because they usually live with their mothers and are disproportionately African American, they are more likely to be less well-off than children from small families of two and three children. (Over the years, social scientists have varied as to the use of the terms black and African American. I have generally con­ formed to their usage in summarizing their research.) Only children are also more prone to infant and child health problems due to the initial low birth weight more common among the infants of low-income mothers and its consequences (Blake, 1987, p. 356). Moreover, because higher proportions of singletons are born to older couples, their parents tend to be less well educated than the parents of larger families. Consequently, family composition, social class, and race, along with only chil­ dren's early health problems may help ac­ count for their behavioral differences from children with siblings. When such factors are taken into account, however, it turns out that popular beliefs about only children are myths. Surveys comparing only children to children from other sibship sizes show them to be at an advantage. They tend to be more interpersonally sensitive and mature than children with one or more brothers or sisters. These qualities appear in this mother's description of her only child: "She can talk to adults as well as she can talk to children. And she does. She's not afraid to talk to adults. She never has been. She can carry on a conversation with an adult as easily as she can carry on a conversation with someone her age." (Polit, 1984, p. 194) There are no differences between only children and others in respect to characteris­ tics such as impulsiveness, self-confidence,

72 and leadership. As adults, they are just as likely or more likely to be optimistic and con­ tent with their health and jobs (Claredy, 1984; Falbo, 1984; Polit 8c Falbo, 1987). A consideration of what we know about the relation of size to family interaction should help explain why only children are not at a disadvantage. It appears that the sheer num­ ber of relationships in large families limits the personal attention parents can devote to par­ ticular children. It is worth reviewing the results from an early exploratory study of 100 hard-to-find, large families (Bossard 8c Boll, 1956). All the families had at least six children. Several interaction patterns distin­ guished the large family system. Due to family size, parents tended to emphasize organiza­ tion and leadership. Set patterns developed to get things done. Each person had a particular task to perform.^o the family members were highly interdependent. Conformity to family patterns and cooperation in accomplishing family tasks were important rules. Parents lacked time to give individual attention to children, and siblings served as parental sur­ rogates. Under such circumstances, family members were less demanding and less pos­ sessive in their relations to one an-other than was true in smaller families. These findings were supported in a family size study a decade later with white seventh graders in central North Carolina. The sample of 1,265 students was large enough to allow analyses according to the social class of the families (Elder 8c Bowerman, 1963). Workingclass girls in large families, those defined as having four or more children, more often perceived their fathers as authoritarian. These girls viewed both parents as using physical punishment more, being more controlling and less communicative, and giving less praise than did working-class girls from smaller families. Family size had compara­ tively little effect on the child-rearing prac­ tices of middle-class parents of girls. The authors explain the differential effect of large family size on girls in the working class as being due to the greater difficulty workingclass parents faced in monitoring their daughters' premarital behavior. Middle-class boys in large families saw parents as more controlling, more punishing, and less com­ municative than did boys from the same class in smaller families. When all children in the

T H E FAMILY CAREERS

PERSPECTIVE

family were boys, similar findings also ap­ peared for large, working-class families. As I will discuss further in the chapter on the siblings careers, recent research on the constraints family size may exercise on inter­ action patterns is based on two models of what goes on in families with different num­ bers of children. One is the resource dilution model and the other is the confluence model. The first model holds that in larger families, parents must dilute their resources of time, energy, attention, and money among their children. Only children and children in small families have more opportunity to interact with their parents and so more quickly learn adult vocabulary and behaviors. In large families, contacts with adults are often more restricted. Consequently, children have fewer opportunities to acquire adult speech habits and skills (Powell 8c Steelman, 1990). The confluence model, in contrast to the dilution model, suggests that there may be some cog­ nitive advantages to children in larger fam­ ilies. As substitutes for their busy parents, the older children have to teach their younger siblings. This should lead to these teacher siblings having better verbal skills. Only and last children would not have this advantage (Zajonc 8c Markus, 1975). The resource dilution model and not the confluence model is generally supported when family size is related to children's or youths' IQs or adults' educational attainments (Blake, 1985, 1987). Although family size is less important than parents' schooling as a deter­ minant of the amount of schooling their offspring obtain, large national samples, with controls for possible confounding fac­ tors such as family income, family intactness, race, and parents' education, show a generally negative relation between family size and children's amount of schooling and IQ. Smaller families, regardless of social class membership, appear to invest more attention and encouragement in each child, rather than diluting their investment over larger num­ bers. Parents from smaller families seem to be able to make more quality inputs per child. These parent-child interactions are translated into greater verbal ability, which is strongly related to educational attainment. Larger families, because of the constraints associated with size, are less able to prepare their chil­ dren to "compete" educationally and be able

73

THE MAKING OF FAMILY ROLES

to apply later for better-paying jobs. Also, as I show in the discussion of birth order effects, children from larger families do not neces­ sarily compensate for their lesser academic achievements through superior social skills. Birth Order and Family Interaction It is even more difficult to determine how the family composition factor of birth order constrains family interaction structures than to get at family size effects. Birth order may be useful to help explain variation within families and why siblings from the same fami­ ly experience different outcomes. But as we saw in the discussion of only children, we have to separate birth order effects from those of family size, gender of children, social class, and family in tartness. The difficulty in doing this has led various scholars to discourage re­ searchers from investigating birth order ef­ fects (Ernst & Angst, 1983; Schooler, 1972). Because birth order, like family size and gender, is a factor that influences family interactions apart from the personal characteristics of mem­ bers, I shall discuss some of the best of the little available knowledge. (For a review of study findings, see Steelman 8c Powell, 1985.) Popular belief has it that parents encourage their firstborns to do well in school and to exercise leadership with respect to younger siblings in the family. Presumably, this is be­ cause firstborns enjoy temporarily the un­ divided attention of parents, who are as yet relatively unacquainted with the capacities of youngsters. They set high achievement expec­ tations for their eldest children. When other children arrive, parents need older children to be more independent and to help themselves and their sibs. Parents have more realistic ex­ pectations for later-borns, but these younger children must learn to get along with their more powerful older sibs. Research shows the effects on family inter­ action patterns that children's birth order sets. Two surveys of the National Health Ex­ amination Center provide large enough samples to allow the necessary controls for gender, family size, and social class to see how birth order affects children's behaviors. These samples of children, 6 to 17 years of age from intact homes, suggest that later-born children do have to develop their social skills to protect

themselves from being overpowered by older siblings (Steelman 8c Powell, 1985). They are judged by parents and teachers as finding it easier to get along with others and to make friends more easily than early-borns, who in­ itially have not had to deal with siblings. Al­ though later birth order entails pressures to develop social skills, early or later birth order is not associated with academic achievement. Leadership qualities, however, contrary to popular thinking, are found among laterborn not early-born males. Birth order makes no difference in rated leadership qualities for females. It may be that later-born boys are exposed to leadership skills through interaction with older sibs. In contrast, girls at all ordinal posi­ tions other than the youngest may develop them because of having to care for younger sibs. Family size, however, like gender, affects the birth order results. Younger children in larger families appear to be in a family en­ vironment similar to that of children in smaller families, with respect to encouraging greater social skills. In general, though, the larger the number of siblings, the less well children do socially (Steelman 8c Powell, 1985). Thus, popular myths concerning the association of children's having to get along with a greater number of siblings and their development of social skills do not appear to be supported by these research findings. Age and Gender Composition Like family size, which determines the num­ ber of family plurality patterns, the demo­ graphic elements of age and gender affect family structure. They have much to do with prescribing roles as labor is divided and power apportioned in the family. These roles, with their attached normative prescriptions as to how the actors must behave, are what Linton (1936) called ascriptive roles. The ac­ tors are assigned ascriptive roles by virtue of some characteristic they possess but have no control over, such as age or sex. Achieved roles, on the other hand, are acquired by the in­ dividual's own efforts. Because the individual is destined for certain ascribed roles from birth in societies based on traditional ways, that person can receive intensive training to ensure that the roles will be performed adequately. In

74 rapidly changing societies, however, role re­ quirements are subject to flux. Specific be­ haviors cannot be built into ascribed roles when the recruitment of persons into organi­ zations is more often based on achievement. As a result, task performance is due more to achieved roles. The age categories a society chooses to make salient vary with the culture, and the associated behavioral expectations do not necessarily depend on maturational changes or biological capacities of the individual. For example, many persons in our own society, especially in the middle class, because of living in small families, have not had the occasion to practice child care skills—such as discipline, feeding, comforting, or carrying —until they themselves become parents or stepparents. Our own and other industrial societies also are increasingly organized and operated by those of middle age. Those under 14 are no longer counted in the labor force, and the participation rates of 16- to 19-year­ olds, even those who are married, is declining (U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1994). At the other end of the age continuum, retirement at 65 is often en­ couraged, and some companies set an even earlier age. As a result, the period of playing student roles without job or family respon­ sibilities is lengthening for the young, while the period of playing leisure roles is lengthen­ ing for the old. Only when youths reach their late teens or early 20s does society give its approval to their taking on adult family and work roles. Even then, the approval may be somewhat grudging, as still older youths who have more education and marry later general­ ly obtain better jobs and divorce less. The sequence of age category expectations that sets limits on family interaction patterns in many horticulture and pastoral societies is almost the reverse of our own. Unlike in­ dustrial societies, they are characterized by high fertility and mortality rates, and their peoples have heavy family work responsi­ bilities. In such societies, sibling and cousin interdependencies continue throughout life. Children aged 5 or 6 begin learning child care skills through being responsible for siblings. Mothers gradually relinquish direct care of older children. Even young parents, how­ ever, continue to share decisions on domestic routines with parents, sibs, and cousins. A

T H E FAMILY CAREERS

PERSPECTIVE

woman from Kenya told how close she was as a child to the younger cousins she cared for: " 'At meal times, they would want to sit by my side and would cry, even up to five years old, if their food was not by mine. They would rather have it by me than by their mother'" (Weisner, 1987, p. 240). Among certain ethnic groups in our own society, we can find examples of persons ex­ periencing the sequence of child care respon­ sibilities before parenting. Older girls in some black households manage almost all aspects of house and child care, with little maternal supervision. Many of these "boss girls" in a few years will have children of their own. These offspring may then join the grandmother's family, as the mothers continue to share their parents' homes (Stack, 1975). Thus, age and gender expectations, with their associated se­ quences of behaviors, set limits within which families develop routines. This description of the responsibilities of an oldest daughter several generations ago indi­ cates how these expectations affect children: "The entire responsibility of the large house became mine a good deal of the time. I was thirteen years old at the time Mother went to the hospital soon after. I was combining the third and fourth year in high school. I was in charge with some help from my stepsisters. The baby cried routinely every night, but still I got up and saw to it that the family had breakfast and were ready for school. I often had to miss school, but I managed to maintain an average of over ninety.... I have often wondered if my sense of responsibility is not one of the causes for the good positions I have held." (Bossard & Boll, 1956, pp. 155-156) In our society today, role ascription, par­ ticularly on the basis of gender, plays a less important part than formerly in family role assignments. I use the term gender rather than sex to emphasize the social construction of what it means to have the biological charac­ teristics of a female or male. Single parents necessarily have to take on roles customarily thought of as the other gender's. Husbandfathers and wife-mothers, too, may vary from gender role stereotypes in their domestic tasks, depending on the different abilities of the marriage partners. Couples can reverse traditional roles. Wives may make financial

75

THE MAKING OF FAMILY ROLES

decisions, while husbands mediate family con­ flicts. And more partners than not are sharing breadwinner roles. Role ascription based on gender in the family is more important in societies that en­ courage role rigidity in their members. Mem­ bers of our society need the ability to play a wide range of roles and switch them quickly in the face of situational changes. If socializa­ tion is to occur in the parent-child subsystem, parents have to play both expressive (nurtur­ ant) roles and instrumental (performance) roles. The child learns instrumental roles from a parent only if the parent also is affectionate enough to make it rewarding for the child to acquire the more advanced behaviors his parents want. In the marital subsystem, more satisfactory relations tend to exist when there is little social-emotional specialization. To maintain high morale, wives as well as hus­ bands need a spouse to reciprocate and sus­ tain an expressive relation. Yet all of us have observed that gender does make a difference in family behavior. Mothers, not fathers, continue to take major responsibility for child nurturance, even though the coming of baby bottles and infant foods removes biological necessity for this specialization (Lamb, Pieck, Charnov, & Levine, 1987). Moreover, past national surveys of women showed that, regardless of whether they were employed, only a minority report wanting their husbands to do more to help with children (Pieck, 1979). Many women see child care responsibilities as a source of power in the family. They may also enjoy the work or judge their partners as being incapable of performing the tasks. Although less prevalent than earlier, research reviews continue to show that parents tend to assign household tasks such as mowing lawns, household cleaning, cooking, and taking out the trash to offspring on a gender basis. There also continues to be more parental encouragement for sons to go on to college (Losh-Hesselbart, 1987, p. 545). There are ethnic and class differences in how important gender is in family life. Among African American families, the gender of the child doing the task is less important than its getting done. Parents rear daughters accord­ ing to the stereotype of the "strong black woman." Parents value more independence in girls than do white parents. Not having had the economic basis that would allow for a

full-time homemaker, parents expect girls to combine earning and family care roles (Peters 8c de Ford, 1986). Working-class families, how­ ever, tend to make more of gender differences than do middle-class families and are espe­ cially restrictive with girls (Canter 8c Ageton, 1984). I cannot leave the subject of gender effects on family behavior without pointing out that parents differ in their treatment of children. Probably because women have more to gain by a decrease in the gender-based assignment of roles, mothers tend to be less concerned than fathers about children's conforming to gender stereotypes (Johnson, 1988). There is also evidence of cross-sex effects in interac­ tion between the generations. In general, there is some support for the generalization that parents tend to be more favorable and per­ missive with a child of the opposite sex (Bronstein, 1984). Interestingly enough, such differential treatment appears to be related positively to children's IQ development. We have already seen how family size and the resultant con­ straints it exercises on interaction affect adult educational achievement. Longitudinal studies show that the family environment that will encourage children's IQ development varies according to the gender of the child. Boys seem to do better later in life if, while they were acquiring verbal skills, their caretakers listened and paid close attention to them. These behaviors are consistent with what we know of mothers' treatment of chil­ dren. In contrast, girls thrive when there are few requirements and restrictions, allowing them to explore their intellectual interests and develop independence (Honzik, 1986). Because most fathers are less involved in child care than mothers, they maybe good at leaving room for little girls to try out what they want to do. Given their generally more genderstereotyped role expectations, however, fathers may not be so apt to urge their daughters to develop their own capacities while being independent. Family Structures

and Role Performance

The repeated interactions that link the in­ cumbents of family positions, as noted earlier,

76

T H E FAMILY CAREERS

constitute the structure of families. In twoparent families, husbands play roles that presuppose there are persons playing wife roles. Similarly, persons occupy the position of parent only when there are children. To be more specific, as shown in Figure 1.1 in Chap­ ter 1, the father role of affection giver cannot be activated unless there is a child seeking affection. As described in Chapter 3, certain norms also exist for each of these roles. These set limits on how the actor should behave. When the father is hugging or kissing the youngster, he should not also be setting rules. This is normative behavior for his role as teacher but not that of affection giver. To preserve the interdependence of the family system, some pairs of roles maybe lacking. In our society, where family solidarity is heavily dependent on the state of the husband-wife relation, we have already noted that relations with persons outside the nuclear family unit can constitute a threat to the family's contin­ uance. Norms prescribe that relations cross­ ing nuclear family lines will be secondary to those within the family. Kin roles are often discretionary, or even lacking, to prevent mari­ tal conflict. This absence is more often the case with son roles in the husband-father position than daughter roles in the wife-mother position. Female relatives often assist women to play family roles, more often the focus of their role repertoires than is true for men. Male ties with kin, however, can compete rather than contribute to their fulfilling the expectations of wives and children and so lead to conflict within the family. One working-class wife spoke for many when she complained about the early days of her marriage:

PERSPECTIVE

spousal separation and immediately after the divorce, the parent-children family may be very open to outsiders. Mothers can be par­ ticularly grateful for emotional support from relatives and friends that partiallyfillsthe gap the absent spouse left. They also welcome their assistance with house and child care, assistance former spouses no longer provide. These families provide good examples of why particular family roles that are vacant must be reallocated and why negative feed­ back changes family interdependencies. After the break in a family career due to divorce, the absent person is the one who performed spousal roles of confidant and affection giver and shared the parental roles of disciplinarian and nurturer. Where the noncustodial parent has given up his or her family roles, a child may take over some of these parental roles with younger sibs. There can even be an eras­ ing of generational divisions if an unhappy custodial parent turns to a child as a sub­ stitute confidant and affection giver. These shifts in family interdependencies may force an older child to acquire domestic and human relations skills along with the ability to accept responsibilities. This preco­ cious maturity, however, may also have harmful effects. Others in the family, unac­ customed to the child's performing these roles, may rebel. Younger sibs can be jealous and uncooperative with the favored one. The child forced to play parental roles may resent the increased responsibilities and miss the mother's nurturance (Goldsmith, 1982). Only children, too, become caught up in their parents' unhappiness, as this quotation from a divorced mother of an 8-year-old shows: "I think she's very m a t u r e . I m e a n . . . I c a n sit

"That first year w a s terrible. H e called her every

a n d talk to her like y o u a n d I are talking . . .

single day w h e n h e c a m e h o m e f r o m w o r k . As

w h e t h e r I have a p r o b l e m . . . at w o r k . . . she'll

s o o n as he'd walk t h r o u g h t h e door, he'd g o t o

listen t o m e . I also t h i n k b e c a u s e o f t h e divorce,

t h e t e l e p h o n e to talk t o his m o t h e r . A n d t h e n ,

she's had t o g r o w u p a lot. Because I talked t o

a few t i m e s h e w e n t to see h e r before h e ever

her. T h i s is t h e w a y it i s . . . Ί can't stand h i m ; I

e v e n c a m e h o m e . That really did it. I said, 'Listen,

h a t e h i m ; B u t he's y o u r f a t h e r . . . . H e said h e

buster, this h a s to s t o p . I'm n o t g o i n g to take

wasn't going to give us t h i s . . . w e did get the h o u s e

t h a t a n y m o r e . E i t h e r I'm g o i n g t o c o m e first

a n d different things.' " (Polit, 1984, pp. 197-198)

o r y o u c a n g o live w i t h y o u r mother.' " ( R u b i n , 1976, p. 8 8 )

Kin relations in postdivorce situations, how­ ever, particularly those of mothers, can be very helpful. Especially during the process of

Another transition where the situation de­ mands the reallocation of family roles and negative feedback processes occurs on a new baby's arrival. The mother has limited energy to handle all her accustomed roles. An older

THE MAKING OF FAMILY ROLES

child may have to assume some of her tasks. Because the child is fulfilling new roles, with their attached behaviors, he or she expects to interact with the father in different ways. The son may have to help out with some cooking tasks. He and his father may get into argu­ ments if the father is critical of the child's efforts and does not share the work. The father has not yet accepted as normative the be­ haviors appropriate for the temporary cook­ ing role of the son. Role Making and Role Behaviors The above examples should remind us that the content of the roles people play is increas­ ingly the result of improvisation, rather than that of rigidly prescribed norms. People nowa­ days lack a prepared script in performing family roles. Instead, individuals learn general normative guides to role performan­ ces, but situational demands determine spe­ cific behaviors. These normative guides enable the role performer to relate to others in a situation but only in a tentative fashion. Each person acts toward others based on an assessment of the behaviors they display and on the actor's prediction of the other's reac­ tions. The correctness of the judgment on which each actor stakes his or her behavior depends on the other person's response. Under these circumstances, social psy­ chologist Ralph H. Turner's (1962) concept of role making, rather than "norm playing," seems a more appropriate concept to describe role performance. Within broad normative limits, a wide range of behaviors will be ac­ cepted as appropriate to a particular role. Par­ ticular behaviors, if they prove appropriate to the individual and his or her associates, are repeated often enough to become role ex­ pectations. Individuals' conformity to these expectations leads to the establishment of interaction patterns. Accordingly, actors im­ provise their behaviors in dealing with others, and patterns forming family structures develop out of habituation rather than initial norma­ tive prescriptions (Aldous, 1974, p. 232). What implication does this role-making perspective hold for family analysis? It sug­ gests that we look for the interactional struc­ ture of the family to come primarily out of the day-to-day getting along of family members,

77 within broad limits set by family composition constraints and norms deriving from class, religious, or ethnic subcultures. Under these circumstances, who does what around the house or even who makes the decisions is not automatically set in detail by group norms. Family interaction patterns begin through trial and error attempts to get along, and then as persons find these ways satisfactory for get­ ting things done with a minimum of effort, the patterns become normative. The members are then committed to existing arrangements that developed from the original improvised role interactions (Turner, 1990). Studies of family power structures in twoparent families indicate how families make roles by meeting situational needs within the very broad limits set by social class norms. Within working- and middle-class families, the power structure is generally contrary to expressed values. Families in which husband and wife have college educations generally sub­ scribe to an egalitarian ideology that places high value on shared decision making. In actual practice, husbands tend to have more power. In contrast, working-class couples more often accept the value that husbands should be dominant. Yet within this class, husbands appear to have less power in prac­ tice than in middle-class families with their equality values (Blumberg & Coleman, 1989). The reason for families' failures to con­ form to social class prescriptions may lie in their vagueness. Neither set of class values is always clear as to which decisions and domestic tasks should be shared and which left to husbands or wives. Within the resultant area of norma­ tive freedom, husband and wife are left to develop their own arrangements in line with their respective resources. Working- and lower-class women especially are likely to be employed outside the home to supplement the incomes of husbands. Their economic con­ tributions constitute an important portion of the family income. Consequently, they expect to have a voice in how their wages are spent. It would be unrealistic not to note that following a family role script may be easier than working one out. Role making leads to more disagreements than following a conven­ tional script. Take the example of egalitarian power structures among working- and middleclass couples. When they try to consult to­ gether on decisions, they have to do more

78

T H E FAMILY CAREERS

negotiating and bargaining. The norms on how decisions are made and carried out by two equals are less specific than if each spouse is responsible for certain types of decisions. When each partner has a say, and before each partner is satisfied with the negotiated bar­ gain, there is more opportunity for disagree­ ments and quarrels to occur (Gray-Little & Burks, 1983, p. 535). One wife in such a mar­ riage looked back somewhat wistfully on the time of preset family roles: "Sometimes I wish I was born forty years ear­ lier; my father and mother had it easier. Mom was there taking care of everything, and he worked without worrying about anything else. She didn't complain because he wasn't doing his share (boy, I get so's I hate that word 'share') or he wasn't paying attention to us kids." (Rubin, 1983, p. 169) Role making, however, has the major ad­ vantage that each party in the relation generally has some voice in the final arrangements. Role making can result in morale building modi­ fications in the normative female-centered household arrangements when women make more decisions as how money is spent and can transfer some house and child care tasks to men. Acting according to role scripts, in contrast, means family members tend to ac­ cept without a question the traditional gender and age inequities in role playing. Resent­ ments can simmer as members feel they are being exploited in their scripted roles (Glenn 8c Kramer, 1987, p. 354). In families, as the discussion on system change in Chapter 3 indicated, changing age expectations, peer influences, and demands from school and occupation can render exist­ ing role bargains unsatisfactory. Commit­ ment to the status quo weakens as maturing junior members seek more decision-making power and a reallocation of tasks better suited to their increased abilities. At this point, the old rewards or punishments for performing or not performing, according to previously established role expectations, are no longer sufficient to prevent the individual from in­ stituting new behaviors. Members break with existing family struc­ tures to try out various behaviors at times on the family clock that usher in new periods. Positive feedback occurs. Between these

PERSPECTIVE

critical periods of role transition that usher in different family stages, role behaviors shake down into the habitual interaction patterns that enable families to be functioning social systems. But even within particular family periods, modification in family behaviors goes on. Norms do not rigidly set family interac­ tion patterns, and positive feedback processes can occur. Role Conformity and

Family Social Control

The process of family members' role mak­ ing and their following normatively prescribed roles raises the issue of role conformity. The task of social control that ensures a predict­ able social order in families and societies is a critical issue in sociology. One answer to the problem is that of role reciprocity. When there is role reciprocity, each person in the relation has rights and duties. Each role actor receives something from and gives something to the other in the relation. Role reciprocity is based on exchange so that an individual's failure to reciprocate rights can be sanctioned im­ mediately. The aggrieved party can simply stop recognizing the rights of the other until the latter meets his or her duties. Take the situation I used in the previous chapter about a child who failed to welcome his non­ custodial father. His father felt the welcome was his right and retaliated by delaying his duty of paying child support (Goldsmith, 1982, p. 301). Because family relations endure longer than those in most other groups, members do not always keep specific accounts concerning what they have received from one member in exchange for what they have given him or her. Not only are older members supposed to act in accordance with the value that some selfsacrifice is required for family welfare, but rewards can also come from members other than those whose rights a person has fulfill­ ed. Marital partners during the child-rearing period, for example, are particularly impor­ tant as a source of comfort, just because children are unable to reciprocate the many services they receive. This family practice of members providing services for one and receiv­ ing rewards from another is a source of family solidarity and a means of family control.

THE MAKING OF FAMILY ROLES

The comments of an eldest daughter in a large family show how the process works: "When I was younger I often wished I was the third child or the youngest one because they seemed the favored ones. Now that I am older I have been very much satisfied with my birth position If I had not been the eldest I might never have been so close to my mother nor held such a place of high honor in my father's eyes. Today I have a certain amount of authority over all the family members. I feel a strong respon­ sibility for them and am duty-bound to them. I am frequently asked for advice." (Bossard & Boll, 1956, p. 207) A second family social control strategy that makes for predictable role performances is the inculcation of rules and values by parents while socializing their children. Parents can ensure reciprocity by establishing norms of family relations that children internalize. Such norms affect how many rights family mem­ bers have and the timing of their fulfillment. In family life, women are often at the end of the line as far as rights are concerned. The survival of families certainly depends on their members putting the welfare of others before individual interests in cases of conflict, but women are increasingly questioning the norm that makes them the primary upholders of the value of "family first" (Turner, 1990). With this questioning has come the opening of new family areas to role making. Spouses now negotiate interaction arrangements in which both men and women interact less in terms of ascribed rights than in terms of mutual responsibilities. Moreover, the increasing number of singleparent families and blended families, result­ ing from remarriages where partners each have children from previous unions, lack clear-cut norms to inculcate. Under these circumstan­ ces, both generations role make in their deal­ ings with each other. Also, once children are old enough to cross the boundaries of their families, they become aware of unfamiliar behaviors that they may attempt to include in their own role repertoires. They may also have suggestions for the modification of their parents' behaviors, behaviors that presently put offspring at a disadvantage. Especially if parents are experiencing divorce or remar­ riage transitions, pressures for change in their

79 conceptions of roles, even coming from chil­ dren, can be effective. This is one of many examples of reciprocal socialization across the generations. In family worlds where roles are tentative, socialization of elders by their children (as well as the reverse) becomes common. A third factor that enables families to ac­ complish their social control task involves other concerned individuals who may inter­ vene to sanction the behavior of one party in the role relation. This third-party interven­ tion can head off possible family conflicts. The presence of third-person observers in families cuts down on members' use of coer­ cive, violent behavior to obtain their way (Gelles & Straus, 1988). To take an example, Naomi, an adolescent in the daughter-sister position, may be performing the teacher role with regard to her brother, David, who needs help with his arithmetic. The brother is ready to play with her but unwilling to settle into the role of student. In the interaction process, it quickly becomes apparent that the range of behaviors each is expecting, and has prepared responses to fit, is not emerging. One or the other will have to modify her or his behavior, or the interaction cannot continue. Naomi can control her temper and explain why study is necessary now, or lose her temper and com­ mand David to get down to business. She can add the threat that she will not help unless David behaves. The mother, however, may intervene and tell Naomi that David has had a long day at school and would probably learn more about math if Naomi gives him some playtime first. Because of the third party's intervention, Naomi postpones taking on the teacher role and waits until after dinner to open the math book. Then, David is prepared to settie down and to listen to his sister. Pressures for conformity are particularly potent in the family. Family behavior expec­ tations that delimit interaction patterns are among the first norms children internalize through socialization. The sanctions of other family members to enforce them are effective, because the members are dependent on each other for emotional support or physical maintenance. If a member's conscience or the sanctions of others directly involved in the relation are not effective, another family member is likely to step in when an interac­ tion deadlock occurs. This is because failure

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in one role obligation has negative implica­ tions for role performance in other family relationships. Thus, the self-interest of other family members dictates intervention. The mother's intervention in the above example stems from her knowledge that if the child is forced to activate the student role, his fatigue may make him too irritable to eat his dinner. The daughter may concede to her mother's wishes, knowing if she does not the mother may be unwilling to take her shopping the next day. Finally, their role as socializers requires parents to serve as examples of good behavior. As a result, they meet the requirements they are attempting to make normative for their children. Parents can then say, "Do as I say and as I do." Their serving as role models is a fourth strategy for encouraging role conform­ ity. To summarize this discussion on social control, there are a number of social control strategies families use to encourage member conformity to normative expectations. They include reciprocity, inculcation of rules and values, intervention of third parties, and ex­ ample. Individuals may use several strategies to encourage conformity, such as a use of sanctions while teaching rules and values.

to do battle on his behalf. She took care of him; he was grateful. She sacrificed, he thanked her. That was the equilibrium of their marriage, but in the mid-1850's it broke down, in a manner characteristic of marriages in which the wife feels she has given up a lot for her husband's sake. All of a sudden, he is not grateful enough. She feels herself taken for granted. She feels her­ self slighted and somebody else favored. (Rose, 1 9 8 3 , p. 2 4 8 )

CONFORMITY AND CHANGE

Conformity contributes to the maintenance of a family's current interaction structures. Patterned ways become habitual and require little conscious thought and energy to con­ tinue. Yet, paradoxically, conformity to any set of role relations may result in family mor­ phogenesis. Conformity of one family mem­ ber to another family member's expectations can lead to less rather than more gratifica­ tion for the conforming person. Ironically, persons may come to take these actions for granted and give fewer rewards for them. One of the underlying principles of exchange theory is that the more frequently in the im­ mediate past a person receives a rewarding activity from another, the less rewarding any additional unit of the activity becomes (Homans, 1961). The relation between the 19th-century his­ torian, Thomas Carlyle, and his wife, lane, illustrates the point: S o l o n g as Carlyle clasped her in his a r m s and called her h i s guardian angel, Jane w a s c o n t e n t

PERSPECTIVE

Under such circumstances, the wife may try harder to please her husband with more tasty meals, better budgeting, or larger contribu­ tions to family finances. But eventually, the cost of obtaining gratification becomes too high in time and energy, and at this point the wife stops conforming to her husband's ex­ pectations. She may issue the classic complaint, "You don't appreciate me," often followed by other verbal and nonverbal sanctions, until the husband institutes a higher level of rewards. Nonconformity may be necessary at times to keep customary role understandings going. Each family member who goes beyond his obligation in fulfilling family responsibil­ ities places other family members in his debt (Turner, 1970). The role of family martyr was sometimes played in the past by wife-mothers whose worlds lay within family boundaries. Their excessively conforming role perfor­ mance might well have been based on their normative expectations that family interest came first. Overfulfillment of family obliga­ tions can be one way of actualizing this value. It can also be a strategy for gaining one's rights through playing on the guilt feelings of those less scrupulous in performing family duties. The less conscientious, however, rarely delight in recognizing the contribu­ tions of the more conscientious, leaving the latter feeling unappreciated. Conformity, therefore, can create tension and eventual conflict, as can dissent and nonconformity to role performance expectations. The resulting conflict may reinvigorate the system by en­ couraging family change. The possibility of nonconformity also forces family members to be sensitive to each other's actions. This sensitivity, springing from uncertainty about the behavior of others, brings us back to our initial discussion of role making, with its emphasis on the tenuous quality and changing nature of interrelations. Families must work out their own role agree­

THEMAKING

OF FAMILY ROLES

merits within the limits set by outside groups and family compositions variables and look largely to their own members to enforce them. Under these circumstances, interper­ sonal sensitivity becomes essential for the role monitoring and role modifying that enable the family system to endure. Interaction Structures Thus far, the discussion has focused on the development of interaction patterns within families and the strategies members use to enforce the norms that shape them. Now, I turn to the interaction patterns of power, communication, and affection, because they are central to the family's performing its tasks and accomplishing its goals. Power Structures Power can be defined as the probability that one person will be able to exert his or her will despite resistance from others (Weber, 1947). This structure of accustomed behaviors is continually being activated in the family. Someone or ones must decide the allocation of resources among members and the domes­ tic division of labor to fulfill the physical maintenance task of keeping family members fed and clothed. Power is also involved in parents' attempts to socialize children in the interest of inculcating and preserving family values and the associated behaviors. Siblings, too, use social control techniques, based on their relative power, to either create or main­ tain favorable interchanges among them­ selves. As is true of other family structures, who has the power shifts over time, according to what is at issue. But in most families, at any one time there tends to be a fairly clear outline of who decides what is best for the family in particular areas. Let us look first at how power considerations operate between adult partners before turning to the other two fami­ ly subsystems. WIVES A N D HUSBANDS: WHO HAS THE POWER?

The balance of power changes in couples who stay together over the marital career

81 (Hess-Biber & Williamson, 1984). It shifts from greater equality when the couple is first married, to more husband dominance when children are present, and finally returns to greater equality in the later years of the partnership. This trend can be explained in terms of access to resources. According to the classification of psychologists John R. P. French and Bertran Raven (1968), husbands' participation in the world outside the family gives them power bases such as "reward re­ sources" based on income contributions. Their "legitimate power" stems from this resource, as well as the long tradition that gave hus­ band-fathers head-of-household status. Being able to get out of the house more, they also have "informational" as well as "expert" power. The couple comes together initially on relatively equal terms, but having the main responsibility for child care, wives often lose out. In the past, those with preschool children tended to leave the labor market. Thus, they became financially dependent on husbands and so could exert less influence. One woman told about this time in her marriage: " 'It worked for a while, but, after the children were born, things seemed to fall apart. I would nag him to be home more and take more responsibility; there was a lot of bitterness and whining' " (Rubin, 1983, p. 17). Today, leaving the labor force after child­ birth is less common for women. A majority of mothers, including those with children under age 3, continue to be employed. But wives' employment, which makes them less economically dependent, also increases their need for husbands to help with children and house care. Mothers with children are also more family centered. This increases their emotional dependence on their husbands. The latter, in contrast, are increasing their job and professional competencies outside the home, which constitute potent expert resour­ ces to back up their expressed wishes. More­ over, if the marriage dissolves, men's usual higher earnings give them more indepen­ dence to purchase services they formerly ob­ tained at home. Women are less free to leave unhappy marriages. They generally receive custody of the children, so their earnings, even with child support, must be stretched farther. They may be unable to purchase household services, and their child care responsibilities continue without a partner to

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assist them (England&Kilbourne, 1990). Thus, most men maintain the upper hand in the family power structure during these childpresent years. Women's power does pick up as children enter school, and they are able to give more attention to their occupational roles. Still later, when youths leave home, couples do more role making with respect to who has the final word. Changes are occurring at this time in the intersection of family and community, changes that affect personal resources. Men's occupational achievements are leveling off, and women are freer from family responsibil­ ities. The greater equality in husbands' and wives' commitment to family and work situa­ tions encourages renegotiation of power ar­ rangements in the direction of greater equality. Both partners' retirement from work roles continues the process. We have already seen that because the gender gap in pay is less in working-class than middle-class couples, blue-collar wives have more power. They thereby possess the means to influence financial decisions. This increased power runs counter to traditional ideas that give men the final word in family matters. The result can be marital conflict, as husbands lose out in decision making. Notice what this often unemployed husband had to say about his wife's working and her influence: "I think our biggest problem is her working. She started working and she started getting too inde­ pendent. I never did want her to go to work, but she did anyway. I don't think I had the say-so that I should have." (Rubin, 1976, p. 177) Black wives tend to have more power for economic reasons. They are more likely to be employed than white women, although the difference is narrowing (Shank, 1988). Also, due to a tendency for African Americans to have lower paying jobs, what they take home is more like their husbands' paychecks than is true of white couples (Hess-Biber 8c William­ son, 1984). But among these families also, societal constraints in the guise of genderassigned child care norms and the greater earn­ ings of men throughout their occupational lives still push couple power arrangements in the male direction. In working-class families, in which scarce money makes it difficult to pay even for neces-

PERSPECTIVE

sities, husbands may use the family headship tradition as a power resource to leave it to wives to figure out how finances can be stretched. One working-class wife, employed as a salesclerk, explained her decision-making "power" in these bitter words: "I pay all the bills and manage the money—if you can call it managing. All it means is that I get stuck with all the scut work. When there's a problem with dun notices, or what have you, I'm the one who faces it. If there's anything that has to be explained or worked around so that things like the electric don't get turned off, I'm the one who gets stuck with it. Like, just the other day, P.G. 8c E. was going to shut off the electric, and I was the one who had to face them and figure out a way so they wouldn't do it." (Rubin, 1976, p. 107) In middle-class families where there is dis­ cretionary income left over after the basics are taken care of, men do the money manage­ ment. A middle-class housewife described the power process this way: "I handle the money, but he makes the decisions. Like, he decided about whether we were going to buy this house or not, or whether we should buy a car, and how much we should spend for it. Some things I decide, like when the kids need shoes. But he watches out for what we're spend­ ing money on, and I pretty well know what it's okay for me to do and what's not okay." (Rubin, 1976, pp. 107-108) Marriages that operate according to nonlegitimate power arrangements based on threats or use of force are less happy. Couples, in which one or both partners uses such coer­ cive techniques, are more likely to divorce. Thus, an early study showed that the formerly married, in a sample of 512 low-income families, reported less compromise, more conflict, and fewer egalitarian power struc­ tures (Osmond 8c Martin, 1978). PARENTS AND CHILDREN: GETTING THEM TO OBEY

Chapter 3 pictured the relations of par­ ents and children as shifting from closeness to separateness, as youths mature and seek independence. Thus, the age of children exer­ cises limits on parental power. The decision­

THEMAKING

83

OF FAMILY ROLES

making balance is modified in similar fashion. Starting out as dependent children, offspring are increasingly influential in intergeneration­ al matters. Socialization becomes a two-way process between parents and children, and both generations use power tactics to obtain conformity to the changes they are urging. In principle, we would expect parents of younger children to be better able to enforce their decisions than parents of older children. Older children are involved in the larger com­ munity through school attendance and other activities parents do not supervise. Outsiders serve as alternative models of behavior and sources of comfort. Older children are more knowledgeable about how to meet their own needs. Consequently, it is a truism that the older the child, the less the parental power. The bases of parental power also shift over time. Commands and punishments, never ef­ fective on a sustained basis as strategies to get children to conform, have to be replaced by explanations for requests and rewards for obedience. Otherwise, the child will obey out of fear, not conviction, and with increasing age and information, refuse to be coerced. Even dependent youngsters, however, are not without influence. Their compliance is a source of pleasure to parents (Szinovacz, 1987). Be­ cause it is not inevitable, it gives children a source of power with which to reward parents for doing what the child wants. This can be an effective power strategy. For example, a tod­ dler cries for candy at the supermarket check­ out stand and is finally hushed with candy from the parent. The helplessness of children also awakens concern in parents and activates the norm of protection. Again, dependency can be a source of power. Young children's power that stems from their ability to refuse to obey is especially apparent in the families of recently divorced mothers. One longitudinal study showed the first year after the dissolution of the couple relation to be the hardest (Hetherington, Cox, 8c Cox, 1982). The mothers were disturbed by the loss of interaction routines and the in­ come and residential changes resulting from the breakup. They were distracted and im­ patient in dealing with their children. Com­ pared with married parents, they set fewer rules, but they were more arbitrary and talked less to their children about why they should obey the rules. The children, unhappy with this treatment, responded with disobedience.

Only later, when mothers could give more nurturant attention to their children along with more explanations, did the situation change. Older children can gain power by forming coalitions to reach their goals. Mothers, too, can serve as confederates. They benefit from the alliance with children in urging husbands to agree to some decision, such as letting the children stay out later on weekends. Children, in turn, gain power. Mothers can be sympa­ thetic to their youngsters' requests, and fathers are more apt to agree to the joint motherchildren requests. SIBLING POWER: FIGHTING IT OUT

As was true in the parent-child subsystem, relative age differences operate to affect sib­ ling power plays. One indirect indicator of children's attempts to control their brothers' and sisters' behavior is to look at their verbal arguments and physical fights as means for getting one's way. As I shall discuss in more detail in the chapter on siblings, children are more likely to fight with younger siblings than with older. Aggression is less common when the children are widely separated by age, say 4 years or more. But contrary to what we might think, girls are just as likely as boys to get into physical and verbal fights. Sibling disputes, however, tend to moderate as children get older, to the great relief of quiet-seeking par­ ents (Felson 8c Russo, 1988). Figure 4.1 illustrates several possible structures of family power. In only one, the Aor/zoHiii/structure, is power not asymmetri­ cal. This would be an unusual arrangement if there are children in the family. Their de­ pendency and lack of experience work against their sharing in decision-making patterns. The two-tier system permits intracohort soli­ darity but emphasizes intergenerational power discrepancies between parents and children. The vertical arrangement is reminiscent of the armed forces table of organization in which everyone but the top commander is under the control of some higher-up. This, too, is an uncommon structure. In traditional families, husbands are the accepted heads of the households. Their wives are second in control. They handle all matters their mates delegate to them—or choose not to concern themselves with. Who has the power among

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Horizontal

Vertical

PERSPECTIVE

Two-tier

Figure 4.1. Family Power Structures children in residence, however, is rarely so clear-cut. Parental intervention and their often shifting alliances create unstable control relations. Communication Structures Power differences affect and are affected by the communication structure. Children may try to keep information from parents whose control is irksome. In response, parents, because they possess power, can demand that children keep them informed. Communication interaction patterns can be analyzed according to the following questions: (a) Are all family members in direct communication? (b) Is the communication two-way, or does one person always initiate the conversations? (c) Are the communication channels open, or are there areas of family life that are not discussed? To do a diagram of the communication structure of a family, you would show the location of positions that serve as communication centers and point out those positions whose occupants are isolated, or one-way communicators or receivers. This structure, like the power structure, can vary according to the topic of concern. Communication through speech or nonverbal gestures serves several purposes, as early workers in the field found (Raush, Goodrich, & Campbell, 1963, pp. 376-377). The first has to do with providing others with information as to one's intentions. In transactions with others, shared communications can be the

means for clearing up family misunderstandings about diverse issues, such as children's outside activities and the division of family income. Family problems arising from unexpected happenings external to the family, such as job layoffs, low school grades, or the illness of aging relatives, demand some talking through if they are to be addressed. A second purpose of communication is to underline the solidarity of the persons in communication, to point up their closeness, and to indicate their separateness from others. This setting of boundaries assists the family in establishing its identity and its feeling of distinctiveness from other groups. Casual remarks that point up the "peculiar" ways of outsiders, amused glances that indicate a shared evaluations of friends, and the surprised reports that describe the idiosyncrasies of neighbors all serve this function. This second purpose blends into a third— the communication of feelings. The affective aspect of communication is particularly important in role-making families, in which persons must work out agreements about not only task allocation and performance content but also family goals and ways family members work together. To negotiate relatively stable division-of-labor and power patterns, individuals must know the sentiments of the other actors toward their roles in the family drama. As each member works out the content of her or his role in interaction with others, their comments help establish the specifications of that role. Communication permits a family member to modify the role

85

THE MAKING OF FAMILY ROLES

Switchboard

Wheel

Gap

Figure 4.2. Family Communication Structures so it will suit her or him better, while informing others of the feelings that led to the additional role making. The others, in turn, can express satisfaction or dissatisfaction about the proposed new arrangements. Even couples who do litde experimenting with role assignment or role content may ventilate their feelings to prevent the buildup of irritations and misunderstandings that lead to deep-seated family conflicts. Communication, however, does not always lead to increased family solidarity. Telling others of one's painful feelings, supplying information concerning irreconcilable differences, or raising unsolvable issues can lead to family conflicts. Happy couples emphasize in their conversations the positive, the things that are going well. Unhappy couples complain, disagree, and interrupt more. When couples are followed over time in longitudinal studies, negative conversations not only reflect couple unhappiness but also contribute to it (Markman, 1981). This finding is consistent with the feedback characteristic of families as systems. Telling other members what is wrong with them rarely makes them happy. They resent the failure of the critic to live up to the goal of family harmony. The criticized member often reacts in kind to coerce the cornplainer to back off. In turn, he or she may respond with even more inflammatory comments, and a fierce argument follows, leading to more hurt feelings. Figure 4.2 gives some different family communication patterns. In the switchboard arrangement, everyone is joined by communication channels. One family member, often the mother, keeps family members in touch

in the wheel arrangement. The gap structure indicates that there are communication barriers among the family members. These barriers suggest that the peripheral members may soon be outside the family boundaries. An example of a family where the mother was the center of the wheel communication structure comes from the study of large families done several generations ago. Mary's mother was the mediator between her six children and their father, the top figure in the family power structure: "It is a r o u n d m y father that o u r family revolves, yet a n y o u t s i d e r c a n s e e that it is m y m o t h e r w h o holds us together. It is she w h o sees to it that w e don't say o r d o a n y t h i n g that w o u l d m a k e m y father angry. H e h a s little o r n o p a t i e n c e , a n d h e is always right. It is i m p o s s i b l e to ever talk anything over with h i m . N o w that I a m older, I can see that h e h a s n e g l e c t e d to give u s the o n e thing we need most—fatherly love. Although m y m o t h e r tries hard, s h e c a n n o t b e e x p e c t e d to fulfill the e m o t i o n a l n e e d s o f six c h i l d r e n alone." (Bossard & Boll, 1956, p . 9 5 )

Affection Structure One form of communication that is often overlooked is that of affection. As the previous quotation demonstrates, it affects both power and communication structures. Social scientists tend to use terms such as positive regard, emotional support, and expressiveness to label it instead of writing directly about love and tenderness among family members. There is much variation among families in the amount of love members have for one

86 another. High separation and divorce rates indicate that the sentimental bond supposed to join husband and wife is often brittle. Sibling rivalry and parent-child conflict also show that a family's affection structure can be problematical. The ways and the amount of affection fam­ ilies display through words or touch vary, depending on the age and sex of the children. Touching another person, as psychologist Sidney Jourard (1966) pointed out some years ago, is the last step in reducing distance be­ tween people. Touching conveys information to the individual in a form she or he cannot overlook, whether it be disapproval, hatred, affection, or goodwill. With a touch, parents punish children, wives arouse husbands to love, and family members soothe each other. In Europe, and especially England, it used to be that the higher the class, the less there was of touching (Montagu, 1971). Social class differences are the reverse in the United States. Although affected by ethnic back­ ground, because persons with southern Euro­ pean heritage usually are more demonstrative, members of the middle and upper classes tend to give their children more loving atten­ tion than do persons in the lower classes. The reason for this U.S. difference may lie in the greater influence of child guidance author­ ities among the more highly educated. These authorities encourage parents to give chil­ dren tender loving care. The generally smaller family size of the better-off may also play a part in this social class tendency. Men's and women's styles of showing love differ. Men are burdened by gender role expectations that put a premium on not ex­ pressing emotions. This is particularly true of father-son relations or male friendships, in which gestures of affection are limited to shak­ ing hands or backslapping. Other male tactile behaviors are often labeled in this society as effeminate or indications of homosexuality. It is also the case that higher-status persons tend to initiate touching behavior with lowerstatus persons. As a result, considerations of status may discourage touching between men. When growing up, boys have fewer op­ portunities to communicate through skin contacts. Boys, compared to girls, have less contact with their mothers' bodies, both touching and being touched, and this is also true of tactile contacts with their fathers. The

T H E FAMILY CAREERS

PERSPECTIVE

lack of touching experiences carries over to adulthood, when fathers, being less involved in child care, have fewer pleasure-giving, sen­ sory experiences from holding or comforting children as expressions of affection. As a result, the studies we have on touching behavior indicate that women initiate more of it than men do, and that women engage in more touching behavior with each other than men do in same-gender situations (Hall & Veccia, 1990; Thayer, 1988). There is also some evidence that persons, especially men, who are more uncomfortable about homo­ sexuality are less likely to engage in same-sex touching (Roese, Olson, Borenstein, Martin, 8c Shores, 1992). Lovemaking between hus­ band and wife, with the tactile pleasures of touching, stroking, and rubbing it incor­ porates, takes on added significance for men. For some it maybe the only time in which they feel comfortable displaying affection. Thus, the unashamed kisses, hugs, and hand-holding of married couples that indicate mutual affec­ tion and contribute to the marital bond are particularly important for husbands. There are other differences in the ways women and men express love (Cancian, 1987, pp. 73-75). Women are better able to talk about their feelings, whether of love, sadness, or disappointment. Other family members can tell how Mom feels about things, and Mom is better at interpreting her emotions. Part of this skill stems from girls' and women's greater opportunities to develop interper­ sonal skills. Over their lifetimes, they will see relatives more often and have closer ties to them than do men. They are also more likely to have friends to confide in and feel freer to confess their fears and weaknesses to them. Men, in contrast, tend to be more isolated. With the heavy normative expectation that they be successful achievers, they cannot af­ ford to reveal their vulnerabilities to possible competitors. Thus, wives or lovers usually constitute their only confidants and, indeed, their only intimates. Their ties with their chil­ dren, especially in the past, have been rather distant and centered on discipline and rule setting. Consequently, with present high separation and divorce rates, many men cut off from family ties are without expressed love from another person. A number of men resent having to talk about such matters. One man swore,

THE MAKING OF FAMILY ROLES

"The whole goddamn business of what you're calling intimacy bugs the hell out of me. I never know what you women mean when you talk about it. Karen complains that I don't talk to her, but it's not talk she wants, it's some other damn thing, only I don't know what the hell it is. Feelings, she keeps asking for. So what am I supposed to do if I don't have any to give her or to talk about just because she decides it's time to talk about feelings? Tell me, will you; maybe we can get some peace around here." (Rubin, 1983, p. 66) This is not to say that men do not value love as much as women do. In a representative sample of 373 newly married, black and white couples, both men and women tended to be happier when they spontaneously gave couple ties initially top priority in talking about their marriages (Veroff, Sutherland, Chadiho, & Ortega, 1993). Their way of showing love, however, is different. Love to men means spending time together, giving practical help, doing things together, and sex. These dif­ ferent love styles of men and women can create couple misunderstandings. To men, painting the cupboards or washing the car is a sign of affection. In contrast, women are more literal. They see love in terms of verbal expressions of affection and feelings along with tender caresses. Thus, each gender sees the other's love as discordant. Men have dif­ ficulty talking about their feelings, afraid if they do they will reveal their weaknesses. Women, in turn, interpret sex, men's main expression of love, as a male initiative in which their needs are secondary (Cancian, 1987, p. 78). The following remarks illustrate the way gender differences in love styles create ten­ sions among couples. The first is from a work­ ing-class wife, who gives her own handling of family emotions equal or higher priority than the paid work of her husband: "I guess I wouldn't like to change places with him because I couldn't support the family like he does. Anyhow, it's not much fun knowing you have all the responsibility on your head. On the other hand, that's all men have to do. I don't mean it's easy, but it's all they do But when it comes down to the emotional work in the family, that's mine, all mine. In the long run, I guess that's harder because it never ends; the

87 worries are always there—whether it's about the kids, or our families, or how we're getting along, even about money. He makes most of it, but it's never enough. And I have to worry how to pay the bills." (Rubin, 1976, p. 106) Husbands, however, are apt to feel sex is necessary before they can talk about their emotions. Here is the explanation of one: "It's the one subject we never get anywhere on. It's a lot easier for me to tell her what she wants to hear when I feel close, and that's when I get closest—when we're making love. It's kind of hard to explain it, but (trying tofindthe words) . . . well, it's when the emotions come roaring up." (Rubin, 1983, p. 101) For the wife, though, communication is through talking, and it should precede sex: " Ί want to know what he's thinking—you know, what's going on inside him—before we jump into bed' " (Rubin, 1983, p. 101). These gender differences in the giving and receiving of af­ fection are built into the parent-child and marital subsystems. Parents welcome little girls' requests for kisses and hugs and comfort them when they are troubled. They tend to be more restrained with little boys. Parents who accept gender stereotypes believe that encouraging sons to be affectionate and to talk about their troubles could make them dependent sissies instead of independent strivers. Siblings, too, can serve as social control agents. Their jeers and taunts can make tearful brothers bottle up their feelings. As families experience the various expect­ able events that separate family stages, mem­ bers' patterns of seeking and giving affec­ tion change. Spousal relations moderate as the raptures of early marriage mellow into the multitudinous interdependencies that undergird the mature union. Children need affection from parents less as they move from being dependents to entering the community as active participants. The adolescent, aware of maturing sexual capacities, looks increas­ ingly to a peer outside the family to fulfill her or his affectional needs. These needs help instigate and support the formation of new family units. But the distribution and the amount of love in a family are means for achieving reconcilia­ tion of family members in cases of conflict.

88

T H E FAMILY CAREERS

Isolate

Cloverleaf

PERSPECTIVE

Hub

Figure 4.3. Family Affection Structures Affection cushions the ups and downs of family existence, makes the daily routine more bearable, and bolsters family boundary maintenance. Thus, it is central to the continuance of family careers. Figure 4.3 shows possible affection structures. In the isolate pattern, one family member, the father here, does not participate in the affection giving structure. In the cloverleaf pattern, family members are equally close. The mother is the center of family affection in the hub arrangement. The Interrelation of Interaction Structures COUPLE RELATIONS

Communication, power, and affection structures are interdependent. We have already seen how verbal communication is an important indication of love among women. Effective communication between husbands and wives, however, in terms of being able to put oneself in the other's place (empathy) and a common interpretation of what is said (congruence), may not be related to marital satisfaction if the couple is no longer bound together by affection. Thus, without positive regard, a social science term for love, the communication skills of white, middleclass couples in one study showed little relation to their marital satisfaction (Barnes, Schümm, Jurich, 8c Bollman, 1984). Communication patterns include affection giving and through it affect the family power structure. The different love styles of women and men, sociologist Francesca M. Cancian (1987, p. 79) believes, contribute to

the greater power men generally enjoy. She argues that women, by confiding their troubles and revealing their weaknesses to the ones they love, make themselves dependent. They see themselves as requiring a man's understanding and protectiveness. In contrast, men's signs of love consist of providing the resources that they control and that women believe they must have. Men overlook their own dependence on women's resources, such as nurturance, personal care, and sex. Men tend to undervalue these services or, as with sex, can look to others to supply them. Thus, according to the argument, women's dependency on men is apparent and overemphasized, and men's dependency on women is hidden and underappreciated. Through each gender's differential styles of love reflected in communication or its absence, men acquire power and women lose it. Power, communication, and affection structures are interlinked with marital satisfaction. In numerous studies relating marital power and marital satisfaction, it appears that the happiest couples are in egalitarian marriages in terms of decision making or other forms of control, and the unhappiest couples are in wife-dominant arrangements. Husbanddominant marriages tend to be somewhere in between. Why should it be that powerful wives seem to have such a deadening effect on marital happiness? Wife-dominant marriages are problematic because they violate the conventional gender stereotypes of the spouses. There is incongruity between expectations and behavior. More relevant to our concern, however, is an explanation based on the role incapacity combined with the role incongruity argument.

THE MAKING OF FAMILY ROLES

According to it, wives take over because husbands abdicate their responsibilities. They are incapable or refuse to play family roles. Neither partner is happy with the situation. Husbands violate the gender norms they and their wives hold. A husband's noninvolve­ ment in family affairs may increase as his wife tries to make him be the family's leader, fur­ ther frustrating their lives. A vicious circle develops, because the more the husband with­ draws from participation in family affairs, the more the wife tries to coerce his involvement, which leads to his further withdrawal. Power patterns in such households appear more often than in other families to be based on partners' communicating threats and force, strategies that lead to conflict (Gray-Little & Burks, 1983, p. 533). With women receiving as much or more education than men and their increasing par­ ticipation in the labor market, communica­ tion failure or power struggles based on role incongruity may be decreasing. Gender stereo­ types, wherein men take responsibility for family decisions and women obediently carry them out, are shattered by the new reality. It forces couples to recognize that differential abilities are not tied to gender identities. Persons able to organize families to get things done include women as well as men. Men in­ creasingly at ease with lively, assertive women can share management roles or turn them over to women. Actually, women all along have generally had to organize the day-to-day operations of the family. Men entered the picture only at times when big decisions had to be made or when women, aware of their husbands' disapproval, failed to take action. The change now is that more men are willing to accept women's being in control or sharing it. PARENT-CHILD INTERACTION STRUCTURES

Similar relationships between affection, power, and communication structures show up in the parent-child subsystem. For example, in one small-scale study, 1-year-old children who were securely attached to their mothers tended to be more compliant 9 months later. Among the 31 white middle-class mothers in the study, those who were close to their infants also seemed to use noncoercive

89 socialization techniques more often. Young­ sters' positive relations with their mothers were associated with the mothers' getting along easily with their offspring. They were gentler when observed in free play with their almost 2-year-olds and had more warmth in their voices in giving directions. Children, on the other hand, whose mothers used more coercion in these settings were more dis­ obedient (Londerville 8c Main, 1981). There are carryover effects of the family power, communication, and affection struc­ tures to members' role participation in the broader community. When young children feel insecure about their mothers' attentions and mothers use force to gain obedience, chil­ dren rebel. The negative consequences of such interaction patterns show up in children's school performance. They do less well when they come from such family backgrounds (Hess, Holloway, Dickson, 8c Price, 1984). At issue here are what kinds of parental behaviors encourage children to be prepared to enter school and to do well once they are in school. To get us started in our thinking about favorable family environments, we turn to a British social scientist, Basil Bernstein (1970). Some time ago, he noted that it makes a difference not only how parents and chil­ dren communicate but also whether children have any power. When socialization is uni­ lateral from parents to children, he argued, communication tends to be one-way. Parents place emphasis on the child's age and gender position. Control is not so much based on reasoning as on force or appeals to age norms. We have all heard remarks stemming from age and gender status such as, "Behave your­ self; little boys don't cry," or "Don't talk back to your mother." Here is a dinner conversation from several generations ago that could still occur. The mother is talking to the son, Robert, who has opened the refrigerator door to get milk. Mother: Don't keep the refrigerator door open too long. Robert: Do you have to keep telling me the same thing over and over? You know I don't keep the door open. Mother: Gee, I can't even speak any more. The sons boss the mothers and the fathers. (quoted in Bossard 8c Boll, 1956, p. 139)

90 In contrast to this critical mother are parents who deal with children according to their characteristics as persons. These mothers and fathers both listen to and talk with their offspring. Communication is two-way. Par­ ents also base their control techniques less on coercion than on expertise due to longer ex­ perience. They try to use verbal persuasion, if possible, and take into account the charac­ teristics of the culprit. Their demands would be more like, "I know you're very tired, but we can be through here sooner if you stop crying," or, "Let's think about what you just said and why you said it." They would avoid statements such as, "Do what I tell you to do and stop arguing," which give the child no room for appeal. It is easier for families to change under these latter conditions. When parents and chil­ dren have two-way communication, demands for obedience are less arbitrary and there is room for negotiation. Through their conver­ sations, both generations become conscious of tension areas and the possibilities for relax­ ing them. Because parental authority is not based on ascribed age characteristics but expertise, children's disagreements and de­ mands for modifications in family patterns do not challenge parents' formal authority. Under these conditions, intergenerational relations are likely to be closer and warmer. For example, fathers and sons, freed from con­ stricting gender stereotypes that showing or receiving affection is effeminate or indicative of homosexuality, could communicate their feel­ ings for one another in trying circumstances. Let us now see how this parental com­ munication style based on a person, rather than a position-oriented communication model, affects children's school performan­ ces. To do so, we will make use of findings from a study of 47 white families from several social classes (Hess et al., 1984). The mothers and children, 23 girls and 24 boys, had been observed, interviewed, and given various standardized tests, on instruments especially designed for the study, when the youngsters were 4 to 6 years old and later when they were in the sixth grade. From all the longitudinal material, this is what stood out. Mothers, in­ deed, had an influence on their children's readiness for school in terms of relevant skills and their later intellectual performance. Ef­ fective mothers gave their preschoolers a

T H E FAMILY CAREERS

PERSPECTIVE

"cognitive boost" in tasks similar to those they would be assigned in grade school, a boost that appeared to carry over and affect posi­ tively the 12-year-old children's scores on achievement tests. The children's school readiness and later test performance were not determined by maternal IQ, an explanation based on the in­ fluence that biological factors have on intelli­ gence, but were affected by mothers' behaviors. Mothers communicated more effectively with young children who did well later in school. When asked to have their preschoolers per­ form various tasks, the mothers used techni­ cal descriptions or spoke about the size, quan­ tity, and names of the objects the child was to identify. They did not use directions such as, "the thing looks sort of round." Rather, they would say, "It is a circle with a corner removed." Children who performed well over their grade school careers also had mothers who were warm toward them and did not reject them when they were preschoolers. Mothers used rules and not appeals to their own authority in describing how they would handle preschoolers' problematic behaviors. In response to the example of a child's writing on the wall, mothers of children who did well in school when older reported they would say things such as, "paper is for writing; walls are not for writing." When asked what they would do if the preschooler hit another child with a block, they said they would appeal to the child's personal feelings. "How would you feel if someone hit you?" represents this type of statement. But they did not assert the authority derived from their position as mothers without accompanying explanations to control the erring child. They did not say, "I told you not to do it" (Hess et al., 1984, p. 1904). Not only were the mothers of children who did well in school more likely to explain the reason for their rules, but they also had teaching styles that encouraged their chil­ dren's participation. When asked to show their preschoolers how to perform tasks, they set up two-way communication channels. "Now let's find the block that has an X" was the message, a message that allowed questions. Along the same lines, mothers of schoolready children who later did well in the sixth grade were likely to press them to respond verbally to their comments, questions, or

THE MAKING OF FAMILY ROLES

commands. Mothers of children who were less successful in their school careers were more controlling in their statements. They issued directions such as, "Put the block where it should go." This type of control statement allowed the child no room to express his own ideas, ask questions, or voice objections (Hess et al., 1984, p. 1906). These findings on parent-child interactions demonstrate, as did the material on couple interchanges, how power, communication, and affection structures are intertwined. Because they constitute family system elements, the structures are interdependent and mutually influential. Hierarchical power structures based on commands and coerciveness make for one-way communications between those with power and the persons they control. Giving affection is limited, because the weaker members have unresolved disagreements they feel unable to express. In contrast are families in which communi­ cation is more open, power is less centralized, and members feel close to one another. Even preschoolers who lack the experience and cognitive development to make many decisions and whose vocabulary limits their abilities to express their feelings, benefit from such structures. Parents who give them some say in their socialization and provide reasons for their rules have children who learn to control themselves. Change is easier in families whose members are unafraid to express their needs and in which ties of affection are strong. Role making goes more smoothly when affection serves to soften confrontations as new inter­ action patterns develop. Social Class and Family Structures There has been evidence of social class and ethnic differences in family interaction structures throughout the chapter, despite the good deal of overlap in behaviors of families from different backgrounds. There are some generalizations about social class differences that continue to appear in research reviews (Langman, 1987). Middle-class people, be­ cause of their greater education, make less use of age and gender norms with respect to child-rearing practices. Working-class and lower-class parents tend to use more coercive techniques, in the form of physical punish­

91 ment and depriving children of privileges and resources, than do middle-class parents. Dis­ cipline among the less well-off is directed to stopping children's activities on the basis of adults' authority. Children have little voice in family rules and little freedom to contradict parents. Living in more spacious, less cramped quarters, the better off are not as concerned about the consequences of their children's misdeeds as the reasons behind them. They want to hear what their children have to say. For this reason, these parents are better able to transmit their values to their children. They have a better idea of why their children are not conforming and can explain this insistence on obedience. Another generalization concerning social class differences in socialization is that affec­ tion giving is greater among parents in higher classes. Without having close ties with their children, middle-class parents would have a hard time maintaining open communication channels. These are necessary to get children to say why they are misbehaving. Moreover, middle-class parents often appeal to a child's guilt at disobeying as a disciplinary technique, and without dose emotional ties, this control technique would fail. They also have the re­ sources and the energy to better monitor the behavior of their offspring to ensure their following parental ways. Working- and lowerclass parents, more often beset by job, money, and unsafe neighborhood problems, are less likely to feel able to watch over their children's behavior. It also appears that the less affluent, espe­ cially men, are more concerned about dif­ ferentiating their socialization techniques on the basis of gender. Thus, lower- and workingclass fathers would be more coercive with and less affectionate toward sons than daughters. Again, there is a greater emphasis on status differences between the generations in the lower classes. For the lower-lower class per­ son, particularly, such a concern is consistent with his or her own social position. Being poor often rests on ascribed roles having to do with race, gender, and physical or mental characteristics. Disproportionately repre­ sented in the poverty ranks are blacks and women. Because persons in middle-class families are more often able to enter esteemed achieved roles, they have less need to em­ phasize age and gender differences in family

92

T H E FAMILY CAREERS

role assignments. With little scope to be suc­ cessful in society's terms, those scrambling to make a living often view women or children in their families as the only people over whom they can assert power. It should be remembered, however, that conjugal power relations are not always egali­ tarian among middle-class couples or tradi­ tional in other social classes. Men holding professional or managerial jobs may favor centralized power structures despite adherence to egalitarian values. The reason for the discrepancy lies in the greater financial dif­ ferentiation in these couples' incomes. Men generally earn considerably more than women do and are involved in demanding careers that take them away from their families. It is among lower-middle-class couples where communication and affection structures may operate most satisfactorily for both partners. Men have time for their families, because their jobs do not require attention beyond the standard workday. Women can expect them to be more active in domestic affairs. Workingclass husbands also can be more involved with their families. Wives have financial power as their wages more often approach those of their husbands than in the middle class. But financial problems and rigid gender role prescriptions can raise insurmountable bar­ riers between men and women in com­ munication and affection giving. When these problems are due to lack of income, couples see it as a reflection of the husband's failure (Cancian, 1987, pp. 130-140). It is difficult then to talk about family matters as women would like when unsolvable problems are up­ permost in the couples' minds. Consequently, working-class couples are likely to settle for intimacy at arm's length. Wives turn to female kin for affection in the form of shared con­ fidences that their husbands do not en­ courage. Husbands make do with less willing sex partners. Summary In this chapter, I have presented a picture of the elements that make up the family and

PERSPECTIVE

the interrelations that enable these family elements to hang together. The discussion has covered the two polarities that charac­ terize family life and the family development perspective—stability and change. Without the one, it would be impossible to gauge the other. Looking at the family composition vari­ ables of size, age, and gender composition, I showed how they shape interaction struc­ tures, regardless of the personal characteris­ tics of individual family members. The concept of role making highlighted ongoing alterations in family interaction patterns. This process enables members to get along better when the previously worked out role scripts no longer fit their needs. Breaks in the structures that have maintained family routines constitute the transitions in family careers that signal the members' entering into a different period. After analyzing how individuals modify their roles, I then examined the issue of why people conform to role expectations, whether new or habitual. After this analysis of social control, I ended the chapter with a discussion of the power, communication, and affection struc­ tures that enable the family to fulfill its tasks. The chapter attempted to place in a new context the concepts of the family as a system that was examined in the previous chapter. The interdependence of family members continues to be a central concern, with much attention paid to role reciprocity as a means for maintaining family interaction structures. As a changing entity, role making character­ izes families in contrast to a more static ap­ proach based on normative behavior. How families organize to perform tasks is sug­ gested by their power, communication, and affection structures. Here again, the impor­ tance of the ascribed characteristic of gender appeared in what members perceived as "proper" elements of their roles. It was also apparent that the structures were intertwined. To exercise power effectively, parents or chil­ dren had to be able to communicate their demands and to draw on a surplus of affec­ tion in others to gain their willing conformity to the demand.

5

Developmental Tasks

for Families and Individuals

Tasks and Stages I complete my overview of the family de­ velopment conceptual framework with a consideration of the tasks families and indi­ viduals must accomplish at various times on the family clock. As we saw in the last chapter, family careers can take different directions, with varying role transitions and stage Schemas. The old certainties that establishing an inti­ mate relation meant an enduring marriage within which parenthood would occur no longer exist. Yet as the last chapter also showed, there are expectable changes setting off time periods in these different family careers. This chapter focuses on developmental tasks for both individuals and family groups. After defining what developmental tasks means and showing the connection between individual and family tasks, the discussion continues with a consideration of the usefulness of the con­ cepts. The level of task accomplishment with­ in stages, for example, provides a means of comparing families in that period. This level also sets limits on how well individuals and families can do in future periods. The concept of limited linkages incorporates the idea that a family's accomplishment of tasks in the past

influences how well its members do in fulfill­ ing present demands of family living. The next section of the chapter covers other uses of developmental tasks. They serve as bridges between individuals and families and between families and other social groups. Developmen­ tal tasks also specify sources of family change within the family development perspective. An analysis of research done on developmen­ tal tasks concludes the chapter.

The Individual

Developmental Task

All of us are familiar with the developmen­ tal tasks individuals are supposed to ac­ complish, even though we may not have used the term. Here are a few examples of how they are talked about in daily life. A mother, com­ plaining that her 23-year-old son is not selfsupporting, argues, "It's time he was off on his own." A middle-aged man reports, "I'm start­ ing to slow down on the job and give more time to my family. My kids are teenagers now and need me to be available when they've got problems." A new divorcie sighs, "I hated to go back to work full-time, but I can't manage 93

94 on child support to give my little boy the opportunities his friends have." Finally, her little boy's boast, "I get to go to school all day, just like the big kids." These examples share some common ele­ ments. The first is timing. They all refer to certain tasks that persons need to take on at particular times. A mother believes it is past time for her son to behave like an adult. A father notes that his children are at an age where they need him more than his job does. A recent single mother discovers that now she has to work more to support her child. A child is now ready to be a full-time scholar. There is also the implicit idea in all the examples that performing the particular activities, whether getting a job, spending more time with children, supporting a family, or starting school, is desirable. Not to perform the tasks would result in negative consequences, such as dependency, family misunderstandings, lack of money, and illiteracy. THE MEANING OF THE INDIVIDUAL DEVELOPMENTAL TASK

Robert J. Havighurst, who first wrote about individual developmental tasks, provided a formal definition. He wrote that such a task appears at a certain period in an individual's life. If the person took on the task and ac­ complished it, she or he felt good about it and was likely to accomplish future tasks. If the person failed, he or she was unhappy, ex­ perienced disapproval from others, and had dif­ ficulty accomplishing later tasks (Havighurst, 1953, p. 2). Developmental tasks, therefore, represent sequences of problems or difficul­ ties occurring throughout life that lead to behavioral change. This relatively simple definition has several implications that are worth exploring. The use of the term task indicates the active part played by the person, whose intellectual, physical, and cognitive characteristics medi­ ate the external and internal demands that he or she perceives. The task is something the individual must decide to try accomplishing. The outcome is not something that will occur without the individual's active participation. Accordingly, the concept is consistent with the assumption of the family development framework that the individual in the social setting is the basic unit.

T H E FAMILY CAREERS

PERSPECTIVE

The developmental task embraces both in­ dividual and group levels of analysis. It points to an individual's decision to undertake tasks determined by societal norms, as they are interpreted for and urged on that individual by his or her associates. Biological and social clocks set the time when changes in behavior are appropriate (Neugarten, 1968). These dif­ ferent tasks, arising at certain times, give direction, force, and substance to individual lives (Baltes 8c Reese, 1988; Havighurst, 1973, pp. 10-11). In the early years of life, the inter­ nal thrust that leads to developmental task learning stems in large part from physical maturation, as with a child who learns to walk. Still later, at puberty, bodily changes contribute to changes in self-identity and so to a youth's aspirations within the context of cultural definitions given by his or her social group. There is also the idea that task ac­ complishment includes adequate handling of the tasks salient to a certain period, along with necessary preparation for the next phase (Waters 8c Sroufe, 1983). Learning to get along with others in earlier years, for example, gives the adolescent the foundation required for taking on the later task of preparing to es­ tablish intimate relationships with others. To summarize this discussion of the developmental task definition, it includes the following: (a) The various periods in in­ dividual lives whether infancy, adolescence, or middle age incorporate a set of tasks, (b) Within each period there are particular normative tasks set by associates based on the central events in this period, (c) There is a range of possibilities for individual develop­ ment (see Oerter, 1986, p. 235). This latter point is important. Once tasks associated with biological maturation are past, the expectations associated with individual and family career milestones vary, depending on the social class, ethnic, and gender charac­ teristics of the persons involved. Indi­ viduals, however, are not locked into sets of tasks deriving from these memberships. In our complex society there is a looseness within these requirements. Most of us have encounters with persons, outside our im­ mediate families and circle of intimates, who hold different expectations. Even youngsters largely limited to the family world can come in contact with a teacher or a neighbor who presents expectations somewhat at odds with

DEVELOPMENTAL

those their families hold. With increasing age, our awareness of the range of task possibil­ ities and their definitions increases. The process of a person's taking on and fulfilling tasks as time goes on occurs some­ thing like this. Through being with others and seeing their expectations and through self-discoveries of changing capacities, an in­ dividual forms a new sense of self-awareness— a modified self-identity. She or he now per­ ceives different potentialities in the present situation, potentialities previously overlooked. The individual now feels ready to take on the developmental task, to try to iearn new ways of coping with the situation. The steps out­ lined in Figure 5.1 illustrate this process. The normative expectations are not always related to age, and in the years between adolescence and old age, biological capacities have little to do with individuals' undertaking new developmental tasks. To emphasize the point that persons at all ages face developmental challenges, let us look at the hands-on tasks of middle-aged children and compare them with their hands-off tasks as middle-aged parents. When parents be­ come older and request assistance, adult chil­ dren may feel they have to take over decision making for them, something they would think twice about doing for their inexperienced adolescent children. Gerontologist Lillian Troll, as quoted in a newspaper article, points out the difference between our interpretation of the behavior of youths and the elderly. " 'If, for example, a 19-year-old can't remember why he went to the refrigerator, we might say he's in love and leave him alone. But if a 79-year­ old forgets why he went to the refrigerator, we are likely to say he's senile and start doing things for him' " (Slade, 1985, p. B5). Having to stand back and wait for an older parent to ask for help can be frustrating to concerned children. But fulfilling the task of encouraging the elderly to be independent is necessary for adult children. The alternative of treating parents like children, however, can turn the parents into dependents. As Mrs. Therice Weisel, who was on the shady side of 65, put it in the same article," 'To think that I shouldn't do it for myself would make me feel as old as I am. And I know that many of my peers feel the same way... but if we want our children to do for us, we'll ask' " (Slade, 1985, p. B5). 1

95

TASKS THE INFLUENCE OF PEERS

Although developmental task points up the individual in the situation, the concept also indicates the influence of others in task accomplishment. Social time clocks are set by others, and the socialization pressures of parents to keep their children on schedule or the concern of lovers that their significant others conform to societal timetables reflects the interdependence of family members and intimates. A person's sense of accomplishment in fulfilling a task successfully—or sense of failure in not doing so—is specifically included in the developmental task concept. The ur­ ging of others that she or he take on the task and their responses to signs of progress, al­ though only suggested in the definition, can be critical. By encouraging the person who decides to learn or by scolding and punishing the one who refuses to do so, others exert a strong influence on the feelings and behavior of individuals. One college student reported how he, as the youngest of four, learned not to believe everything he was told. His two older brothers told him his comic book hero, Richie Rich, lived not too far away. Not only that, but Richie actually telephoned him. He had his doubts at first, but had he not talked with his idol on the phone? Reality soon set in, how­ ever, and the kid brother realized his big brothers were just having fun with him. The outcome of the experience for the little boy was a healthy dose of skepticism (Megargee, 1988, p. 2). Adolescence is a particularly good period for looking at individuals trying out new task behaviors. We tend to associate the begin­ ning of this period with puberty. Yet the tasks youths attempt, as they gradually shift from dependency on parents and siblings to the greater independence and the broader world of their peers, may not coincide with the bio­ logical changes. After the tasks individuals accomplish due to the unfolding of the matur­ ational capacities of walking, talking, and toileting, their development is largely socially organized. How individuals use their capa­ cities, what tasks they choose to take on, and their feelings about their task performance have much to do with their close associates. A number of researchers have looked at how peers influence biologically mature youths to

96

T H E FAMILY CAREERS

PERSPECTIVE

F R O M T H E INDIVIDUAL

F R O M O T H E R S IN SOCIETY

Necessary

Capabilities

Normative Expectations

Self-Identity

r

Aspirations

T h e Individual

Takes on the

Developmental Task

F i g u r e 5.1.

S o u r c e s o f t h e Individual D e v e l o p m e n t a l Task

take on tasks that will make them more independent. One interesting study concerned teenage girls' violation of parental and school prohibitions (Magnusson, Stattin, & Allen, 1986). The girls, school children in a Swedish town of about 100,000, had all participated in a longitudinal study from the time they were 10 until they reached adulthood. As we all remember from our own school days, children vary in the time they reach puberty. This

was the case here, with a 5- to 6-year span separating early- from late-maturing teenage girls. Age at menarche was related to norm violations, such as staying out late without parental permission, being absent from school, drinking, using drugs, and loitering in town during the evenings. The earliest develop­ ing girls were most likely to engage in these behaviors.

DEVELOPMENTAL

97

TASKS

But we should not conclude from this find­ ing that the impetus to these more adultlike behaviors was biological menarche. These behaviors were engaged in by only those early-maturing girls who reported their older friends showed little disapproval for their misbehaviors. Girls without older friends, regardless of their puberty status, showed few differences in prohibited behaviors. The long-run consequences of the onset of puberty, however, did show up in the girls' educational careers. Even controlling for socio­ economic background and intelligence, earlymaturing girls had less schooling than did late-maturing girls. What does this mean in terms of indi­ vidual developmental tasks? Adolescence is a time when young people begin to fulfill tasks that prepare them for adulthood. As the re­ searchers of the Swedish study point out, such behaviors as staying out late without parents' permission, drinking alcohol, and hanging around town might be thought of as attempts to move away from the supervised home en­ vironment toward greater independence. But it is not necessary for children to acquire adult biological characteristics for them to take on adultlike behaviors. In the Swedish study, early-maturing girls, despite develop­ ing adult physical characteristics, such as breasts and pubic hair, showed precocious behavior only when they had older friends willing to accept such behavior. From this research, it appears that the con­ sequences of biological maturity depend on the expectations of associates. These affect the sorts of behaviors individuals will try to fol­ low. Even the lesser educational achieve­ ments of these early-maturing girls can also be seen as the result of their association with older peers responding to their more adult appearance. More extensive contacts with boys in these years, coupled with the greater independence parents gave these earlymaturing girls, help to explain their leaving school early. They were ready to shoulder adult occupational and family responsibilities. It is important to note how the inter­ dependencies of family members result in each one affecting others in fulfilling her or his developmental task regimen. Members' individual task efforts may not always easily fit together. To continue with the example of families in the stage with adolescents, parents

are having to lessen direct demands and sub­ stitute softer suggestions to adolescents eager to make their own decisions. This letting go process constitutes a difficult task, as parents see their offspring about to make mistakes in their desire to be autonomous. They can be frustrated and lose patience with teenagers, who become less reasonable the more opposi­ tion their elders express. The alternative to parents letting go gracefully is often outright conflict. A letter to advice columnist Ann Landers (1985) from a teenager presents the differing perspectives of the two generations in graphic terms. "Dear A n n Landers: " . . . I a m a 16-year-old h i g h s c h o o l j u n i o r . I'm n o t a t r a m p , but I'm n o t a v i r g i n either. M y boyfriend a n d I have b e e n g o i n g t o g e t h e r for a year and a h a l f a n d s l e e p i n g t o g e t h e r for f o u r m o n t h s . We are careful a n d u s e birth c o n t r o l . "My parents f o u n d o u t w e w e r e i n t o sex a n d p r o h i b i t e d u s from s e e i n g each other. . . . N o w a y c a n t h e y k e e p us apart. T h e y s h o u l d h a v e talked t o m e a b o u t sex at a n early age. Instead o f acting like it w a s an e m b a r r a s s i n g subject. " . . . S o o n e r o r later, m o s t k i d s are g o i n g t o b e t e m p t e d to e x p e r i m e n t w i t h d r u g s a n d sex. Parents s h o u l d b e aware o f it

Kids n e e d all

the i n f o r m a t i o n t h e y c a n get. T h e y s h o u l d b e told w h a t the risks are. If t h e y g e t straight talk w i t h o u t s c r e a m i n g a n d y e l l i n g t h e y will b e in a p o s i t i o n to m a k e better decisions." (p. I I )

2

In this instance, the young woman's parents apparently had never been able to establish open communication with her on the subject of sex. Their past failure in this value trans­ mission task coupled with their present in­ ability to adopt less confrontational social control methods, influenced their daughter's rebellion against parental precepts. Thus, parents' not fulfilling earlier socialization tasks have negative later repercussions for the two generations. Parents have to inculcate their values in earlier stages if children are to act on them in later life. The Family Developmental Task The family developmental task, like the individual task concept, is a task that families

98

THE FAMILY CAREERS

need to complete at a certain period if their members' developmental tasks and societal expectations are to be fulfilled. Without such achievements, families experience con­ flict among members and disapproval from outsiders. A family developmental task can be con­ ceptualized as any one of the family functions that contribute to its continuance at a par­ ticular stage. These functions, discussed in Chapter 2, included the following: 1. Physical maintenance of family members 2. Socialization of family members for roles in the family and other groups 3. Maintenance of family members' motiva­ tion to perform family and other roles 4. Maintenance of social control within the family and between family members and outsiders 5. Addition of family members through adop­ tion or reproduction and their release when mature The key element of the family develop­ mental task concept is the content changes in these functions at particular stages of family careers. Then the demands of family members and of community representatives change. Family functions remain nominally the same from one stage to another, with the exception of the addition and release of family members. In contrast to these family tasks, each member may take on a variety of different individual developmental tasks within a given family stage. One can view family developmental tasks somewhat as follows. To continue as a unit, the family must meet minimal task perfor­ mance standards satisfactory to its members and to the broader society. Individual mem­ bers acquire new aspirations through experi­ ences with other family members, friends, work associates, or schoolmates. As each faces new expectations from these associates, he or she makes different demands on other family members. These demands constitute internal pressures on the family to change. Families also receive pressures from the community to conform to certain minimal standards of civic responsibility. These stan­ dards vary according to the age composition of family members. The school entry of the oldest child, for example, introduces a new

PERSPECTIVE

family stage, in part because parents and sib­ lings now share the socialization function with teachers. They expect the child to have ac­ complished developmental tasks, such as paying attention and remaining quiet, that classroom learning presupposes. Children's be­ havioral problems can arise from their un­ readiness to meet school requirements. If children do not obey the teacher, make it hard for others to learn, or skip class, school per­ sonnel generally contact parents to obtain their cooperation in trying to get the child to meet school standards. As the discussion on boundary mainte­ nance in Chapter 2 showed, the family ac­ quires an identity based on its reputation for meeting community standards of task performance. Young children may lose out in school, because teachers have found in dealing with their older sibs that parents did not sup­ port the school rules. Such a family reputa­ tion can lead busy teachers to expend their greatest efforts on children of families who encourage their children to do well. Based on their expectations of children's school perfor­ mance, teachers in low-income or inner-city neighborhoods may try less hard to get them to learn than teachers in middle-class areas. The latter know "their" parents are more apt to be college educated and able to help their children achieve in school. Other family development tasks become important because of the necessity of keep­ ing the group going. Single-parent families resulting from death or divorce face such tasks while being understaffed. Whether it is socialization, social control, or physical main­ tenance, one parent—or an older child alone or in combination with a parent's parent or siblings—has to tackle problems that two adults dealt with in the past. The unhappiness the truncated household feels at the loss of a member accentuates the task of motivation maintenance at the very time the remaining residents are least able to be comforting (Goldsmith, 1982). Family members who are also facing demands from outside agencies can experience added stress. One mother told of being called in to her son's school to talk about his grades shortly after her separation from his father, Paul:" 'Going to school feeling very emotional, almost tearful, about what was happening, and in the back of my head I'm hearing Paul tell me that Evart's not making

DEVELOPMENTAL

99

TASKS

it. It was going to be my fault because I left' " (Abelsohn, 1992, p. 66). The interconnection of individual mem­ ber and family task accomplishments can lead to both conflicts within families and threats to them from outside authorities. The earlymaturing girls described above, who were precociously displaying more independent behaviors, were jeopardizing their parents' social control attempts and bringing them­ selves to the attention of public authorities. The intertwining of individual and family developmental task accomplishment can also be illustrated by the birth of the first child to the remarried couple in a stepfamily. The event fulfills the discretionary family task of repro­ duction, but its timing influences the accom­ plishment of the developmental tasks in the remarriage transition. One of these tasks has to do with the custodial parent, most often the mother of a child from the previous mar­ riage. She has to reallocate time, energy, and affection from that child to the new partner while still assuring the child of her continued concern (Clingempeel, Brand, & Segal, 1987). If the birth occurs before that morale main­ tenance task is accomplished, the family may well have continuing problems in addition to the tasks associated with the new arrival. In short succession, the child of the mother and her former husband will have seen the loss of the birth parent's personal attention, first from the entry of the stepparent into the former parent-child family unit and now from the arrival of the half-sibling. The child, consequently, will be less likely to fulfill ap­ propriate developmental tasks, and the family's socialization task will be put at risk. The interdependence of family members also means the child's resultant distress com­ plicates the stepparent's performance of his individual developmental task. Interaction patterns concerning setting limits and giving nurturance acceptable to the child and the biological parent can be in process when the infant is born. A stepchild can still be saying, " 'Two parents are more than enough. I don't need another telling me what to do' " (Visher & Visher, 1982, p. 335). The stepparent may shift his attentions from the more touchy stepchild to the new offspring. The stepchild's disagreeableness then increases due to the disproportionate interest the stepparent de­ votes to his own child. Consequently, the

developing stepparent-stepchild relation de­ teriorates. Trouble there creates spousal fric­ tion, further adding to the stress resulting from the infant's demands and the not-yet­ accomplished tasks arising from the stepfamily's establishment. With this illustration, we see again how members' individual developmental tasks do not always mesh, as well as how the degree of their mastery affects the fulfillment of family developmental tasks. This interconnection of individual and group tasks brings us to a consideration of how family task accomplish­ ment at one stage sets limits on task mastery at the next period. Limited Linkages There is nothing in the definition of family development task that relates its degree of accomplishment specifically to task perfor­ mance in later stages of a family's lifetime. The discussion of stages in the previous chap­ ter did indicate, however, that family role per­ formance at one stage can narrow the family's behavioral options in the next. One of the assumptions of the family development task is that families must perform certain timespecific tasks set by their members or the broader society. Some time ago, family economist Frances M. Magrabi and family studies scholar William H. Marshall (1965, p. 456), in a thoughtprovoking analysis of the developmental task concept, dealt specifically with this phenomenon of limited linkage. As a family moves from one stage to another, it encounters pressures for change in the content of its developmental tasks. The level the family at­ tains in task performance depends in part on the demands of the new stage and in part on the limits set by their past performance achieve­ ments or failures. Thus, the extent to which families at any one stage satisfactorily main­ tain themselves in terms of food, housing, and clothing; socialize their members; keep up each other's morale; and preserve some sort of social order sets limits on their task performance at the next stage. To take the social control task as an ex­ ample, families with fairly inflexible power structures and one-way communication pat­ terns from parents to children at the primary

100

T H E FAMILY CAREERS

school stage often find it hard to move in the next stage toward two-way communication patterns and achieving more egalitarian power structures. Despite the pressures for change from adolescent members wanting autonomy and a greater say in family decision making, the patterns established in the previous stage constrain how parents go about meeting the social control task at the present period. As the teenager's letter to Ann Landers indicated, parents face disobedience from youths un­ willing to conform to rules they see as unfair. Parents who have not given teenagers a voice in the rules regulating their behavior are likely to retain less influence in socialization. Their ideas and suggestions as to how youths should behave as young adults are less likely to be listened to, because adolescents are not used to talking to parents about what they are doing and thinking. Socialization, like com­ munication, is not two-way, and parents lose out. Not knowing their adolescent's interests and ideas, parents lack this information that might help them head off problems and avoid confrontations. They cannot perform the family socialization and social control tasks effectively. Carryovers from the past that haunt the present are nowhere more apparent than in the aftermath of divorce. Feelings about the departed member affect task accomplishment in the remaining family unit. With its out­ spoken anger, this letter to "Dear Abby" from a former wife provides an example: "We were b o t h kids we drifted a p a r t . . . years. He is now w o m a n who

w h e n w e married . I've

been

alone

. . . but for four

m a r r i e d to a y o u n g e r , stylish

is v e r y pretty and active socially. I

frequently see her picture (usually w i t h him)

in

the society section of the newspaper. Abby, every t i m e I see a picture of that w o m a n w i t h m y exh u s b a n d , I get so u p s e t I have to g o to b e d for a week! W h a t s h o u l d I do? ( S i g n e d ) Jealous." ( q u o t e d in V i s h e r & Visher, 1 9 8 2 , p. 3 4 2 )

3

Because women usually receive custody of the children, they are the ones facing the for­ midable challenge of keeping the remaining family going. They must do this while strug­ gling with their own feelings, sometimes of relief and good riddance, but also, as with "Jealous," of anger and rejected love. Mothers

PERSPECTIVE

may be less able to organize the remaining family members for task accomplishment, both then and in the next stage. At risk are socialization, social control, and particularly, maintaining their own and their children's morale. Working out fathers' continuing finan­ cial and companionship contributions to their children, always a tricky endeavor, becomes even more difficult. Mothers and fathers, still acting in terms of previous unsatisfactory marital relations, may, under these circum­ stances, attempt to enlist children on their side and discourage children's obedience to the other parent's rules. Let us look at the limited linkages argu­ ment byway of the chart shown in Figure 5.2. This type of chart is sometimes called a "directed graph" or "game-tree model," be­ cause there is a branching of lines from an initial starting point or "root." The numbers in the graph—1, 2, 3—indicate a family's position at a particular stage, according to its overall performance on the family develop­ mental tasks. In the chart, the family proceeds from the number 1 position. It represents the family's overall task accomplishment level at stage A. The family's performance on the family developmental tasks at this stage limits it to three possible options at stage B. Similarly, the family's performance of its tasks at stage Β restricts its alternatives for task accomplish­ ment at stage C. From position 2 at stage B, members are limited to the options of 5 or 6 for future task performance mastery. Families at positions 3 or 4 lack these task accomplish­ ment options. Similarly, unless the family is at level 5 in stage C, it will be unable to reach accomplishment levels 9 or 10 at the next stage (Magrabi & Marshall, 1965, p. 456). The family task of physical maintenance provides a good example of how a family's performance at one stage affects its future per­ formance of the same and other tasks. It ap­ pears that men who marry as teenagers, compared with men who marry at older ages, have less success in providing for their fam­ ilies. This accomplishment deficit continues not only from the first stage of the first marriage but for as long as 30 to 40 years later. Marrying as adolescents is also associated with lesser success in their families' being able to get members motivated to accept family responsibilities. These differences in family

DEVELOPMENTAL

101

TASKS

LEVEL OF TASKS ACCOMPLISHMENT

9

1

Family S t a g e ·

5 •

10

2

6

11

3

7

12

4

8

13

g

-

^

Figure 5.2. Linkage of Accomplishments of Family Developmental Tasks From One Stage to the Next SOURCE: Modification of a chart in Magrabi a n d Marshall (1965, p. 456).

ask accomplishment, moreover, appear among younger and older cohorts of men and among whites and African Americans alike. The data to document these statements come from a Bureau of the Census labor force survey of civilian men 14 years of age and older. The investigators looked at the achieve­ ments of white and black men aged 30 to 35, 40 to 45, and 50 to 55 in 1980, most of whom had married in the 1940s through the 1960s (Teti, Lamb, 8r Elster, 1987). There were com­ parisons within each age cohort between those marrying before the age of 19 and those marrying between 19 and 29 years of age.

With respect to physical maintenance, the early marrieds, regardless of age cohort, had less education and lower occupational status. This translated into lower incomes for family maintenance than their later-married cohort members could provide. For the entire sample, the education achievement in the two groups was 11.8 versus 13.1 years. On a 78­ point occupational prestige status index, the men who married when older scored 39 points, as contrasted with 32.2 points for the earlymarried men. The yearly income difference in 1980 dollars was $2,520, equal to $14,419 in 1993 dollars. All of the differences were

102 statistically significant. For the youngest group, the education difference had reached 2 years for white men and lowered to 6 months (a nonsignificant discrepancy) among black men. Presumably, they had become more adept at handling early marriage and schooling than white men. The lesser accomplishment of these early marrieds, with respect to the family task of physical maintenance, was also associated with lower morale maintenance rates. Among all age groups of the men marrying as teenagers, between 30% and 36% were in a second mar­ riage, and 10% had married three or more times. Men who timed their first marriages at later ages were more successful. Only about half as many, 13% to 16%, had married twice, and no more than 3% were in their third or more marriages. The investigators wisely note that they lacked information on the socioeconomic status of the families in which the 14,632 men in the sample grew up. The early married may already have been disadvantaged before entering marriage as teenagers. But previous studies have indicated the negative effects of early marriage on educational attainment, regardless of class status prior to marriage, so we can conclude that the effects the researchers found were influenced by the timing of mar­ riage. Thus, the deficits in economic perfor­ mance associated with adolescent marriage are long lasting in limiting future family physical maintenance and are associated with deficits in morale maintenance as reflected in divorce. Uses of the Developmental Task Concepts The first use developmental tasks serve is to bridge individual and group levels of analysis. In both the individual and the family task definitions, you will remember, reference is made to pressures for change from in­ dividuals and groups that culminate in either the individual or the family taking on the task. Without this bridging service of developmen­ tal tasks, we would lack a means for tying members into the broader structures of fam­ ilies, schools, and workplaces. By viewing the family development tasks in terms of functional requirements specified according to the stage of the family cycle,

T H E FAMILY CAREERS

PERSPECTIVE

the concept can be related to the individual developmental task concept. We have already suggested that the family can be viewed as a set of the intercontingent careers of its mem­ bers (Färber, 1961). These careers are com­ posed of the changing role clusters of the incumbents of the various family positions. The behaviors that initially constitute the requirements for role performance were in­ dividual developmental tasks. The individual has to be able to accomplish a number of them to fulfill family roles. The family functions, such as socialization and morale mainte­ nance, prepare members to learn the new ways, which in turn enables the family to fulfill these responsibilities. The previous limited linkage example in­ dicated how the job status and income of an adult affect family well-being and stability from one period to another. The family de­ velopmental task of physical maintenance was the link between this social context of work and the individual himself. Note the gender of the persons in the study of the lasting effects of early marriage. These were men whose occupational histories were traced. They con­ tinue to earn more wages on average than do women and to work full-time more often, due to freedom from child care responsibilities. This work status advantage based on gender makes it easier for households in which there is a male partner to fulfill the physical main­ tenance task. The relation of age and its symbolic mean­ ing for adolescents and their showing more adultlike behaviors appeared in the individual developmental task illustration. It tied the structural variable of age to the individual's own behavior wishes and the expectations of others. Historical effects were not specifically addressed in the research, but the develop­ mental tasks of individual family members may need to take them into account. A number of social scientists have argued that the life course of individuals and their developmental tasks in the present historical period are increasingly more tightly organized on the basis of chronological age. This is par­ ticularly apparent in school and work careers, which institutionalize the sequence of events from first-grade entrance and progression through the formal education hierarchy to full-time employment and eventual retirement (Kohli & Meyer, 1986). At the same time,

DEVELOPMENTAL

TASKS

there is increasing emphasis on individualism and personal choice in committing oneself to advanced education or to an occupation (Meyer, 1986). The discrepancy between the institution­ alization of event sequences in critical life areas and the popular ideology of the autonomous decision-making self appears nowhere more sharply than in family careers. There appears to be a deinstitutionalization in them (Held, 1986). More variation in the family event se­ quence of leave home, get a job, marry, have children, retire, and die has been disrupt­ ed. Not always is there a connection between marriage and having children, and persons no longer consider love, marriage, and parent­ hood as necessarily occurring in that order or connected in one enduring relation. Through individual developmental tasks, we can trace this opening up of family careers to personal choice. They enlist persons into the different family sequences. At the same time, individual and family developmental tasks alert us to the current social climate reflected in peer, work, and family expecta­ tions that affect the tasks families and their members take on. Developmental tasks, there­ fore, are means for bridging the macrolevel of the historical setting and the microlevel variables of families and their members, and within the microlevel linking the levels be­ tween the individual members and the family group. The second use of developmental tasks is to specify sources of family change. Take the concept of individual developmental tasks. Each family member is entering into, playing out, or leaving behind a number of tasks he or she sees as appropriate at this particular time. Individuals come to terms with these task requirements in the context of the be­ havior of fellow members, who are also ex­ periencing pressure to take on new develop­ mental tasks or to do better with the ones they are now performing. Individual members are often following different time schedules, be­ cause families are composed of persons of different ages and genders. The interdepen­ dencies that exist in family life mean that members not only perform tasks consistent with their development but also urge others to move along on their own task agendas. These

103 different sets of members' developmental tasks are one source of the pushes that challenge families and move them along in their careers. An increasing number of women are chal­ lenging the role prescriptions that say when children come, mothers take care of them. They are pressing their partners to also per­ form these tasks. Through such a shift in household chores, women can take on tasks that go beyond the domestic sphere. One wife described her new activities in this way: "I went back to painting and designing seven years ago, but this time I took myself seriously. . . . Four years ago I got my first real job as a designer, and it's been on the upswing ever since. I love what I'm doing Ted's [husband] been forced into a new relationship with the kids because I'm not so available anymore, and I actually think he loves it." (Rubin, 1983, p. 18) The wife's fulfillment of the occupational task she had wanted to accomplish required her to push her husband to learn new domestic skills. Both partners appeared satisfied with the changed division of labor and their in­ creased role competencies. Families are also subject to external pres­ sures to change. These pressures, joined with those from members, result in the modifica­ tion in families' interaction patterns associ­ ated with different stages. Plans to get married can be moved up due to expectations in the corporate business world. One 26-year-old man who was looking for a management job was surprised to find that job interviewers were interested in his marital status: " 'If you ap­ peared as a single young buck, they looked at you differently.'" To avoid giving the impres­ sion that he was unattached and therefore less likely to work hard, he told them he was en­ gaged to be married (Bradsher, 1989, p. CI). Thus, subtle job requirements can force shifts in family careers, including their initiation. The family's accomplishment of the changed content of developmental tasks with a new stage is uneven. The process is rarely smooth. That is why we speak of stage transi­ tions as times when families are fumbling to develop the structures needed to accomplish tasks. They may not always be successful, and the period will be difficult for all concerned. 4

104 Partners may decide to call it quits so that stage sequences are broken due to divorce. They can also be repeated in remarriages. A nice illustration of the interplay of socie­ tal demands and member expectations as they make for changes in families' task perfor­ mance has to do with the socialization task and, specifically, parents' preparation of chil­ dren to enter school. The law requires that youngsters attend school at a certain age. Their going off to school can constitute a demarca­ tion in the family career. As noted above, the family has to see that children have ac­ complished the tasks learning requires. Families, through their expectations, are ac­ tive agents in a member's task accomplish­ ments. They can change the times they social­ ize children in these school preparation skills, and these changes, in turn, can modify socie­ tal expectations. In Germany, as in the United States, more parents view preschool education as valuable for their children. Aware of the increasing body of knowledge today's children must have, par­ ents are concerned that their youngsters begin obtaining formal education as early as pos­ sible. Then they have the opportunity to learn to get along with others of their age and to acquire basic reading and arithmetic skills. Accordingly, families are preparing their children for school when they are somewhat younger than in the past. An increasing num­ ber of German children are entering school a quarter year earlier than in the past, and many fewer are postponing going to school for a year, as used to be the case. The early entrants have performed so successfully in school that a new societal norm for the timing of school entrance has appeared (Oerter, 1986, p. 248). In response to changing societal demands, fam­ ilies in the stage with preschoolers have had to move up socializing their children for school. STRESS A N D TASK ACCOMPLISHMENT

The use of the developmental task to ex­ plain family change should not blind us to the difficulties associated with innovation. Having to cope with alterations in routines, even when expected as some family events are, is rarely easy for the individuals involved. As we saw in the last chapter, it takes time for members to refurbish, renegotiate, and recon-

T H E FAMILY CAREERS

PERSPECTIVE

struct the interaction patterns that enable them to meet the tasks of the new period. This stress is compounded by the intermittent crosspurposes that exist between the tasks members are taking on in their individual timetables and the duties families face in their schedules. This mixture of shifts in individual and family lives helps to explain the results from a crosssectional study of the responses to stress of intact families across the life cycle (Olson, Lavee, 8c McCubbin, 1988). The 1,251 mainly white, middle-class, Protestant families were divided into four stages to preserve sample size in each stage. The families, regardless of stage, experienced about the same number of events such as mar­ riage, childbirth, and children leaving home, or member occupational career changes, in­ cluding job transfer, job loss, and promotion. But the families in the stages with children present—whether adolescents, in the primary grades, or only a preschooler—complained of the most stress. The increased number of family relationships children bring result in attendant possibilities of more clashing in­ dividual and family developmental task agendas. In contrast, young couples without children or older couples whose children had left home or where the partners had retired enjoyed greater well-being. Getting along with one other, as opposed to several others who were having to be cared for, was less difficult for adult partners. Several factors cut down the stress families and individuals experience from changing developmental tasks (Hagestad 8c Burton, 1986). One factor that helps to some extent is their expectable character. We can count on certain marked breaks in family composition or changes in the age-related role contents of family positions to occur (Hill 8c Mattessich, 1979). Despite the prevalence of divorce and remarriage, the family sequences of marriage, parenthood, and children leaving home con­ tinue to be seen as normal. They are even institutionalized through civil and religious rites, such as weddings, baptisms (birth regis­ trations), and graduations. Individual develop­ mental trajectories also follow institutionalized sequences, such as those connected with education. Children progress through an or­ ganized series of entrances and exits from schools, beginning at the primary grades, con­

DEVELOPMENTAL

TASKS

tinuing through intermediary schools, and ending for many in high school. Because they are expectable, people can anticipate and prepare for the problems as­ sociated with these individual and family time segments. Part of the changing content of the family's socialization responsibility concerns members acquiring the skills, ac­ tions, and values they will need to accomplish the duties required at certain periods. Unex­ pected life events, such as prolonged illnesses, premature deaths, or wrenching divorces, sel­ dom provide lead time for adjustment and so are more stressful. The lesser stress involved in expectable fami­ ly and member task sequences points up the timing feature of their accomplishment and the support individuals receive. When families or their members are "on time" in taking on tasks, whether marrying or entering the job market, they have the advantage of not only hearing from their friends about their experi­ ences but also observing where friends do well or poorly with particular task-related be­ haviors. Aloneness replaces the "we're all in the same boat" feeling when families or their individual members are "off time" in under­ taking task sequences. This loneliness adds to the pain of social disapproval and personal distress associated with task postponement or failure. Developmental Task Research Issues The previous discussion has centered on the usefulness of the developmental task con­ cepts for understanding family careers. The present section examines research on the con­ ceptualization of the tasks and their underly­ ing assumptions. I shall begin my analysis with the individual developmental task. Havighurst (1956, p. 216), who initiated the idea, described three procedures for discover­ ing and defining individual developmental tasks. One is based on observing homo­ geneous age groups and deciding for each age group what they are working at. Another con­ sists of asking people what their concerns and interests are, on the assumption that they are aware of their developmental needs and can discuss them. The last procedure is for the social scientist to be introspective about his

105 own personal career and define the develop­ mental tasks he sees himself taking on. The lists of tasks people make using these procedures share those tasks set by biological time schedules, such as learning to walk and talk. Individuals who belong to the same so­ cial groups are also subject to the same social time schedules, which can differ on events and timing from members of other groups. A third component of such lists are those tasks personal to the individual that he or she chooses without external urging. An example of a task set by families and community pressure is that of getting a job. Most social groups expect married men and, increasingly, women or single parents with children to obtain jobs that will enable them to maintain some sort of viable level of living. If they fail to accept an available job—and in the case of a couple, if the wife also is not employed—they will experience social disap­ proval and the possible suffering of their loved ones. Whether an individual decides to take on civic responsibilities, such as participating in political party caucuses where nominees are endorsed, trudging door-to-door and dis­ tributing political literature, or voting in elec­ tions, however, is more a matter of personal choice affected by one's family values, educa­ tion, and historical era than societal pres­ sures. Failure to accomplish the task of "good citizen"—however one defines it—brings little negative reaction. In addition, there are usually few positive rewards, aside from the inner satisfaction of having helped to elect particular candidates or to make democracy work. In like fashion, there are also few external pres­ sures to encourage the middle-aged adult to expand his leisure time interests in prepara­ tion for the long days of retirement. At the present time, there is a lack of research evi­ dence on what constitutes age-graded tasks in different class and ethnic groups. For that reason, we are largely limited to lists of matur­ ationally based tasks and those tasks based on the educated judgments of researchers. We do have some research on the underly­ ing assumptions of the developmental task concepts. One of these assumptions is that good achievement on a developmental task at one period is followed by good achievement on similar and other tasks at subsequent periods. In other words, limited linkages exist

106 on the individual and family levels. Child psy­ chologist L. Alan Sroufe and his associates found this to be true in their longitudinal research with 48 middle-class infants (Sroufe, 1979; Waters & Sroufe, 1983). Babies are an especially interesting group to follow over time because their development so clearly sets up maturational personal tasks and physical care tasks for other family members. Sroufe places the infants' task of becoming attached to the caregiver in the second 6 months of life. The infant comes to count on this person or a few persons and to organize her or his be­ havior around them. In turn, the caregiver is performing the tasks composing the nurturer role at this period. She, for the primary care­ giver is usually a woman, has learned to inter­ pret the needs of the infant through cries and movements. If the caretaker's comforting responses interweave easily with the infant's signals, they provide the baby with a secure environment. It is one the infant learns to trust, a developmental outcome that psychiatrist Erik Erikson (1963) sees as critical at this age. The benign interaction that encourages the infant's attachment to the caretaker has positive consequences for future task ac­ complishment. It gives the 12- to 18-monfh­ old sufficient confidence to leave the caretaker and explore and master a different environ­ ment, a new developmental task. The care­ taker's glance, smile, or familiar gesture from across the room is reassuring to the child, who is sure of her availability and attention. Still later, the 2-year-olds, who as infants were securely attached to their mothers, were more effective in mastering problem-solving situa­ tions they encountered. These toddlers kept trying longer and were happier and more enthusiastic in the process than children whose ties to their mothers when infants were less secure. The children in the former group were also more open to their mothers' suggestions about solving the problems and opposed them less. Securely attached children at 15 months were also more accomplished at 42 months, in the later developmental task of establish­ ing peer relations. Observers and preschool teachers rated them as enjoying other chil­ dren more, having fewer tantrums and dis­ plays of anger, and being less dependent. Thus, the infants' accomplishment of the attach­ ment task, influenced as it was by their care-

T H E FAMILY CAREERS

PERSPECTIVE

givers' sensitivity, affects their performance on issues arising later in their development. The research on the infants' attachment task points up the difference between tasks in which there are particular times when the individual is biologically ready to learn and tasks set by families and others. The former include maturational tasks, such as toileting, that need to be learned once to be mastered for the future as well. Other tasks, such as mastering the environment and getting along with one's peers, recur over a lifetime. Making friends in Miss Francis's preschool does not ensure this will happen in primary school or still later on the job. Delay in learning to get along with age peers, however, although it may lead to an unhappy childhood, need not have permanent negative consequences. The more mobile adult has greater opportunities to search out persons with similar interests, particularly because the age range of adult friendship possibilities is less restricted than among the young. For tasks that appear again and again, the shirting groups of which the individual is a member—whether family, social, or workmates—determine both the sequence of tasks that must be taken on and the stage when their accomplishment becomes critical for so­ cial approval and self-esteem. There is some evidence that timing emphasis varies, de­ pending on the age of the individual (Neugar­ ten, 1968). Middle-aged (33-55) and elderly (65+) persons in a middle-class sample were more apt to set limits on adult behavior in terms of age suitability than were young adults, aged 20 to 29. Young men, especially, were less apt to see harmful consequences from being "off schedule" in accomplishing life events, such as having children or moving to be near one's married children, than were the middleaged and the elderly. These young adults, who still faced the tasks associated with such events, were less demanding that individ­ uals accomplish a developmental task within a restricted time period. The limited research available, therefore, suggests that for group-prescribed and recur­ ring individual developmental tasks, there is a varying period for meeting them. The consequences of not meeting these timing schedules depends on the age and social class of the person's associates.

DEVELOPMENTAL

TASKS

OPERATIONALIZING THE FAMILY DEVELOPMENTAL TASK CONCEPT

There has been little work done on the family developmental task concept. We do have the work on limited linkages, discussed earlier, that supports the assumption of car­ ryover effects from one stage to another of family task achievement. One early study, one of the very few in the area, concerns the cor­ respondence between the list of family develop­ ment tasks I have given and what occurs in the lives of families (Ferguson, 1971). The sample of 195 intact Mormon couples was middle class. Although not representative of other kinds of families, they did come from all stages in the family career. Each partner filled out a marital role inventory. Among the behaviors and the family task to which they are relevant were the following: Care for all family mem­ bers (physical maintenance), decide on friends and relatives to visit and with whom to main­ tain close ties (morale maintenance), try to get improvement in family members by giving them reminders of personal responsibilities (socialization), and do most of the talking when you and your spouse discuss marital problems (social control). The couples reported how they would feel if their spouses performed these and other behaviors in the marital roles inventory for varying percentages of the time. They also gave their perceptions of actual performances of these actions by their spouses. When their responses were factor analyzed to see what items grouped together, those items concerned with socialization of children and mainte­ nance of morale did indeed form separate task factors. The physical maintenance area also formed a factor, although it included items from other areas. There was also a factor, "emotional nurturance," that seemed to be related to what I term maintenance of moti­ vation in family members, just as the function I call social control incorporates the factors the researcher labeled "external integration" and "coercive control." Therefore, there was some support from the couples for the family tasks categories discussed above. There were expectable temporal variations across the family stages in the performance of the role behaviors grouped together in the various factors, because the content of the same developmental task changes from one

107 period to another. For example, there was a good deal of alteration in how families ac­ complished physical care of the home and family. The responsibility of wives for this task was lowest in the initial marriage stage, when there were no children. They had most to do with it when the oldest child was younger than 30 months or was in primary school. These are periods when mothers have traditionally been seen as central to children's welfare. Husbands were least active in house­ hold care when children were leaving home. At that stage, they are at the peak of their occupational achievement, and job demands are high. To quote one man in a demanding job, "I consider eating dinner with the family an important part of every day. I go home every night. I may take work, but I go home. But I have a lot of anxiety about being able to say no to the work and live with it. And that comes out, I can see it coming out, in unrelated ways. Every­ thing from getting upset in traffic to being nasty around the house." (Weiss, 1990, pp. 43-44) Husbands in the Utah sample were most in­ volved in the physical maintenance task after retirement, when time can hang heavy with no outside employment. This same pattern was also true of husbands' nurturant be­ havior. They performed these morale main­ tenance activities least often when children were leaving home, and they were most caring after retirement. There has been more recent research on the preparation and assessment of develop­ mental task scales (Rogers, 1989). Because I have listed broad family developmental tasks that are important over the family career, it is wise to see if they continue to show some validity. The 271 individuals—114 males and 157 females—in the midwestern sample used in the investigation were more often college educated and in professional and managerial occupations than the general population. Their responses to the family development task measure were summarized in factor scores. They suggest that the ebb and flow of family life in the various stages create different task priorities in terms of accomplishment dif­ ficulty. Newlyweds were most concerned about setting up their households (physical maintenance). This was followed by creating family roles, such as deciding who would

108 perform domestic tasks (socialization), es­ tablishing themselves as independent families apart from kin (social control), and making decisions with respect to whether and when to have children (addition of members). During the childbearing period, seeing to the chil­ dren's needs and getting used to the new fami­ ly unit (socialization and social control) were tasks that loomed large. Finally, in the amount of factor variance accounted for, came what would appear to be the morale maintenance task of members' adjustments to each one's new roles. The next stage division in this research was families with preschool children. Here, the major factor had to do with the development of family relationships, socialization into sharing household duties, and morale main­ tenance. They were followed by physical main­ tenance, such as concerns arising from paying for housing and children's needs along with having the personal energy to meet them. For families in which the oldest child was in ele­ mentary school, there was some suggestion that morale maintenance and then physical maintenance and socialization tasks were most important. Emotional support for members performing domestic, school, and job roles came first—meeting basic family budget re­ quirements along with encouraging children's acquiring knowledge. During the eventful years when families have adolescents present, morale maintenance and socialization con­ tinue to be important. The first factor is parents and teens getting along while parents set guidelines for behavior, which also involv­ es socialization by both generations. Marital adjustment, another aspect of morale main­ tenance, and making do with available house­ hold space, a physical maintenance concern, are succeeding factors. At the stage when children are leaving home and going to college and starting their own families, socialization, social control, and physical maintenance tasks seem most critical to their parents. In this so-called launching stage, including new in-laws in the family and negotiating responsibility assignments with adolescent and adult children are important for parents. Providing financial support for children finishing school and getting started on their adult careers is another task the respon­ dents checked as difficult to accomplish. When couples are alone again, morale maintenance

T H E FAMILY CAREERS

PERSPECTIVE

tasks take priority. These include being con­ cerned that both partners feel free to express themselves in partner interaction and dealing with adult children and aging parents in posi­ tive ways. The final retirement stage has most to do with physical maintenance, in terms of health and domestic arrangements for preserving it. Being able to keep up an active way of life is critical. This research and the work on limited link­ ages indicate that families in their careers vary in their task accomplishment. Moreover, the content of these tasks shifts over time, just as do the members performing them. Families' level of achievement at any one time, how­ ever, seems to affect how well they will do at another segment of the family timetable. There is no one hard-and-fast list of activities within each task that all families have to perform at any one stage. For some such as physical maintenance, socialization, and social con­ trol, families either have to meet minimal standards of fulfillment or outsiders will step in to see that they do. Other tasks, such as the orderly addition of family members, are left up to individuals and couples to take on or not. Chapter 5 concludes the chapters explain­ ing the concepts that differentiate family development from other approaches to study­ ing families. As I noted in the first chapter, the chapters that follow are divided into three sections. The first is devoted to the career of the partner subsystem. The section on the parent-child subsystem comes next, and the sibling subsystem chapter concludes this part of the book. In these sections, I apply the family development approach to relevant re­ search to make sense of what goes on in these relationships over time. These sections point out distinguishing characteristics in each subsystem. This chapter organization strategy also permits me to compare variations within each subsystem, such as partnerships that last with those that do not, single-parent and twoparent families, and those with children and those without. Summary What does the assessment of the develop­ ment task concepts in this chapter reveal? There is evidence to support several ideas associated with both the individual and the

DEVELOPMENTAL

109

TASKS

family developmental task concepts. Consis­ tent with the limited linkages idea are the findings that the performance level of certain tasks at infancy or preadolescence seem to be related positively to the individual's task per­ formances at later ages. Aside from certain maturationally based tasks, however, the op­ timal timing of task learning is determined by the role expectations of the learner's associates. They also seem to have much to do with what tasks the individual attempts, and many duties are never finished once and for all. Like the responsibility of getting along with others, they continue over the life course. The existence of several of the proposed family developmental tasks appeared in the findings of one study. The way these tasks are performed varies over the family stages, along with the changing demands on the family from both outsiders and family members. There is also research evidence that family develop­ mental task performance at one stage affects the adequacy of task performance at sub­ sequent stages. The concepts of individual and family de­ velopmental tasks possess systemic qualities, befitting the conceptual framework status of family development. The individual develop­ mental task links age-role expectations and the concepts of timing, as differentiated on social and biological clocks. This concept also suggests that individuals may go beyond societal and biological demands to define tasks for which they set the achievement standards.

This idea, in turn, ties into role making, be­ cause role behaviors are composed of task performances. Taking on tasks in anticipation of role changes suggests role transitions that herald stage changes and result in family mor­ phogenesis. The family developmental task, too, has systemic qualities. It has given rise to the concept of limited linkages across stages of task performance and points to the in­ fluence of individual members and the com­ munity on family change. The value of the developmental task idea lies in its bridging levels of analysis and its change functions. It specifies role behaviors of individuals in family groups, and through the activities of members in work and school, families are joined to other societal groups. By tying together the different levels, develop­ mental tasks are a useful way for specifying the sources of change in various stages over family careers.

Notes 1. FromSlade(1985).Copyright© 1 9 8 5 b y T h e N e w York Times Company. Reprinted by permission. 2. From Landers (1985). Permission granted by Ann Landers and Creators Syndicate. 3. Taken from the "Dear Abby" column by Abigail Van Buren. Copyright © Universal Press Syndicate. Re­ printed with permission. All rights reserved. 4. From Bradsher (1989). Copyright © 1989 The New York Times Company. Reprinted by permission.

PART

II



Couple Relations Over Time

6

Couple Beginnings The Establishment

of Intimate

The Partner Subsystem We will start our examination of family careers by looking at their beginnings in couple relationships. The process of a couple's get­ ting acquainted, liking each other, spending more and more time together, and deciding to form a union has traditionally come to completion with an officially sanctioned mar­ riage ceremony. In recent years, however, the necessity of marrying to establish intimate couple relations has come into question. The increase in premarital sex and cohabitation outside of marriage over the past several decades has made marriage less of a new de­ parture from previous ways of life for many persons. They have already had sexual inter­ course and lived as a couple before taking out a marriage license, not always with the ones whose names are found on the license. In addition, there are some groups, such as African Americans, for whom marriage ap­ pears to be a less frequent transition. Because of legal restrictions, homosexual couples in stable relationships also often do not make the love and marriage connection. In addi­ tion, there are single-mother families, com­ posed of parents and children, in which there

Commitment

has never been a stable couple relation. These changes in family formation have led two sociologists, Andrew J. Cherlin and Frank F. Furstenberg, Jr. (1994), to write of the "de­ institutionalization of marriage" (p. 360). The legal and religious sanctions marriage bestows on the intimate partner relation that con­ stitute the societal legitimation of the union appear to be less important than in the past. Most persons, however, continue to think of starting their own families with some sort of wedding ceremony. But to establish any sort of family based on couple relations, there has to be some process whereby two adults get together and decide they are mutually com­ mitted to being a couple. In other words, they are convinced they want to devote their atten­ tion and concern to each other for a long period of time. One issue I discuss in this chapter is how couples meet and establish such commitments. A second issue I consider is whether the process of mate selection af­ fects the quality and stability of the relation established. Social scientists over the past cen­ tury have joined novelists, songwriters, and poets in their observations of the way isolated individuals become joined into partnerships. In this chapter, I will concentrate on what the social scientists have to say about the process 113

114

COUPLE RELATIONS OVER TIME

involving heterosexual couples; to date, there has been little research done on homosexual unions. I also look at the reasons why couples marry and the developmental tasks this fami­ ly turning point brings. Love or Arranged Marriages In the United States and most European countries, the choices people make in decid­ ing to link their fate to that of another in­ dividual are supposed to be based on love. There are other societies where such choices are made by concerned elders, usually parents, who arrange the marriages that take place between young people. Their primary con­ sideration is preservation of the kinship lineage's well-being. Matters of property and status transmission from the older generation to the younger underlie these decisions. We like to think that such economic considera­ tions do not affect the intricate steps involved in persons settling into couplehood in this country. Sentiment is supposed to override class and ethnic differences. As one observer described this ideal, the "group background of the beloved has no place in the emotional calculus of the loving relationship," nor should it affect the organization and quality of mar­ riages based on love (Mayer, 1985, p. 32). Despite this fervent belief that love can overcome interpersonal barriers based on status differences in class, religion, and race, persons who marry tend to have similar back­ ground characteristics. Sociologist Martin K. Whyte (1990, pp. 101-109) found this to be true in his survey of a representative sample of 459 ever-married women living in the greater Detroit metropolitan area. Just about all of these 18- to 75-year-old women, 98% to be exact, married within their own racial groups. It was also fairly common for them to stick to their own broad religious group, whether Catholic, Protestant, or another, in choosing a partner. For the women who had married before 1964, the figure was 73%. Those marrying in more recent years were less likely to be religiously endogamous in their choices, but still, 57% married within their own group, broadly defined. As far as social class was concerned, a majority of women (58%), when they married the first time, believed they married someone of the

same social class. The three class divisions were poor or working class, middle class or upper-middle, and upper class. Over the years, there were no differences in this class similarity between partners. To summarize these results, only in religion did there appear to be a shift in recent cohorts toward women more often overlooking background differ­ ences in their marital choices. They still main­ tained religious similarity to the same extent they did class endogamy. Because Americans are supposed to prize individualism so much in the mating game, how can we explain these results that show a good deal of like choosing like? One reason is that parents in our society with the financial means to do so make sure that the friends their children make when they are growing up meet parental standards. They do not have at hand such strategies to prevent inappropriate matches as arranging marriages for their off­ spring when they are children, socially isolat­ ing them from potential spouses or limiting their pool of eligible mates to certain relatives, as when the father's sister's child is betrothed to the mother's brother's child. All of these strategies, sociologist William J. Goode (1959) wrote some years ago, prevent individuals from marrying for love and forgetting about differences in social position. He noted that parents in our own society, by carefully select­ ing their residential areas and the schools their children attend as well as the comments they make concerning the racial, religious, and class characteristics of "people like us," limit children's perspectives on who is eligible to be their intimate partners. This is the way one mother influenced her daughter's marital choice. According to the daughter," 'Well, anyway, she was domineer­ ing, very domineering. I think at this late date I should have married the guy I went with before I met my husband. But he was divorced, maybe 12 years before and she didn't go for that'" (Allen, 1989, p. 76). The influence of parents on children's choices begins with dating relations. For example, 159 sophomores and juniors at­ tending a large eastern state university, who reported how their parents affected the change in their relationships with a dating partner over a 4-month period (Leslie, Huston, 8c Johnson, 1986), did not bother telling their parents about casual relationships. Those who

COUPLE

BEGINNINGS

were going steady or were engaged, however, were likely to have told their parents about their loved one, tried to influence them to favor the person, and had been generally suc­ cessful in gaining their approval. It appeared that, knowing their parents' preferences, these youths did not tell them about their "un­ suitable" friends but restricted their serious involvements to persons they knew would receive parental approval. According to the persons interviewed in the Detroit-area survey (Whyte, 1990), greater independence for women in the past several decades did not lead to their being more likely to marry men their parents disliked. Four fifths of the women married between 1925 and 1984, regardless of class background, de­ clared that their parents approved or strongly approved of their choice of husbands. The women also saw their in-laws as liking them in 85% of the cases. Despite our apparent individual choice of mates, therefore, com­ mitted couples are likely to have their parents' approval.

Changes in the Family

Formation Transition

A number of observers of the family for­ mation process would agree with historian John Modell (1989, p. 270) that the sharp break in lives marriage used to bring is less often the case now. High divorce rates make getting married more a transitory than a life­ time contract, and cohabitation, sexual inter­ course, and parenthood, the sequence of events bound up in marriage, are no longer restricted to it. As Modell (1989) describes the changes appearing in the 1970s, "The path to marriage, as experienced, was now associated with the enjoyment of the very pleasures that had recently been uniquely consecrated to marriage itself" (p. 322). As a consequence, marriage is less a prerequisite to intimate partnership and so is "deinstitutionalized" (Cherlin 8c Furstenberg, 1994). An "intimacy revolution," as Whyte (1990, p. 39) dubs it, has occurred. Dating seems to begin roughly at the same age in the present era as in the past, but more young people are exploring deeper levels of commitment sooner than previously. It should be empha­

115 sized that this trend toward more sexual ex­ perience before marriage has been going on since the early part of the 20th century. Some of the factors accounting for the intimacy revolution include the freedom from parental supervision that access to automobiles gave dating couples and their participation in com­ mercial activities outside the home. Couples' greater affluence after the Great Depression of the 1930s was another factor. Another fac­ tor was the assimilation of immigrant groups with conservative traditions of chaperoning couples into the more mainstream beliefs in individuals making their own dating arrange­ ments. These factors preceded the women's liberation movement and the invention of the birth control pill in the 1960s, two develop­ ments often used to explain the increased prevalence of sex and cohabitation before mar­ riage. Together, all these influences enable young people to negotiate the pleasures of close relationships in a context that puts a premium on romantic involvement regardless of and often counter to the concerns of elders. Only if the relation seems worthy of commit­ ment do the participants feel it necessary to seek their elders' approval. Let us look at the transition to marriage as it presently exists, beginning with how people meet and learn about each other. We have already seen that the pool of eligibles from whom individuals choose their intimates does not contain every fish in the sea. In most instances, it is generally limited to persons of similar racial, religious, and social class back­ grounds, given neighborhood patterns and parental design in the case of better-off youths. Within these restrictions, however, couples do get together. Dating used to be the accepted way. The procedure was well known and fairly formal. There were widely accepted rules concerning how males asked for dates, how their prospec­ tive female dates accepted, and what went on during the date. The goal appeared to be less having a good time and getting to know someone than demonstrating youths' popu­ larity by going out with others rated as being good catches by their peers. Nowadays, however, according to one sur­ vey of 472 high school students, even seniors are more likely to spend their Saturday nights in a mixed-sex group (50%) than with one person of the opposite gender (28%). (The

116 remainder spent their Saturdays alone, being with a friend of the same gender, or working.) Demonstrating popularity as a goal for going out did not seem to be a preoccupation in these six Connecticut schools, which ranged from a small, rural, all-white school to a large, racially mixed, inner-city school. There was also some evidence of a breakdown in tradi­ tional gender roles. A large majority of both boys (63%) and girls (76%) did not believe girls would be reluctant to accept a late invita­ tion for a weekend date. The students answer­ ing the questionnaires (87% of the girls and two thirds of the boys) also reported that girls asked boys for dates. There were limits, how­ ever, to how far this easing of gender roles had gone. More than 70% of both genders wrote that the male still "almost always" or "always" paid for the Saturday night dates (Miller 8c Gordon, 1986). As in the past, valued characteristics were ones resting on looks or reputation, rather than less apparent qualities that outsiders needed time to discover. Almost half the stu­ dents said the kind of people they liked to date were "attractive" (38%), "jocks" (48%), or "popular" (31%). There is some evidence that older persons, compared with early (sixth graders) and middle adolescents (high school juniors), place greater emphasis on less su­ perficial aspects. College students are more apt to look for shared interests in a dating partner and to expect them to have some future goals (Roscoe, Diana, 8c Brooks, 1987). Those more mature and experienced in going out with the opposite sex begin looking for the kind of persons who wear well over the long haul. Whether these persons have the surface qualities of appearance and popu­ larity, so important to younger teens, be­ comes less important. The sequence of events in establishing close couple relations appears to be somewhat as follows. Getting together in mixed-sex groups comes first, after which there is some pairing off in single- couple dating, usually for a fairly short period. Going steady, in which girl and boy restrict going out only to each other, follows. More than three fourths (77%) of the high school youths in the survey had been in such exclusive arrangements. More girls (81.2%) than boys (69.7%) had gone steady. These youths are seeking friendship and af­ fection in an admittedly temporary arrange-

COUPLE RELATIONS OVER

TIME

ment, and for most, going steady is not a prelude to their getting married. The process whereby most teenagers es­ tablish heterosexual relationships is worth ex­ amining in some detail. The experiences of 18-year-old adolescents, followed while they were growing up in the Detroit metropolitan area, suggest that in the dating and courtship process, timing is of the essence (Thornton, 1990). Girls and boys at 13 years of age or younger, who began hanging out with peers of the opposite sex and dating, were more likely than their less precocious peers to date more frequently and to go steady with one person at earlier ages. This earlier process of heterosexual involvement carried over to sexual behavior. Although 63% of the 18­ year-old men and 54% of the 18-year-old women reported having had sexual inter­ course, those who had begun dating younger and had established steady relationships at earlier ages were also more likely to have ex­ perienced coitus. These precocious daters had also had more sexual partners and engaged in more frequent sex with them. The seriousness of the courtship process also affected sexual behavior. When adolescents reported that they were planning on marry­ ing the person they were dating, they were more likely than other youths to acknowledge having had frequent sexual intercourse in the month preceding the interview (Thornton, 1990). Thus, going out with someone of the opposite sex follows a developmental pattern. The sooner heterosexual relations begin, the more time there is for adolescents to become seriously involved in couple relations. And as they become more tied to one another emo­ tionally, the sexual behavior they judge as acceptable broadens. Going steady related to marital plans only when students see fewer alternatives to estab­ lishing a family after high school. White girls from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, whose mothers had little education and who have no college plans themselves, were the group most likely to expect their steadies to be their future marriage partners. They are like other women over the centuries who have few prospects that would enable them to obtain interesting jobs and be financially in­ dependent. Getting married under these cir­ cumstances is an important life goal. It is consistent with women's socialization that

COUPLE

117

BEGINNINGS

marriage and families take priority over edu­ cational or occupational preferences. A woman born in the early part of the century told how it was and still continues to be for women with few resources: " Ί always wanted to be married. I dated quite a few boys I always felt that marriage was the thing for all girls' " (Allen, 1989, p. 75). Marriage is a socially approved solution for girls with few other options, and a life centered on husband and family has tremendous appeal (Gordon 8c Miller, 1984). Consequently, it is not unusual for some high school girls to be thinking of their wedding flowers and bridal finery, even if the event is some years in the future from the time they buy their prom dresses. Gender norms, like the traditional expec­ tation that women could look to men to support them, are critical in other ways in affecting premarital interaction. The conven­ tional age difference in cross-sex close rela­ tions accounts for girls being more likely to go steady. Girls have the whole range of older boys to go out with. Their partners are sup­ posed to be older. As girls reach adulthood and the number of uncommitted men decreases, this convention becomes a disadvantage, as do the customs that boys generally ask girls out and men propose marriage to women. Among college students who are dating and of an age when setding down is more realistic, factors such as the availability of al­ ternative partners, the approval of their social networks (again, parents are influential), and just how much time and energy each person has devoted to the relationship become im­ portant. Personal evaluations join external pressures to keep couples together. To illus­ trate these points, 598 college students, who reported both at the beginning and end of a semester the persons they were going with, were least likely to break up if they had spent a lot of time with their dates. Presumably, they had enjoyed being with them or they would not have been together so much. Also, the more time they devoted to the relation, the more they had invested in its continuance. In addi­ tion, couples were more likely to stick together if their families and friends approved of their relationship and if they, themselves, felt that, in comparison to other dates, their steady rated well (Felmlee, Sprecher, 8c Bassin, 1990). If dating and going steady have become less organized, according to widely accepted rules, as the required sequence leading to mar­

riage, even greater changes have occurred with respect to premarital sex. Longer periods of going steady and more frequent living to­ gether before marriage have led to increasing­ ly high rates of premarital sexual activity. One has only to look at the changes in the mating process of successive cohorts of the women interviewed in the Detroit-area survey (Whyte, 1990) to see how premarital intimacy has quickened. Whether they had married in the years 1925 to 1944,1945 to 1964, or 1965 to 1984, women had generally begun dating around 16. The youngest women, however, those marrying in the 1970s and 1980s, had almost immediately started going steady in­ stead of looking around for a year or two, as the older women had. Associated with restrict­ ed dating at an earlier age was earlier coitus. The proportion of self-reported virgins at marriage had decreased from 44% among the oldest women to 12% among the youngest women. As described above, the intimacy revolu­ tion has gone beyond women and men who are affectionately committed to one another and plan to marry. Not only has sex become less restricted to marriage, but it is also more common among younger couples and couples in casual relations. For example, Whyte (1990, p. 27) estimates that among those married in 1980 to 1984, half (51%) of women having premarital sex experienced it with men other than their future husbands. It was just 17% among those marrying in the 1965 to 1969 period. As far as the change in theageatwhich young people begin intercourse is concerned, a national survey showed that half (49.5%) of 15- to 19-year-old unmarried women in 1988 had engaged in sexual activities. This was up from 42.1% for the same aged group in 1982. Accounting for most of the increase was the greater activity of white women from upperand middle-income families. Teenagers have had a shorter time than older women in which to have intercourse, but more than half of them (58%) reported having two or more partners (Forrest 8c Singh, 1990). More recent surveys show that more than half of women and three fourths of men under 18 have had coitus (Vobejda, 1994a). COHABITATION

Just as coitus is less restricted to marriage than in the past, so, too, has cohabitation

118 ceased to begin after marriage. This change in the sequence of establishing intimate relations is demonstrated dramatically among the women in the Detroit-area survey. No woman married before 1957 admitted to living with her husband before marrying, a conservative measure of the extent of cohabitation. Be­ tween 1957 and 1974, 10% or less of the women reported doing so. But the rate jumped to 32% for those marrying from 1975 to 1979, and it went up to 40% for brides from 1980 to 1984 (Whyte, 1990, p. 29). National surveys showed that by the late 1980s, more than two fifths (44%) of persons in their early 30s and half of the recently married had lived for an extended period of time with someone of the opposite sex before marriage. Only about 5% of those living together did so for less than a month. And not all of these premarital relationships had been with the future spouses. Almost one fifth of all cohabitants had lived with someone besides their marriage partners (Bumpass 8c Sweet, 1989b). By the early 1990s, U.S. census figures show there were 6 cohabiting couples for every 100 married couples. In 1970, the figures showed 1 such unmarried couple per 100 married couples (Saluter, 1994, pp. vii-viii). Before considering the relation between cohabitation outside of marriage and mar­ riage itself, let us look at who cohabits. If we restrict our observation to persons under 45 who have cohabited, because living together before marriage is a recent phenomenon, we may have some surprises. Contrary to pop­ ular opinion, it is not a college student phenomenon. Cohabitation is negatively re­ lated to education. Although one fourth of college graduates have cohabited at some time, this was true of 31% of those who did not graduate from high school. Other evidence that unmarrieds from less affluent backgrounds establish coresidential unions appears in the finding that persons whose families had received welfare while they were growing up were more likely to cohabit. Cohabitation seems to be a substitute for marriage among those who cannot afford to take on the formal responsibilities entailed in marriage (Bumpass & Sweet, 1989b, pp. 622-624). Unlike couples' usual expectations of marriage, cohabitation has little permanence about it. Three fifths of the couples in these relationships have mar­ ried or broken up within 2 years. A majority

COUPLE RELATIONS OVER

TIME

(60%) of those cohabiting for the first time eventually do marry. Half do so within 3 years after beginning to live together (Bumpass 8c Sweet, 1989b, pp. 620-621). Some cohabitants, when they do decide to marry each other, follow traditional customs in the process. One mother told me in a letter what went on with respect to her daughter, Cecily, who was living with a doctor. (I have changed the names.) "The telephone rang," she writes in her letter. "The voice at the other end of an obvious long-distance connection said, 'May I please speak to Dr. Garland?' 'I'm sorry,' said I, 'he's not in, but I'm expecting him at any moment. May I take a message?' 'Well,' said the voice, 'this is Dr. Richard Anderson. I wanted to ask him for the hand of his daughter I have her feet right here in my lap, but I would also like her hand.' Jim [the father] came in before the conversation ended, and gave a hearty 'yes' to the repeated question. The wedding is to be May 26, with a great gathering in of all sibs and grand­ parents and relatives from near and far." Ear­ lier ages at going steady, more premarital sex, and increased unmarried cohabitation mean a telescoping of the process of achieving intimacy with someone of the opposite sex. Moreover, this sequence of establishing in­ timacy is occurring before the marriage instead of after the ceremony. PARENTHOOD OUTSIDE OF MARRIAGE

Although coitus was conventionally re­ stricted in the past to marriage, this norm was not always observed, as the number of babies born before the first 8 months of marriage at­ test. Passion overruled prudence and women's concern about unwanted pregnancies. To take just one example, among the wives in the Detroit-area survey married before 1945,11% of first births resulted from premarital con­ ceptions (Whyte, 1990, p. 50). Parenthood, however, was a status tied to marriage. Un­ married girls and women who became preg­ nant and did not marry were lucky if they could leave home. They could then, without acquaintances knowing, have their babies in an unwed mothers' home or while living with a friendly relative. Society placed the blame on them for becoming pregnant, because they were supposed to control the level of intimacy in a dating or going steady relation. To

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remove the reminders of "their shame," these mothers would give up their babies for adop­ tion. They could return home and reenter the mate selection process with few people the wiser and without the children as evidence of previous intimate encounters. Recendy, the situation has changed. Parent­ hood outside of marriage no longer is a rare event and is not as often stigmatized. Here is another example of the lesser importance of marriage for setting up families. The separation of transitions formerly initiated with mar­ riage—intercourse, cohabitation, and parent­ hood—is illustrated by the comments a woman made to me concerning her daughter, Jane, and Jane's intimate companion, Edward (not their names). Jane and Edward hiked through the country at the tip of South America. She wrote, "They experienced a fabulous vacation of 6 weeks. The trip had also convinced them that they knew each other long and well enough for founding a family. In this endeavor, they were immediately suc­ cessful. Jane and Edward also decided that they wanted to get married after all and set the date for June 8th." In this case as in many others nowadays, the newlyweds had known each other intimate­ ly and lived together before the wedding cere­ mony. What is somewhat different was their deliberate decision to become parents, which was then followed rather than preceded by the decision to marry. Unmarried couples who cohabit seldom plan to have children. In fact, the wish to be unencumbered by children is often one reason individuals choose to cohabit. They do not yet feel ready to marry, either financially or emotionally. Demographers have documented the trends toward increasing unwed parenthood. Note, however, that our information refers to mothers, not fathers. Although every child results from the coming together of a man and a woman, if there is a birth, it's the woman whose status as parent cannot be disguised. Due to the biology of conception, the father, if he chooses, can often escape this respon­ sibility. The mother might not name him as parent, or if she does, he might deny the claim. Because the overall birth rate to married women is lower than in the past, even if the number of unmarried mothers had not in­ creased, they would constitute a larger pro­ portion of women giving birth. But there are

more unmarried mothers. The rate among white women, 20 to 34 years old, doubled over the 1980s. The rate for unmarried childbear­ ing among black women went down. By the end of that decade, 16% of white births and 61% of black births were to unmarried women (Bumpass 8c McLanahan, 1989). In 1993, about 4% (3.87) of white children under 18 were living with an unwed mother. One third (33.59%) of black children and somewhat more than 10% (11.32) of Hispanic children under 18 years of age were living in similar situations (Saluter, 1994, Table 6, pp. 40,44,48). One reason for the degree of motherhood outside marriage lies in the intimacy revolu­ tion discussed earlier. Sex initiated with mar­ riage is no longer the rule. Premarital inter­ course is common, and there is less public stigma attached to it. Consequently, the un­ planned births that result from this premari­ tal intimacy, although deplored, are less often a matter of moral indignation. Another factor in this change is the high rate of marital dis­ ruption. There is no longer the assurance that children born to married couples would enjoy the security of two parents while grow­ ing. Divorced mothers heading families are common, and their existence demonstrates that single women can provide for families. Women's increased education and higher em­ ployment rates have made this possible. Facing parenthood without a partner appears to be less fearsome than in the past. It should not be overlooked, however, that children in mother-only families are more likely to live in poverty. More than half the children living with their mothers only are in poverty, twice that of all children (Zill, 1991). Poorly paying jobs and lack of affordable child care facil­ ities continue to make the lot of many single mothers and their children a hard one. Why Marry? As we have seen, the elements traditionally restricted to the marital state—such as sexual intercourse, cohabitation, and even parent­ hood—are increasingly occurring before mar­ riage. As a consequence, some readers maybe wondering why persons bother to marry at all. Yet the overwhelming number of women and men continue to do so. National surveys

120 of high school seniors, like one in 1985-1986, show that four fifths of female students and 74% of male students said they expected to marry. Just 5% of the girls and 6% of the boys reported they did not plan to marry (Thornton, 1989, p. 879, Table 2). (The remainder had "no idea" concerning their future plans.) One of the major reasons couples marry is that youths want to establish a lasting com­ mitment legitimated by the broader society. The ceremony planned and witnessed by rela­ tives and friends represents a public announce­ ment to the community of well-wishers and outsiders that these two people have left their single status for a couple status. Even if a Justice of the Peace reads the ceremony in his office and the attendants are two nearby secretaries, these strangers still serve as wit­ nesses that a ritual important to society has taken place. Society continues to have a stake in the overall welfare of its members. Particularly for children, society's weakest and least prepared dependent group, weddings provide some guarantee that any offspring will have two certified parents. The complement of mother and father is usually better able than one parent alone to both supply the children's economic wherewithal and to meet the energy demands of child rearing. Thus, outsiders continue to press young people to wed, particularly if there are children planned or on the way. it is some assurance that the couple will take on the responsibilities associated with marital and parental roles. Marriages also provide an opportunity for parents and other close relatives and friends to help the couple set up housekeeping. Even if the couple has been cohabiting for some months, they usually welcome the wedding gifts they receive. The money or durable goods loved ones present enable them to express their concern that the marriage succeeds and their desire to ease some of the financial strains associated with the new union. Weddings are occasions for the older generation to endow the younger generation with the worldly goods that symbolize society's approval of the union (Whyte, 1990, p. 63). These gifts, in turn, give the couple a better start on fulfilling their new obligations. Another of the major factors encouraging persons to marry continues to be social pres­ sure. A headline in the New York Times (Nemy,

COUPLE RELATIONS OVER TIME

1991, p. CI), "Society Looks Askance at the Family of One," expresses this public senti­ ment. After giving the increased number of persons living alone during the 1990s, the news report tells of one 44-year-old unmarried woman's experience with the norm that adults are expected to be married. She reports, " 'Whenever I go to a family wedding, I'm put with second cousins in their teens and early 20s. They never seat me with couples. I'm always assigned to the children's table because I'm single'" (Nemy, 1991, p. CI). She feels it is very insulting. Note that it is a woman speaking, and she uses being with couples as the status indicator of adulthood she seeks. This is understandable, because our adult pop­ ulation is assumed to be paired off. Social events, room reservations, and travel promo­ tions are geared to this two-person unit. Those who do not fit the Noah's Ark pattern of pro­ ceeding two by two are generally out of luck. This is especially true for women who have never been married. In the ranking of singles, they are clearly at the bottom. Despite all the talk about gender role change, custom still gives men the right to propose. An unmarried woman is often seen as someone who has lost out in the marriage market. In contrast, single heterosexual men are at the top of the heap. The customary judgment is that they have chosen to remain single. Widowers may be next on the singles hierarchy. They supposed­ ly can also opt out of their situation and have already demonstrated the ability to sustain a marriage. Widows are lower on the singles' prestige ladder. They are handicapped by their usually smaller incomes and considerations of age. The divorced, who continue to be seen as failures by some portions of society, come next. Again, women who are divorced receive more criticism than men. But never having married is still a more undesirable status for women. Women, usually employed, who have power, money, and security, however, do bet­ ter in the eyes of society (Nemy, 1991). Being independent, they can afford the luxury of being on their own. How much they enjoy single life is revealed in the words of a working-class woman look­ ing back on her life: 1

"I didn't get married w h e n I was y o u n g , so, I really e n j o y e d myself. I w e n t all over, c o m p a r e d t o m y

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sisters, who married when they were 21.1 went out more than my sisters ever did. I went on trips, and they didn't I really enjoyed work­ ing, and my sisters used to say that it was more of a social life for me. I made friends, and I would always go early in the morning before work, and we would have breakfast, and coffee, and enjoy ourselves, and then go in to work." (Allen, 1989, p. 77) Employment, though it may help single women escape the scornful label of old maid, can be a push for men to marry. As I pointed out in the previous chapter, by the time those men poised for entrance into the top echelons of corporate America have reached their late 20s, employers maybe concerned about their marital status. Career consultants and execu­ tive search headhunters say that persons who make hiring and promotion decisions hold strong reservations about bachelors. Employers view single men as less stable, more likely to change jobs—which costs com­ panies money—less able to get along with others, and less committed to their careers than married men. As one former employer put it, married men " 'had someone to care for and did not have a life like a free-floating feather and would not drift away in six months'" (Bradsher, 1989, p. CI). There is also a prejudice against homosexual men among some corporate managers and they prefer to hire married men, whom these bos­ ses assume are not homosexuals. Moreover, top executives are more likely to be married to their first wives than men in lower ranks. They want to hire men like themselves. As a result of these beliefs that managers hold, unless the job calls for long hours and fre­ quent travel, men seeking successful careers often marry by their late 20s. In contrast, employers see single women as better execu­ tive material. Given the household division of labor in families, such women are thought to be able to concentrate single-mindedly on their work, undistracted by family concerns. It is not only societal norms and business pressures that make most young people want to marry. They also see marriage as providing intrinsic rewards, such as safe sex in the AIDS era and a partner's companionship, comfort, and support. The focus marriage gives to people's lives appears in this statement of a middle-level manager in his late 30s:" Ί don't 2

know what it would be like if I hadn't found Myra.' " He continued, " 'Without Myra, I'd have someplace to live, I'd still have a job, but what I would do with my life I don't know' " (Weiss, 1990, p. 114). As this quote suggests, a good marriage gives the individuals involved a sense of mean­ ing and self-identity in their lives. In a world of continuing change, marriage and parent­ hood are relationships that hold some stability. Partners can count on each other to maintain shared interpretations of life events. They validate the individual's self-definitions in a positive way (Berger 8c Kellner, 1964). Soci­ ologist Waiter R. Gove and his associates (Gove, Style, 8c Hughes, 1990) note that in our complex society, individuals play many roles and interact with a number of persons, often in a superficial way. It is only within families and with spouses that individuals are seen as a whole. The self that is fragmented by the different groups in which he or she partici­ pates comes together there. Family members, they argue, because they are linked by sen­ timental ties, are concerned about each other. They also spend considerable time together within fairly close quarters. It is to their ad­ vantage to encourage the individual to be at his or her best and to become aware of posi­ tive and negative characteristics. The family setting also provides a time-out area in which individuals can look to spouses to assist them in preparing strategies for playing roles and dealing with others outside the family. Spouses can provide validation for the whole self while assisting partners to perform in situations where they display only a portion of their feelings and repertoire of behaviors. Marriage in modern societies is where good com­ panions enable each other to unite the trun­ cated selves they display in outside groups. Despite the endorsement of happily mar­ ried persons, the trend in recent years has been for people to put off marrying until their middle 20s, up some 3 years from 1975 (Saluter, 1994, Table B, p. vii). We have already seen that the greater prevalence of premarital sex and cohabitation remove two of the reasons that people used to marry at earlier ages. Other factors related to jobs and career opportu­ nities affecting both genders also encourage later marriages. Women, because of more years of schooling and increased labor force participation, are no longer so dependent on

122 marrying to ensure their economic well-being. Although the pool of marriage eligibles de­ creases as women grow older, college-educated women have generally married at later ages than other women. In the first half of the century, those who had advanced degrees were less likely to ever marry. With more education becoming an expected event in women's lives, however, even those who go on for advanced degrees are only "slightly less likely" to marry than are women who have stopped their schooling earlier (Digest, 1988, p. 101). Sociologist Valerie Kincade Oppenheimer (1988) argues that nowadays it is probably safer for young people to achieve a satisfac­ tory fit with a marriage partner through pre­ marital selection than through postmarital socialization of the two partners. In an in­ triguing application of job search theory to marital selection, she points out that there is always uncertainty about what characteristics a person should look for in potential mates and even whether they themselves are ready to settle down. Because marriage is also a status involving long-term commitment, fu­ ture as well as present characteristics of a possible mate become important. Learning to get along after marriage is more difficult than in the past. This is true because not only must women adjust to their husbands' personal ways and work lives, but men must also cope with the work lives of women. In choosing a partner, men traditionally have had to consider whether their current economic situation would enable them to sup­ port a wife, and traditionally, women would examine the present job situation of a man in terms of his future prospects when deciding whether it was safe for her to become his financial dependent. Nowadays, marrying at a later age becomes necessary because there are fewer good-paying blue-collar jobs that permit men to marry soon after leaving high school, and more professional jobs demand longer training. The uncertain economic position of young men, ages 20 to 34, over the past 30 years reflects these changes in the labor market and contributes to the rising age at marriage. In 1967, 30% of men in the family formation years were below the poverty level for a family of four (Wilkie, 1991, p. 117, Table 4). The number was 32.1% in 1992 (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1993a, p. 100, Table 26). A

COUPLE RELATIONS OVER TIME

Wharton Business School graduate student put the situation for men preparing for professional jobs in personal terms:" Ί don't want to be married for a few years yet,"" the 24-year-old said. He and his girlfriend had agreed to put off marrying because of career considerations. " 'It simplifies my life if I don't have to move someone around with me,' "was his judgment (Bradsher, 1989, p. CI). Women with higher education goals also may not want to jeopardize career possibil­ ities by dropping out of college to marry. Their own jobs permit them to handle any uncer­ tainties about the desirable characteristics of a potential spouse and their own feelings of unreadiness for marriage. They can post­ pone it until they and the marriageable men are older and their attributes and living ways more set. They can use the workplace to look around for agreeable partners. So women's and men's changing economic situations encourage their later timing of marriage (Oppenheimer, 1988). This same argument can also be used to account for racial differentials in couple for­ mation behavior. Trends that have been going on since the middle of the 20th century show that black youths are less likely to ever marry than white youths. Those that do are also likely to marry later. If they do marry, they are more likely to either separate or divorce. As discussed earlier, there are more single-mother African American families because of the greater number of babies born out of wedlock (Farley 8c Bianchi, 1991). One explanation for the family composition differences among blacks and whites in recent years has to do with the economy. The loss of many manu­ facturing jobs and the relocation of others outside the central city have resulted in high joblessness rates among young, poor, urban blacks, which, coupled with the ongoing wage stagnation in this country, make mar­ riage a questionable venture for women and men (W. J. Wilson, 1991). 2

Among young African Americans, those who aspire to higher education are much less likely to anticipate a premarital birth. Lowincome youths, however, often lack the schooling skills and the financial resources that would enable them to prepare for goodpaying high-technology or professional jobs. Students attending inadequate schools are

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more likely to expect to become unmarried parents. Their parents, especially when they are single mothers on welfare or in minimum wage jobs, cannot support poor youths while they get more and better schooling. In addi­ tion, there is often no education tradition among peers or family members that would encourage youths to overcome financial obsta­ cles and attend college (Hogan, 1987). For example, one longitudinal study of 341 low-income, urban African American teen­ agers, 13 to 17 years of age, showed that they lived in communities where many believed there were few educational or job opportu­ nities available to them. Those who believed they had opportunities were the ones who put off childbearing beyond their early and midteen years. They maintained this decision despite the acceptance and prevalence of early and unwed childbearing in their fam­ ilies and among their associates (Freeman & Rickels, 1993). Many black women see there is a shortage of men who are economically able to support a family. Data from the National Survey of Families and Households indicate that black women are more likely than white women to emphasize men's having the financial resour­ ces to marry (Bulcroft 8c Bulcroft, 1993). Black women do not believe that the job environ­ ment is likely to change enough that they can find a partner who can afford to marry. Con­ sequendy, they are less likely to expect to marry. According to the same survey, an un­ balanced gender ratio and a lack of money among blacks also appear to play a part in their lesser propensity to marry. At all socio­ economic levels, black women outnumber black men. Black men are also even less likely than black women to want to marry. Employ­ ment status, only one explanation for their failure to marry, holds true of men at all socioeconomic levels. It appears to be less necessary for black men to marry to obtain intimate companionship (South, 1993). Other explanations, however, such as African American women's proportionately greater receipt of public welfare assistance, which supposedly would remove the need to marry, do not account for the results (Lichter, Mc­ Laughlin, Kephart, & Landry, 1992). Because of these various reasons, many African Americans find taking on a husband or wife at any age to be either impractical or unneces­

sary. Couples are unable to earn enough, jointly or singly, to support each other or a family. There are also not enough men willing to form stable partner relations. As a conse­ quence, parenthood becomes common out­ side of marriage. The fact that occupational roles and the amount of income earned have such signifi­ cant effects on the timing of marriage reminds us that family events cannot be explained only in terms of personality and the interactions of family members. Societal forces can pre­ vent individuals from things such as having a chance to demonstrate their job skills and obtaining the money necessary to marry. THE TIMING OF MARRIAGE

If people decide they do want to marry, what factors influence their timing of this transition? I previously discussed the effect of employer pressures on men aiming for higher management positions to wed before their 30s. Here, I will be looking at other influences on people's setting a specific date to get mar­ ried. One of these has to do with intergenera­ tional factors. Parents' approval is still of some consequence to individuals, even after they have left home and are on their own. Parents by then may know too little about the chosen one to do more than offer their congratula­ tions. The marital history of parents, how­ ever, does make a difference. When parents have been widowed, never married, or di­ vorced, even if they have remarried, chil­ dren are likely to have spent some time living in a single-parent household. There is some evidence from the National Center for Health Statistics that young white women with such backgrounds, compared with intact house­ holds, are more likely to marry when adoles­ cents, to become parents in this period whether married or unmarried and to have their mar­ riages break up. These early timing sequences also held for children of widowed parents (B. F. Wilson, personal communication, February 6,1991). Black women experienced similar although smaller effects on timing of family events when they spent some time grow­ ing up in single-parent families. The one ex­ ception was the lack of association between this experience and their early marriages. The reason for this acceleration in family transitions for daughters of single mothers or

124 fathers seems to lie in socialization factors. Single parents can have more problems trying to supervise and control the dating activities of their children. In addition, single mothers provide a role model of maintaining a house­ hold and being a mother without the presence of a man. When women have the educational resources that enable them to obtain better jobs, regardless of family background, how­ ever, they are slower to marry (McLanahan & Bumpass, 1988). Holding a full-time job en­ courages men to marry, because they are likely to be able to support a family (Kobrin & Waite, 1984). So we see that even if parents do not exert as much influence on one's choice of marital partner as in the past, their marital history, or lack of it, has much to do with their offspring's timing of marriage, parenthood, or both. When women and men decide to marry is also affected by their resources for supporting themselves. Such resources slow the marital transition for women but hasten it for men. SINGLEHOOD

Despite the overwhelming popularity of marriage and the disadvantages of being single in a world of couples, somewhere around 9% of the adult population will spend its life in single blessedness (Glick, 1989). Contrary to the stereotyped view of the old maid and swinging bachelor, taking the lifelong perspec­ tive on single people shows it to be a better state for women then for men, especially as they become older. As noted earlier, educated women who want to advance up the cor­ porate ladder are at an advantage if they do not have family responsibilities to compete for the time and energy they could otherwise devote to their jobs. In contrast, unmarried men wanting to get ahead are seen as less stable and more irresponsible than their mar­ ried peers. It is optimal for them to marry. When men do not marry, it is very often because they lack the economic means to do so. In contrast, when women do not marry, they are more likely to have graduate training, be in one of the professions, and have higher incomes than their married sisters (Stein, 1987). In addition, women are more likely than men to have nurtured the kin contacts and friendship networks that fend off loneli­ ness and discourage self-centeredness. Regard-

COUPLE RELATIONS OVER TIME

less of the reason, never-married men are more apt to have lower feelings of subjective well-being (Haring-Hidore, Stock, Okun, 8c Witter, 1985), be more prone to drinking and substance abuse (Umberson, 1987), and be more likely to commit suicide than single women (Smith, Mercy, 8c Conn, 1988). Being married for women and men, but especially men, is a health protector—another benefit that encourages persons to marry. The group of people who at any one time are single includes the formerly married who have been divorced or widowed as well as the never married. They can also be divided into the voluntarily and involuntarily single. Men, because tradition gives them the option of initiating marriage, are more often thought to be voluntarily unmarried; however, this judg­ ment overlooks the tie between being a good provider and the marital state. Lack of eco­ nomic resources keeps men from marrying, but women who possess them are more likely to choose singlehood. There are also those involuntary singles who, because of physi­ cal or medical disabilities, are unable to take on marital roles.

Developmental Tasks

and Establishing Couple Relations

In recent years, establishing couple rela­ tions for some has become a sequence of coitus, cohabitation, and parenthood prior to marriage rather than after the wedding. But regardless of the timing of first coitus and cohabitation, persons have to make some changes in their accustomed way of doing things if they are to satisfactorily live together for any length of time in intimate relation­ ships. The developmental tasks associated with a man and a woman setting up house­ keeping can be differentiated into individual and couple learning responsibilities. To begin with the personal tasks, indi­ viduals coming together for the first time have to learn how to live intimately with the other person. Both have to develop some com­ petence for engaging in sex with the loved one. They must also negotiate who is going to do what to keep the new household function­ ing. Finally, the partners in the new unit will have to break the ties that bound them to

COUPLE

BEGINNINGS

family or friends who might compete with the couple's commitment to each other. The learning to live together tasks, when they in­ volve intimate behaviors, such as dressing and taking showers together, can contribute to the spice of joint living arrangements. But if one person is a "strewer" in undressing and leaves various articles of clothingwhere they fall and the other is a "picker upper" who arranges the clothes neatly in the closet, conflict can result. Each partner has to allow for the nearness of another person with different domestic habits and reach some sort of agreement on how the two can fit together to keep the setup going. This task of learning to live with another goes beyond sharing the living space to include emotional closeness. You will remember how men and women often differ in showing love. Men are more apt to do things for their one and only or to view sex as an indication of their love. Women, in contrast, tend to ex­ press their love verbally and by holding hands or hugging and stroking. These differences can lead to claims of "you no longer love me" on the one side and bewildered "what did I do wrong?" questions on the other. Exchang­ ing innermost feelings is a desire many women also want to see realized in partner relation­ ships. Men, on the other hand, are more likely to value sharing ideas but withholding their fears and downplaying their failures to pre­ serve their image of being invulnerable. Some men carry this image to the point that they consider it essential to preserve their separateness, even though they are in a stable couple relation. Here is how one businessman spoke about the matter: "I believe in togetherness, b u t not total together­ ness. In the e v e n i n g , o f course, w e have d i n n e r together, D o r i s g o e s off a n d d o e s her h o m e ­ w o r k , a n d I d o m y reading a n d fall asleep. But it's always b e e n like this. I like t o have s o m e t i m e t o myself, b y myself. I n e e d it. Always did. P r o ­ v i d e d I k n o w she's i n t h e n e x t r o o m . " (Weiss, 1990, p . 138)

These differences in emotional style, the ex­ pressive and the reticent, unless reconciled in the interest of getting along, can lead to couple clashes. The task of adjusting emotional styles in­ cludes the individual's learning the role of

125 lover. It concerns behaviors that are not a part of the couple's experience in their respective families of orientation. These behaviors also bring into play emotions and feelings con­ cerning one's adequacy as a sexual being and one's security as a separate entity. In a society that places a high premium on sexual enjoy­ ment but at the same time emphasizes auton­ omy and individual development, fears and anxieties can make it difficult to accomplish this task The man's fears of impotence, joined by the woman's fears of not being able to satisfy him, affect the couple's sexual feeling for one another, their sexual performance, and the place sex will hold in the marriage. The sexual act and its physical union symbol­ ize the loss of privacy and independence that is demanded in the close quarters of day-to­ day couple existence. Individuals must give up some freedom to take into account the other's needs, and that can be hard. It is good to remember in this connection that most young people have to lower their expectations as to sex in marriage. If they are fortunate, the passion couples are supposed to initially feel for each other changes over time into mutual acceptance and appreciation. A number of generations ago, sociologist Emile Dürkheim warned that conjugal love was too ephemeral," 'its vistas too restricted' " to last (Simpson, 1965, p. 535). Instead, a mutual acceptance and appreciation of each other's strengths, quirks, and flaws that develop over time can lead to the more lasting love based on interlocking obligations and respect that unite couples, despite the irritations, mis­ understandings, and major conflicts that living together produces. The individual task of taking on respon­ sibility for some parts of housekeepingis more couple dependent today than formerly. In the past, the job descriptions of marital roles were pretty much set by societal norms. Males, if they were skilled blue-collar workers or whitecollar workers in business or the professions, were supposed to play the role of good pro­ vider. Women complemented their husbands' earning activities by being the homemakers. Their role was to keep the house, to know how to cook and clean, and to take care of their husbands and children. Both parties suffered some disadvantage in this arrangement. True, men's physical and emotional maintenance needs were met, as were women's financial

126 requirements. But men had to earn a living or see their families suffer. Moreover, no matter how well men played other roles in the family, their prowess as husband-fathers was judged primarily by their breadwinning performan­ ces. If they got laid off or lost their jobs in hard times, men saw their power and prestige at home decline as wives or children had to look for work. One friend of mine complained that his wife viewed him only as a paycheck. He, like many other men, saw marriage as a trap to keep him working. The situation was also not easy for wifehomemakers. Being dependent, they had to watch how they asked for money, even when it was to buy family necessities. Consider this woman's quest for money, as reported by a neighbor:" 'When I was 17 or 18,1 remember a neighbor woman who had a grown-up son and a husband, and you know where she used to get her pocket money? After they went to work, she looked in the cushions in the sofa'" (Allen, 1989, p. 53). Lower-income wives, if they were lucky, had husbands who turned over their wages for them to handle. But this meant wives were the ones who had to try to make small sums cover big demands, a task that was particularly hard when husbands kept aside some of the pay for their own use. Middle-class women also found dependency degrading, because the money they had to request was to make home life more comfort­ able. Women could also feel they and their children were neglected if the men in their lives spent long hours on the job (Bernard, 1981). Nowadays, role assignments are not so rigidly based on gender, and couples can do more role making as to household duties. Because both partners generally are working, each will have to take into account the other's work schedule and its conflicts with domestic tasks. Working late, for example, can throw a monkey wrench in a woman's carrying out her agreed-on grocery shopping duty, and a man's fatigue can make him unwilling to care for the children in the evening. His wife, of course, may also be tired after work, but tradi­ tion and lower wages make it harder for her to slough off domestic responsibilities. Regard­ less of whether the couple plans to handle the household management chores on an equal basis, they will have to negotiate and imple­ ment some sort of division of labor. Few employed women nowadays are prepared to

COUPLE RELATIONS OVER

TIME

go along with the old breadwinner-home­ maker dichotomy. Another individual task that the new couple must accomplish is that of boundary main­ tenance. The solidarity of the twosome must be established, and competing interpersonal ties modified. Unless these ties can be accom­ modated to include the new spouse in a joint social network, a fertile area for conflict exists. The refusal to forsake all others, as some marriage rituals put it, can be a reason co­ habitants never become spouses. Establishing close couple ties means the partners must shift their gratifications from those satisfac­ tory to each individually to those satisfactory to both. Men sometimes define this task in terms of loss of freedom, and women see it as giving up the flattering attentions inherent in playing the field. In either case, the in­ dividual has to accomplish the task of chang­ ing from a single-minded to an other-oriented perspective. Besides these individual tasks, there are also couple tasks to be performed. The task of physical maintenance for the new family unit is one. This usually involves both partners being employed, so two work schedules have to be adjusted to get household tasks done. Couples who must hold jobs, keep house, and still find time and energy for companionship and lovemaking generally have enough to do to keep busy. Another critical couple task in­ volves developing a satisfactory pattern of family planning—whether to have children and, if so, when. Cohabitation without mar­ riage is often seen by the partners as a pre­ ferable status as long as children are not in the picture, so cohabitants often fudge the estab­ lishment of a couple identity family develop­ ment task. They are just not sure they are ready to settle down with each other. Keeping the partners motivated to perform their employ­ ment and couple tasks looms large in this initial shakedown period. Contributing to this task accomplishment are satisfactory couple communication patterns. These are not re­ stricted to talk but include the casual touch, the quick hug and kiss, and the satisfaction of sex. Setting up housekeeping in marriage re­ quires fulfilling developmental tasks associ­ ated with taking on couple roles. As we have seen, they include centering one's attention on the partner and establishing satisfactory

COUPLE

BEGINNINGS

ways of getting along. Who does what and who talks about what are both important to managing the household and to seeing that its occupants remain committed to the couple enterprise. Negotiating a division of labor and comfortable communication patterns, both sexually and verbally, are pair tasks that con­ tribute to physical and morale maintenance, just as do the individual skills called for in learn­ ing to make love, earn a wage, and keep house.

Limited Linkages

to Marital Outcomes

Does how a couple comes together to es­ tablish a committed relation affect its history? There is much folk wisdom and expert coun­ sel warning of the limited linkages between the process of getting together and the ex­ tended forecast for the relationship. This sec­ tion will discuss what research tells us about the constraints the premarital period exer­ cises on marital life. These constraints can be grouped into two categories: One has to do with the background characteristics of the two individuals; the other contains the par­ ticular events the couple experiences in com­ ing together. Beginning with individual characteristics, there are at least two conflicting views of the linkages between what a couple does before marriage and how successful it will be. Based on theory, earlier investigations, and folk wis­ dom, some have hypothesized that couples from similar religious, racial, and class back­ grounds will have better marriages in terms of stability or quality. Presumably, they will have more of a common dowry of expecta­ tions and values concerning what is impor­ tant to smooth their getting adjusted to each other. Continuing this line of reasoning but turning to experience, we would hypothesize that couples who have known each other a fairly long time should be better able to figure out if their beliefs and behaviors would easily mesh. If they were out of their teens when they married, they would also presumably be more ready to give up the freedom to date different people, and they would have the job security and financial resources to enable them to establish a family. As we saw earlier with the Connecticut high school seniors, youths are

127 prone to rate others on superficial charac­ teristics into a hierarchy of best dates. Having this flawed basis of comparison to judge their mates' behaviors, they may well feel others are out there who could better fit their needs (Waller, 1937). They are less ready to settle down. But waiting too long to marry, say, until their early 30s, may mean the individuals are so set in their ways that they cannot adapt them to a partner's (Booth & Edwards, 1985). In contrast to this reasoning, others would predict that waiting to marry, though it per­ mits individuals to take time to find out just who they are and who is congenial to them, is poor preparation for settling down to the humdrum routines of family living. Dating a number of others can encourage individuals' sexual exploitation and calculations of pop­ ularity, not permanence in a relationship. Along similar lines, these theorists might well view premarital sexual intercourse and co­ habitation experiences with others than the chosen marriage partner as experiences that would create discontented individuals. They might figuratively expect the grass to be greener on the other side of the fence if they did not find marriage fairly easy to adjust to. Moreover, breaking off sexual and cohabiting partnerships, even without legal entangle­ ments, can lead to considerable heartache if one of the partners miscalculates the other's level of commitment. Thefirstgroup of theorists, however, would counter this thinking with the argument that to learn the skills required to get along in intimate relations, the individual requires experience. Cohabitation, from this perspec­ tive, can serve as a sort of trial marriage, weed­ ing out couples unfit for marriage without the legal complication of divorce. By living in close quarters, the couple would find out how well they were suited to continue joint house­ keeping over the long haul. They would dis­ cover whether their common interests and love were great enough to ease them over the difficulties in developing the skills and solici­ tude for the partner's desires that would enable them to fit together. Something of this argument is reflected in the experience of this man. "I m e t M a r y o n a raft trip i n O c t o b e r . At that t i m e , I w a s e n g a g e d t o a n o t h e r girl. I b r o k e o f f

128 my engagement so I could get involved with Mary. Atfirstour relationship was more physical than anything else—it really drew us together. Once we got physically accustomed to each other, we got closer mentally as well. I was really seeing a lot I liked about her—she fit my 'ideal image.' I felt like things could really work out well for us. "In January she had feelings of uncertainty and uncomfortableness with everything around her—I think lots of things external to the re­ lationship, and more so things within her, im­ pacted on the relationship. On February 1st she said she didn't love me any more—she wanted to change the relationship to just friends." (Cate & Lloyd, 1992, pp. 92-93) The Detroit-area survey I referred to ear­ lier provides helpful findings relevant to these conflicting perspectives (Whyte, 1990). You will remember that a sizable number of women, representing different races and clas­ ses and a range of ages, gave their premarital histories and whether the relationship still endured or had been broken by divorce or death. These ever-married women, however, are presenting their memories of the past, a past that in some cases encompassed 60 years of marriage. Their husbands, if still present, were not queried as to their views of the pre­ marital history. Even if their memories had been tapped, they, too, might not have remem­ bered events correctly. Fortunately, lacking a longitudinal design to follow couples over time, the investigator, Μ. K. Whyte, focused his questions on easily remembered infor­ mation. There are also data from national samples to supplement these findings. With this warning, let us see what Whyte and others found when they looked at whether there were any linkages between premarital happenings and postmarital outcomes. The findings were surprising. Homogamy in couples' backgrounds played a relatively minor part in determining the fate of their sub­ sequent marriages. Marrying within one's ra­ cial category continues to be so common that there was not enough variation to investigate. As far as religious similarity is concerned, data from the National Survey of Families and Households, where we have the marital his­ tories of men and women, showed that rates of marital disruption were "much higher" when Catholics and non-Catholics intermar-

COUPLE RELATIONS OVER TIME

ry (Bumpass, Martin, & Sweet, 1991, p. 39). Couples coming from similar social class backgrounds, as perceived by wives in the Detroit research, did seem to have marriages of higher quality and with fewer problems. Objective measures of class status, such as couples' educational similarity, the similarity of their fathers' occupations, or the husbands' and fathers' occupations, however, showed no particular relationship to marital outcomes. Thus, the rationale that similar class back­ ground experiences make for better marriages was not strongly supported by the Detroit data (Whyte, 1990, p. 181, Table 7.2). Consistent with other studies, the younger the bride in both the Detroit and the National Survey samples, the less enduring the marriage and the more problems and the lesser quality of the marriages that did continue (Bumpass et al., 1991, p. 39; Morgan 8c Rindfuss, 1985; Whyte, 1990, p. 179, Table 1). Not having time to sow one's wild oats, as the saying goes, or to discover what kind of a person he or she is appears harmful to settling down contented­ ly. Moreover, those who marry before they are 20 face other critical transitions at about the same time, such as leaving school, moving out from their parental homes, and obtaining fulltime jobs, which may compete with working out couple arrangements. The importance of societal legitimation of the union through an elaborate wedding has also been demonstrated. Marriages started under these circumstances are more likely to endure, have fewer problems, and be of higher quality than marriages begun in more humble circumstances (Whyte, 1990, p. 179, Table 7.1). Despite some talk in favor of more simple ceremonies, bigger weddings seem to be more lasting, or it may be that only the more committed and financially secure are willing to undergo the planning and stress that go with having a big wedding. Apparently, the active support and legitimation relatives and friends accord the couple, as symbolized by such a ceremony, carry over into the future. Outsiders' recognition of the solidarity of those who have forsaken all others to form their own union may include encouragement and ad­ vice on staying together in difficult times ahead. At any rate, the intergenerational and crossgenerational transfers of wealth at weddings seem to cover both intangible skills at getting along and tangible goods for the household.

COUPLE

BEGINNINGS

What about that always intriguing subject, the effect of premarital sexual behavior on mar­ riage? Being intimate before the ceremony was related to higher divorce rates and more marital problems. Other aspects of sexual in­ timacy, however, including having sex with other than the husband-to-be, seemed to bear little relation to how the Detroit couples fared after marriage (Whyte, 1990, p. 179, Table 7.1). With respect to cohabiting, findings from national samples indicate that the proportion of couples separating or divorcing within 10 years of marriage is one third higher among couples who kept house together before mar­ rying than among those who had not (Booth & Johnson, 1988; Bumpass & Sweet, 1989b). This finding leads to the question of whether cohabitation in itself has negative marital consequences. The answer seems to lie in what is meant by negative. There appears to be some evidence supporting the view of those who reason that cohabitation functions as a kind of trial marriage while the par­ ticipants avoid committing themselves before societal witnesses. Presumably, the 40% of cohabiting couples who do not marry have discovered, without going through the tran­ sition of marriage, that they were not suitably matched. To this extent, cohabitation weeds out the maritally unfit unions and keeps down the divorce rate. Those who argue that co­ habiting is associated with the individuals' continually comparing their present situation unfavorably with previous unions, however, also have some evidence on their side. Divorce rates are higher for former cohabitants, which suggests that cohabitation does not consis­ tently separate unhappy couples or provide a good training period for playing marital roles. The research of sociologists Alan Booth and David Johnson (1988) helps to explain why there should be this negative linkage be­ tween cohabitation and marital success. They found in their national sample that couples who had cohabited prior to marriage, if they had not divorced, were likely to disagree more and interact less. Their data suggest that characteristics of former cohabitants who regularize their relations through marriage also play a part. They appeared to be less committed to marriage itself and to have had more premarital doubts about its wisdom than noncohabitants. Cohabitants were also more

129 likely to have experienced parental disapproval of the match. Cohabitation itself, apart from the kinds of people who engage in it, also appeared to play a part in the lower marital quality and higher divorce rates of those who had lived together before marrying. Perhaps, instead of provid­ ing an opportunity for individuals to sharpen their skills in getting along in intimate situa­ tions, the period of living together outside of marriage encourages a carpe diem, live-for­ the-present philosophy. If so, concern for the consequences of current thoughdess actions and continuing disagreements may get ig­ nored, as one or both partners thinks there's enough good in what's here today not to get bogged down in unpleasantness that could disappear tomorrow. Alas, underlying sore spots in a relation­ ship seldom disappear without care and at­ tention, and certainly, the act of marrying will not heal them. For example, a small sample of 21 engaged couples who discussed four tasks and a major problem area reported on their feelings 5.5 years later (Markman, 1981). Limited linkages were apparent. The more positive they had been about their interac­ tions premaritally, the more satisfied the couples were down the road after they had married. The more negative couples initially were about their discussions, the less happy they were later. The past was but a prelude to the present. As far as parenthood prior to marriage is concerned, it increases the likelihood of di­ vorce. National surveys show that pregnan­ cies that begin premaritally make divorce more probable than do conceptions that occur within marriages. Having to take on parental respon­ sibilities along with marital roles creates conflicts. The new husband might not be the biological father and so lacks emotional ties to his ready-made offspring. In addition, couples who have a child out of wedlock are probably less subject to social control barriers that dis­ courage divorce (Morgan 8c Rindfuss, 1985). We can conclude from this survey, of what goes before and the quality and stability of what follows marriage, that there are limit­ ed linkages. Age is one. Persons who marry while still in their teens are often not ready to settle down with one person into the routines and

130

COUPLE RELATIONS OVER TIME

responsibilities that marriage demands. They are not prepared to place the well-being of another over their own self-gratification. No wonder then that premarital pregnancies ex­ ercise a negative influence on marital happi­ ness. Having to take on parental duties while fulfilling spousal tasks for the first time can result in intimacy overload and marital disil­ lusion and dissolution. Even cohabitation, as a trial period for weeding out the incompat­ ible and improving adaptability skills, does not consistently fulfill these functions to ease the transition into marriage. Similarity of back­ grounds does appear to have some small posi­ tive impact on marital outcomes. But it seems to be that with the major exceptions of youthful age at marriage and cohabitation, current interaction patterns ex­ ercise the most influence on what couples think about the health of their marriages. Of course, the ways people interact at any one time are not improvised. Their knowledge of routines and conventions worked out earlier and taken for granted set limits on their im­ mediate role repertoire. How present interac­ tion patterns get negotiated and their content are in part products of the past, but learning new interpersonal task skills can modify or supplant the old ways.

The Cultural Context of Permanent

Availability and Marital Stability

Some family observers feel that current conditions encourage marital instability and intimate relationships without marriage. Fami­ ly sociologist Bernard Färber (1964, 1987), for one, has argued that in our increasingly open and geographically mobile society, paren­ tal and kin control over mate selection has lessened. Such control encouraged an orderly continuity from one generation to the next in the similarity of partners' social class, race, and religion and in the cultural elements of norms, values, and ways of behaving. About a century ago, Oscar Wilde (1899/ 1970) humorously described this controlled courtship in his play, The Importance of Being Earnest. He has the heroine announce, "I am engaged to Mr. Worthing, Mamma." Her mother, upper-class Lady Bracknell, is astonished:

Pardon me, you are not engaged to any one. When you do become engaged to someone, I, or your father, should his health permit him, will inform you of the fact. An engagement should come on a young girl as a surprise, pleasant or unpleasant, as the case may be. It is hardly a matter that she should be allowed to arrange for herself. When young people increasingly meet their partners in work and educational settings, these kin characteristics and concerns either are not emphasized or are absent. Under such circumstances, parents, grandparents, and other relatives with a stake in family con­ tinuity become passive witnesses to the mate selection process. Individual preferences suc­ ceed an "orderly replacement" system of mate selection, with its focus on obligations and commitments to family continuity over the years as well as over the generations. Färber argues that there has been a shift to a system of "permanent availability." No con­ jugal relationship is safe from the ravages of loss of love and the appearance of attractive alternatives. The breakdown of status dis­ tinctions between parents and children, wives and husbands, the young, the middle-aged, and the old—to name characteristics central to rights and duties in families—leaves con­ jugal stability decisions to individual whim. No current arrangement is undertaken with wholehearted commitment. Spouses make their pledges in the new system contingent on personal preferences. Because these are sub­ ject to change, any partner is still available to make a new arrangement if a more agreeable other shows up. The shift from one marriage to another is a personal matter, and others are in no position to intervene. High divorce rates, more cohabitation, in­ creased premarital sex, and unwed parent­ hood, Färber believes, are all indications of the waning of the orderly replacement of family units from one generation to the next. In­ stead, regardless of current marital status, any person is continually able to start a new relationship. Certainly, as we have seen in this chapter, traditional religious prohibitions or property considerations do not seem very effective at present in keeping couples together once things start going sour. More than ever, persons in the marriage market are well advised to be care­

COUPLE

BEGINNINGS

ful in their choices. They should be aware of the obligations they take on in a marriage, unless they do not fear the emotional upheavals at­ tendant on transiting in and out of intimate relationships. Getting Married in

the Context of the Family Career

According to Charles Dickens (1859/1950), describing the period of the French Revolu­ tion on the first page of his novel, A Tale of Two Cities, It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were aU going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way. (p. 1) This judgment pretty well sums up the state of the couple's coming together period from the perspective of a full-length family career. To take the best of times angle first, when couples are questioned at later periods in cross-sectional studies (Campbell, Converse, 8cRodgers, 1976; Schümm 8tBugaighis, 1986; Whyte, 1990) or followed over time in the few relevant longitudinal studies (Pineo, 1961), they usually report the starting out period as one of the high points in the marital trajec­ tory. One of the reasons for this, of course, is that the couples who decide their coming together should be no more than a brief en­ counter have divorced. Counterbalancing the remembered pleasures of their first days together, among the partners joined for the long haul, is the occurrence of the highest rate of marital disruption within 2 years of the formal union (National Center for Health Statistics, 1991a, pp. 2-14, Tables 2-13). It apparently does not take too many months of living together for two people to find out whether they can comfortably share problems and develop special feelings of mutual caring, the advantages of couple status married men and women are most likely to list (Gove 8c Umberson, 1985).

131 Social scientists point to the self-enhance­ ment qualities that good marriages provide (Berger 8c Kellner, 1964; Gove et al., 1990). It is through the close and continuous interac­ tion with a spouse that one can establish a stable sense of who one is. But it takes work for families to retain this quality of individual affir­ mation. Because it only takes two to make a couple and love is supposed to be the central element in their coming together, the relation­ ship has to bear tremendous emotional weight. If both spouses experience difficulties simul­ taneously, one or the other might not be able to provide the untiring support the spouse needs and expects. At such times of deficit in the emotional budget, either one or both might question the soundness of the union and the desirability of its continuance. There is also the problem that the roles people play outside the family, especially their occupational posi­ tions, are often complex and hard to explain to another. Consequently, it might be difficult for a partner to comprehend why a spouse is upset and to give meaningful sympathy. This incomprehension and failure to affirm criti­ cal aspects of a mate's self are accentuated by a possible lack of overlap in the backgrounds of the spouses (Gove et al., 1990). We have seen from the Whyte (1990) study that homo­ geneity in partners' backgrounds, with some minor exceptions, did not have a strong im­ pact on the future quality of the marriage. But it will require more work for couples with discrepant biographies to understand each other and to accept the other as that person wishes to be. Divorce that exists as a widely recognized alternative to marriage can present an easy escape from a relationship filled with mis­ understanding. It may also encourage couples to work harder at their relationships. But in trying to nurture a faltering union, the spouses may have to modify their chosen ways of behaving. The selves they reveal will be less authentic, despite the family's supposedly being the refuge where one can work out and reveal one's true identity. The outcome may be the partners' disappointment and unwill­ ingness to continue working at the behavior adjustment tasks the initial phase of getting married demands (Gove et al., 1990). Thus, today's fragile marriages are caught between high expectations of mutual affection and

132

COUPLE RELATIONS OVER TIME

understanding and high possibilities of disil­ lusionment. Spouses in partnerships that go the dis­ tance will look back on this early period with fondness, remembering the first meals pre­ pared together, making love as a now-settled couple, laughing at shared funny happenings, and above all doing things together. Partners in relationships that have gone bankrupt will have different and less sunny stories to tell. In either case, echoing Charles Dickens's image, the initial period of the marital career is the best of times or the worst of times.

Summary The process of persons discovering each other and deciding to form a lasting union has changed considerably over the past several decades. There has been a change in the timing of the events of sexual intercourse and cohabitation. They no longer are necessarily initiated with the marriage transition but may have occurred earlier and with different partners. Sizable numbers of women are be­ coming parents outside of a marital relation­ ship. These dramatic alterations in the se­ quence of establishing intimate relations have led observers to characterize the consequen­ ces as the deinstitutionalization of marriage. Some of this change is associated with the later age at which young people are currently marrying. There are also more people who are choosing not to marry, as is the case with black youths. Much of this change in how sharp a break marriage constitutes with previous couple behavior, however, represents trends beginning early in the century. This is true even of our present high divorce rate. In 1927, psychologist John B. Watson was mourning that " 'The mystery and beauty of marriage and the rearing of children has pretty well broken down.' " He then went on to predict, " 'In fifty years, unless there is some change, the tribal custom of marriage will no longer exist'" (Whyte, 1990, p. 1).

But marriages continue to take place, and amid the change, we saw that there remains some continuity with the past. Most people still want to marry. Parental approval of the couple match, even in our system of marital free choice, maintains its influence. Gender differences in the initiator of relationships and the importance of marriage are much the same as formerly. Developmental tasks in es­ tablishing intimate relations remain. Moreover, some premarital factors related to marital success in the past still operate today. Not having to take on a number of other adult roles at the same time as marital roles, as adolescents usually do, appears to continue to account for the positive relation between age at marriage and its stability. Parenthood before marriage, probably for much the same reasons, still has a negative effect on marriage. What about the extent of getting to know a partner before the wedding and its effect on marriage? Similar backgrounds, which suggest like values and behaviors, do have some small positive effect. But cohabitation, though ser­ ving as a trial marriage in the sense of weed­ ing out patently unsuitable couples, does not necessarily lead to sounder marriages for those who stay together long after the wedding. Finally, high expectations of marriage and developing the common ways that make it a desired state also contribute to its fragility. The marital transition period is the best of times but only for those who stay together. Consider­ able numbers do not. Getting along with some­ one else in close quarters over the long haul requires love, understanding, and tremendous patience. But marriage veterans are usually able to give a number of payoffs for this com­ mitment, despite the considerable adjust­ ments involved, that make it all worthwhile.

Notes 1. From Nemy (1991). Copyright Ο 1991 by The New York Times Company. Reprinted by permission. 2. From Bradsher (1989). Copyright © 1989 by The New York Times Company. Reprinted by permission.

7

Couple Relations and Parenthood

The Parenthood Transition Some years ago, Reuben Hill and I ob­ served that parenthood rather than marriage appears to be the critical role transition point that marks the individual's entrance into adult status (Hill 8c Aldous, 1969, p. 923). Because of the increased educational requirements for occupational careers and the availability of sex and cohabitation privileges outside of marriage, many men and women have experi­ enced marriagelike situations before they are wed. When they do marry, there are fewer breaks with the unmarried state than in the past. The coming of children, however, forces couples to take on adult domestic responsi­ bilities that they have not before encountered. Parents have to physically care for and financially support a being who is totally de­ pendent on others for her or his well-being. In many cases, neither mother or father has previously fed, diapered, or held an infant. They must learn the skills in these develop­ mental tasks. But even if they become adept at ministering to the baby, their schedules of rest, work, and leisure maybe at odds with the child's schedule. Fatigue and lack of time to play spousal roles and perform parental chores can create discontent and disagreements

about child care and its priorities. Time on the job cannot usually be changed, but adjust­ ing domestic routines to the newcomer have to be. Therefore, breaks from the preparent­ hood period are present in most aspects of family life, and the disarray they create is hard to disguise or ignore. Entering the parenthood career, therefore, represents a more serious critical role transi­ tion point than does marriage. The choice of a mate and the decision to marry tend to be relatively voluntary decisions within the con­ straints of timing and income described ear­ lier. Parenthood with modern contraceptives may also be a chosen option, but it can be the consequence of sexual intercourse that was recreative and not procreative in intent. This difference shows up in ordinary conversation. One "decides" to get married, a purposeful act, but one "becomes" a parent, a more pas­ sive stance. Because unplanned pregnancies can occur both before and after marriage, there is a greater probability of unwanted pregnancies than of marriages. Marriages, moreover, can be dissolved by divorce or separation. Parent­ hood, in contrast, is more irrevocable. Unless the child is given up for adoption, a practice generally restricted to unwed mothers, it is 133

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COUPLE RELATIONS OVER TIME

hard to escape parental responsibilities. As Alice S. Rossi (1968) reminds us, "We can have ex-spouses and ex-jobs but not ex-children" (p. 32). There are couples without children, how­ ever, and the discussion begins with them. It continues with a consideration of the shifts in couples' lives that parenthood brings. Marital quality can change. It is affected by the differ­ ent developmental tasks, breaks in routines, and reorganization of the household division of labor that a baby entails. There is also an analysis of the alterations in family life that additional children cause. The chapter ends with an analysis of single-parent families, in which either the husband or wife is absent. Childless Couples As we saw in Chapter 4, there are some women and men who have decided to share their lives for the duration but do not become parents. About 15% to 17% of couples in childbearing ages during the baby boom be­ tween 1945 and 1965fitinto this category (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1991). Some of these couples chose to be child-free, and they were described in Chapter 4. Other couples, how­ ever, are involuntarily childless (Matthews 8c Matthews, 1986). This group, unless they become parents through adoption, are un­ willingly prevented from going through the parenthood transition, with its symbolic con­ ferring of adulthood. Until recently, popular opinion blamed women for not conceiving. We now know that infertility can also be due to male problems, such as impotence or low sperm count. Regardless of which partner is responsible for the infertility, couples who want children but cannot have them biologically often consider themselves to be failures. This is par­ ticularly true for women, one of whose im­ portant identities is likely to be that of mother. They feel guilty that they have not "given" spouses an offspring and parents the living evidence of the continuity of their lineage. Even if the childless state is due to their hus­ bands' incapacities, it is women who are gen­ erally questioned about not entering into the parental status. Because the usual scenario people share about newlyweds is that they will settle down

and have children, this identity is spoiled for the involuntarily childless. Not only do they often feel guilt at not meeting their own, their friends, and their kin's expectations, but they also often go through a number of unpleasant medical tests that supposedly will remedy their infertility. No intimate behavior is left un­ revealed as the couple's sexual intercourse is exposed to external scrutiny. Repeated examin­ ation of each partner's genitalia, laboratory inspections of the aftermath of coitus 1 or 2 hours later, and the production of sperm for analysis on demand are some of the treat­ ment techniques that constitute invasion of the infertile couple's privacy (Matthews 8c Matthews, 1986). Couples giving up on parenthood may attempt to reconstruct their "spoiled" identities with a focus on work, ignoring family roles (Goffman, 1963). For these men and women, involuntary childlessness can serve as an ac­ ceptable excuse for concentrating on oc­ cupational concerns. Other couples may enjoy parenthood vicariously through the children of friends and relatives. There will be some fortunate ones who negotiate the parenthood transition legally through adoption, becom­ ing social, not biological, parents. This strategy is not always available nowadays when un­ married mothers are less stigmatized and less likely to place their children for adoption. Consequently, the seriousness of not experi­ encing the parent transition in our pronatalist world is shown by the strenuous efforts the involuntarily childless undergo to design iden­ tities that will excuse their "failure" (Matthews 8c Matthews, 1986). THE VALUE OF CHILDREN

Although modern contraceptive practices give those using them the choice of whether to have children, most couples decide to do so. Their reasons are summed up in statements such as these: "Without children, a married life is not a family," and "[Having children] makes you complete as a person and it com­ pletes your marriage, too" (Fawcett, 1988, p. 14). It is true that in common parlance, people usually differentiate between married couples and families. They believe that it is the presence of children that defines the existence of families. Accordingly, one of the family developmental tasks couples have been cus­

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tomarily expected to fulfill is having children. Families are the one social unit that actually create their own personnel after the initial female/male couple has come together. Couples who have not yet had their first child are aware of the benefits that entering parenthood confers on those making the trans­ ition. Views of children over the past century have changed, concentrating on children's contributions to parents' emotional well­ being rather than on their economic useful­ ness (Zelizer, 1985). People in industrialized countries do not see children as a form of social security to provide for their parents' old age or to take care of them when they are sick or having problems, as adults would have in the past. In one national survey, for example, wives referred to the fun and activity having a child would bring. These women looking forward to parenthood also expected that a youngster would bring them love and affection and would benefit their marital relation (Fawcett, 1988). One wife put it this way: " 'After the baby, I think we'll be closer than we are now.' " And a husband explained, " 'With the baby, we'll have some type of force that will bring us closer to each other.... There's always some­ thing that will crop up that, you know, will keep you, supposedly, hopefully, together' " (LaRossa, 1977, p. 121). Women did not, however, expect their children to be of eco­ nomic utility to them, as do parents in poorer countries. This is not to say that a sentimental pic­ ture of the value of children is so prevalent that couples see no disadvantages in having children. Even those wives in the national survey choosing to do so mention that young­ sters bringfinancialburdens, a loss of freedom, and worries about their safety and health (Fawcett, 1988). After all, the expense of rear­ ing two children to the age of 18—before the expenses of a college education are added— can be some $275,000 in 1990 dollars for average families. (See Glick, 1989, p. 125, for original estimates.) The transition to parenthood, even more than marriage, symbolizes the attainment of adult status. Taking on the roles attached to being a father or mother signifies that the position holders have someone dependent on them with the attendant responsibilities as­ sociated with adulthood. These include ties to

a web of civic organizations. Think of the number of community associations that pre­ suppose parenthood for admission. They in­ clude sports teams operated for girls and boys; parent organizations centering on schools; youth groups, such as the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts; and religious activities, all of which serve to integrate parents into the broader neighborhood and community. Parenthood as Transition Women's recognition, as reported above, that children can bring couples a shared in­ terest shows how their views on the value of children are linked to the couple relation. Its quality has much to do with how smoothly the transition to parenthood will go. As the value of children has changed, so has women's be­ havior in ways that affect the demands they will place on their partners both during the pregnancy and after the infant's birth. In the previous chapter, we saw that couples are marrying later, because both parties are in­ creasingly having to juggle job and family considerations before deciding to wed. Just as couples want to spend time after finishing school in trying to find those persons who can help them solve problems and whose love they can count on, they also want to be sure that their work schedules after marriage will fit to­ gether before they have children. Accord­ ingly, women's higher levels of education and employment and higher rates of divorce are all factors explaining why first births among women in their 30s are increasing (Ventura, 1989). Nowadays, most couples have small savings, and living expenses are high. They need two incomes to support themselves, especially with a new baby coming. By the 1980s, some two thirds of expectant mothers were continuing to hold jobs throughout their pregnancies, up from 37% in the early 1960s, and 80% to 90% were working full-time. Half the mothers (53%) having first births in the 1980s re­ turned to their jobs within 1 year of giving birth, compared with 17% in the earlier period (O'Connell, 1990, p. 11). Having a cushion of earnings can cut down on worries about medical costs and also provide the little extras, such as hiring a baby-sitter for an occasional night out, that smooth some of the irritations

136 parenthood may bring. Remember that divorce is inversely related to family income, because financial resources remove a potent source of conflict between husbands and wives. As we have seen, children are of great im­ portance to the well-being of partners. Parent­ hood, however, although often desired, brings great change to couples' lives. Having chil­ dren constitutes a sharp break from the past, even for the most prepared couples. Without role models and emotional support to assure new parents that they will survive the prenatal and postnatal periods, parenthood can be a worrisome time initially. Although being mar­ ried protects men in particular from emo­ tional and physical ailments, some research suggests that children in general, and having several preschoolers at the same time in par­ ticular, is associated with poorer health among women (Gove, 1984). The added responsi­ bilities children bring from their inception do not generally appear to affect mothers and fathers positively and can increase their psy­ chological and physical problems (Ross, Mirowsky, 8c Goldsteen, 1990). Especially for women balancing job efforts with the physical demands of pregnancy and later infant care, the transition can be rough. We may speak of parenthood, but more often that term really means motherhood. In some ways, this restriction makes sense. When couples were childless in the past, it was wives who were blamed; and even today, as the previous discussion showed, they often feel ashamed about what they see as their incom­ plete family status. It is women who physical­ ly shelter the child-to-be during pregnancy, and in the past, fertility was seen as central to their societal value. Also, women who are pregnant generally experience major physical changes, not all of them pleasant, in the tran­ sition. Putting aside the pain entailed in child­ birth, because women are increasingly choos­ ing to experience childbirth with a minimum of drugs, there is the fatigue and discomfort associated with weight gain and having one's customary balance thrown off. As one friend complained to me, "When I didn't 'show,' I felt sick in the morning. Now I'm all front and I'm continually tired from having to carry the added weight around, not to mention the back strain I have."

COUPLE RELATIONS OVER TIME

A number of longitudinal studies have shown that couples' marital adjustment, when measured before and after a baby's birth, declined (Belsky, Lang, 8c Rovine, 1985; Cowan 8c Cowan, 1988a; Entwisle 8c Doering, 1981). This decrease has given rise to the label "parenthood as crisis," which is often used to characterize the transition. There is some in­ dication, however, that it is the passage of time in marriages, not the coming of children, that leads to less satisfaction. It appears that most couples, regardless of whether they have children, become less contented with their partners as the years go by. For example, longitudinal research conducted over a 3­ year period, with a nationally representative sample of households, indicates that both couples who had children for the first time and those who did not in this period per­ ceived declines in marital quality. There were 220 persons from the sample who met the requirements of being childless at the first interview with the wife under the age of 35, and they were reinterviewed. The two groups when first contacted were much the same in their reported marital happiness and interac­ tion and the number of problems and dis­ agreements. Thus, there was little evidence of some selectivity factor that would differen­ tiate the two sets of couples. Those who remained childless were not initially more satisfied in their marriages, although future parents were somewhat more likely to have believed that their household division of labor was unfair (White 8c Booth, 1985b). The findings from the later interviews showed that, even controlling for marital dur­ ation and gender of respondent, there were only "slightly greater declines" in marital hap­ piness and interaction and "slightly greater increases" in problems and disagreements among the new parents. They did express somewhat more unhappiness with the house­ hold division of labor (White & Booth, 1985b, pp. 445, 447). One important statistically significant difference that appeared was the greater propensity of the childless to divorce despite practically the same marital quality. They seemed more willing to end their mar­ riages in the 3 years, even without major dis­ satisfactions, than did those couples who were either thinking of having a child or welcom­ ing their firstborn. Having a dependent infant

COUPLE RELATIONS AND

PARENTHOOD

or toddler seems to make couples more aware of the well-being of someone besides themselves. They are less willing to put the newcomers' well-being in jeopardy through divorce. But it seems that with the passage of time, most couples generally express less love for their partners and less marital satisfaction. As another longitudinal study over a 2.5-year period of 98 couples indicated, the couples experienced these declines regardless of paren­ tal status. The couples were doing fewer things together of a companionable nature. The de­ clines in joint leisure activities, however, were greater among parents, where mothers espe­ cially would presumably be busy with their young children (MacDermid, Huston, 8c McHale, 1990). Although both the childless and those with children experience less marital happi­ ness, it is useful to look at what factors specifi­ cally associated with parenthood may create difficulties. I will begin this discussion with this question: Does how parents get along with each other as well as with their children have any limited linkage to how their own offspring handle the turning point of parenthood? The answer appears to be that women and men live through this pregnancy interlude and the first weeks after the birth of their infants best when they have good memories of their own families. Belsky and Isabella (1985), in a lon­ gitudinal study of 50 middle-class couples, looked at their adjustment just before their children's births and 3 months postpartum and related what they found to what each partner told them of his or her parents' mar­ riage. It turned out that when wives and hus­ bands reported growing up with parents who got along well and enjoyed their children, there was less decline in the quality of the couples' marriages after children arrived. This was especially true for wives. We may wonder why there should be this seeming carryover of marital satisfaction from couples to their children at a critical juncture in the latters' partnerships. Although specific information on how the parents interacted is missing, the answer may lie in the role models parents can provide. When children are ac­ customed to seeing parents living together in relative harmony, it may encourage them to deal with the conflicting demands if either husband or wife is loath to change the marital

137 and household task patterns following the arrival of a baby. Having grown up in homes in which children were treated with respect and parents were fond of one another, spouses may believe that they can replicate the same experiences in their own family lives through talking over the discontinuities and discon­ tents that follow the parenthood transition. This marital communication can provide social support to new parents handling the changes that children bring to their lives. Trying to reconcile the demands of children, part­ ners, jobs, and households results in stress. By renegotiating their spousal roles to allow for parent roles, partners can reduce role strain. Family demands have to bear the brunt of renegotiations, because there is generally less "give" in the demands of work. Through their concern and assistance, so­ cial networks of friends and kin can help ease the strain during the pregnancy period and afterward. Outsiders can contribute to couple solidarity even though crossing family boun­ daries. Physical help can prevent some ten­ sion-laden situations from occurring. This help can take the form of presenting mone­ tary gifts that enable employed parents to maintain sitters in their home; loaning car seats, infant cribs, and other child equipment; or bringing in food when the mother and baby return from the birthing center. They can lessen worries between doctor visits by pro­ viding explanations for emotional and physi­ cal changes in the pregnant woman and later in the mother or infant. Advice on what shifts are going to occur when domesticity includes an infant as well as two adults may cut down on angry confrontations. Such counsel can include suggestions on how babies should be breast-fed, bathed, held, or diapered, skills that new parents without acquaintance with youngsters must learn. It is important to note, after describing the usefulness of social networks for couples at this turning point in their family careers, that it is the new parents themselves who must determine which friends and relatives they want to call on for assistance and advice. Un­ solicited counsel from outsiders, especially from parents-in-law, can be more of an ir­ ritant than a comfort. Today's partners may be seeking a more flexible child-rearing di­ vision of labor than the traditional one based on gender. Moreover, some mates from un­

138 happy or rejecting homes may want to do things differently from their parents. Because individuals have no choice in their close rela­ tives, there is no guarantee that they will open their boundaries and involve kin in the parent­ hood transition. In addition to the advice, gifts, and physical assistance from selected relatives and friends, emotional support, especially between the part­ ners, is important in easing the parenthood transition. The husband's reaffirming his love for his pregnant wife, who is feeling unattrac­ tive and overloaded, can provide a real boost to her morale and self-esteem, and when noth­ ing seems to stop the baby's crying, spouses can raise each other's morale by listening to and voicing complaints and fears while at the same time providing comfort. DEVELOPMENTAL TASKS A N D THE PARENTHOOD PERIOD

The birth of a first child is generally cele­ brated. Parents are relieved that they no ionger have to worry about the physical dangers of childbirth and having a healthy baby. Kindred and close friends can show their pride and feelings of closeness toward the new parents. Just as their wedding gifts helped the couple with household expenses, now their baby gifts can cover some of the newcomer's outfitting expenses. Such contributions free up money for other couple needs or pleasures and con­ tribute to the new family's well-being. More­ over, parents from both sides are likely to have a rise in self-esteem to see their offspring now mature enough to take on parental respon­ sibilities and continue the family lineage (Gottlieb & Pancer, 1988, p. 235). There are developmental tasks associated with this addition of a family member. One has to do with child care, and the other concerns spousal well-being. Both of these are family maintenance tasks, the first dealing with physi­ cal maintenance; the second, morale mainte­ nance. Given the behavior shifts that partners face in becoming a family instead of only a couple, the heavy emphasis on maintenance duties is understandable. Let us begin with physical maintenance. It is the alteration in the couple's division of labor with the baby's coming that is associated with increased marital conflict and decreased

COUPLE RELATIONS OVER TIME

marital love, particularly among wives. They are handicapped initially by fatigue from giving birth and sometimes a sense of letdown once the long-awaited birth is a reality. Learning to meet the needs of an infant who initially lacks a schedule while facing marital and job re­ quirements means women have to reconcile conflicting obligations. In the last trimester of pregnancy, women are tired and physically awkward because of the extra weight they are carrying. Husbands are apt to pitch in then and take over house­ hold chores. Mothers-to-be understandably appreciate the help and come to expect it; how­ ever, after the infant's birth, these expectations are not borne out. Task performance is more specialized than in the pregnancy period, and child care becomes the province of mothers (Cowan 8c Cowan, 1988a). These unfulfilled expectations may underlie the decline in mari­ tal quality among dissatisfied couples. They tend to feel more distant from one another with the infant's birth, as each separately per­ forms different tasks to keep the augmented household going. The tiredness and worry that come from staying up all night with an irritable baby are accentuated when disagree­ ments about child care arise. Partners are feel­ ing more distant from each other, because one partner is increasingly seen as responsible for the welfare of the baby. It becomes difficult to talk over these disagreements. One longitudinal study found that just as couples felt less close after childbirth, by 6 and 18 months postpartum, marital satisfaction for both fathers and mothers was positively related to their satisfaction over how child care and other tasks were divided (Cowan 8c Cowan, 1988a, pp. 128-130, 140). It is not a particular type of division of labor, say, tradi­ tional or egalitarian, that is related to marital satisfaction but the partners' feelings about it. The earlier described longitudinal study of 98 couples, comparing those who became parents and those who did not, showed this to be the case. Although both groups of wives were performing more domestic chores than their husbands, the proportion for mothers went up significantly. It was among couples who held traditional sex role attitudes, but where fathers were more involved in child care and household tasks, however, that partners were less happy in their marriages (MacDermid et al., 1990). Parents' willingness

COUPLE RELATIONS AND

PARENTHOOD

to talk with each other about the domestic setup, and to modify it if necessary, appears essential to establishing a mutually agreeable arrangement regardless of the division of labor. Thus, openness of communication and suffi­ cient financial resources enable fortunate couples to minimize the parenthood crisis. The burden of role specifications for women as wives, mothers, and job holders, even when fathers take on household duties, leads to nonfulfillment of some maintenance tasks. Research reviews of the parenthood transition period show that it creates more overall chang­ es in women's lives than in men's lives. More often for men than women, the change is limit­ ed to their marital relations (Worthington & Buston, 1986). One such critical area is sex. Sexual intercourse is an important way in which couples can display their mutual at­ tachment, so it contributes to each partner's morale. Wives' sexual responsiveness tends to wane in the last trimester of pregnancy as their bodies become ungainly and their fatigue increases. Men, however, experience no such decrease in sexual interest. As one father-to­ be complained, " O u r sex life has certainly slowed down No, it's come to a screeching halt' " (Entwisle 8cDoering, 1981, p. 60). This decrease in responsiveness can continue even through the first crowded year after the baby's birth. Husbands may feel not only that they are losing out sexually in the transition to parent­ hood but also that they are enjoying less of their wives' undivided attention. Many wives recognize that the infant's needs take over much of the time they used to give their hus­ bands but feel the baby must come first. As a consequence, some husbands may have the sense that the new family is less a unity than a pair and a spare, and they are in the latter insecure position. Wives and husbands end up with less time and energy for themselves and are forced to postpone goals. No wonder they feel irritated and upset. One new mother described what can happen under these cir­ cumstances in this way: "Oh, we don't quarrel. We don't fight. It's just silly things like my asking him to bring some paper towels up, and he says, 'Can't I have two minutes peace?' And that infuriates me, be­ cause I haven't had two minutes peace since I had her. But, you know, I didn't say anything. I

139 just wish I could have one minute's peace!" (Entwisle 8c Doering, 1981, p. 175) For these reasons, maintaining comfort­ able couple relations while keeping the new star boarder reasonably content are tasks that loom large at this period. Having a child in the household may make a couple feel they are now a family, but the infant will surely affect the marital relation. The partners will have less time and money for leisure activities just when the energy and worry tied up in infant care would make such relief desirable. The role strain from the competing de­ mands of spouse, parent, and occupation, however, is lessened to some degree by the advantages parenthood confers that make adults feel proud and pleased. These morale boosters include seeing the infant develop and flourish. By talking about the baby, the couple has a new interest to share that brings them together at a time when boosts to their intimacy, such as coitus, are less frequent. There is a new purpose for living. Listen to this new mother: "I guess I'm really kind of enjoying her. I don't resent having to spend time with her. I enjoy having her here, and it's just really an exciting thing to see her learn to do different things One week she will not be able to do something, and the next week she can pick up something in one hand and then put it in the other hand. ... And it's really fascinating. It's ah experience that I think we both would have missed some­ thing had we not done it. I think we both benefited." (LaRossa & LaRossa, 1981, p. 109) The jobs partners hold, no matter how boring they are or how tired new parents might be at work, take on new meaning be­ cause they pay the baby bills. The community becomes "their community" now that the new resident will be using its parks and schools. Even parents whose advice may have been spurned by children during the pregnancy period acquire new worth as offspring come to realize the problems parents face in rearing children (Cowan 8c Cowan, 1988b). I will conclude this section by noting that parenthood does disrupt most marriages to some extent—and some marriages to a great extent (Worthington 8c Buston, 1986, p. 453). Psychologists Philip A. Cowan and Carolyn

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COUPLE RELATIONS OVER TIME

Pape Cowan (1988a), who have done lon­ gitudinal research on the parenthood transi­ tion, however, put it this way: "Babies do not appear to create severe marital distress where it was not present before, nor do they tend to bring already maritally distressed couples closer together" (p. 121). This conclusion suggests that these developmental tasks of the transi­ tion period are not easily accomplished by couples already having difficulties. Whether marriages remain unscathed by parenthood appears to depend on the juggling abilities of women and men to fit together marital, parental, and job roles. What we do know is that this is more likely to happen if each part­ ner gives a little in her or his expectations. When men add child care and housework to their other duties and women limit their in­ vestment in parenthood, both parties are more likely to retain their positive feelings about marriage (Cowan 8c Cowan, 1988b). The family task of morale maintenance is more apt to be accomplished.

Variation in

the Parenthood Transition

Most couples do not experience parent­ hood as a crisis situation. Good role models and helpful social networks, along with finan­ cial resources and the willingness to talk things through, can make the interlude before and after parenthood less of a traumatic break with what went before. But other factors can smooth the way, and it is to these I now turn. One of the few studies that has followed families for as long as several years after the first infant's birth is that of child psychologist Jay Belsky and his associates (Belsky 8c Rovine, 1990). It provides information from 128 white working- and middle-class couples, begin­ ning in the last trimester of pregnancy and continuing until the children were 3. Their reports can supply useful pointers about fac­ tors affecting marital quality during this junc­ ture in couples' lives. As we saw earlier, the passage of time creates difficulties for most couples in the early years of marriage. The findings for this sample of new parents indicate what it is about parent­ hood that can be tough on marriages. Across the first 3 years of marriage, these couples

showed declines in love for their spouses while feelings of ambivalence about them in­ creased. Among wives, conflict went up as open communication went down. But the records of individual couples over this period revealed considerable variation. Not all couples had histories of declining marital quality with the arrival of their babies. In fact, more than half the couples showed no change over the transition in their love for their partners. Slightly more than 10% of this number even experienced an increase. With respect to con­ flict, more than 30% of the spouses actually reported fewer disagreements and arguments. Where a clear majority of couples (more than 60%) did fall down as time went on was in behaviors that would maintain, improve, or enrich their marriages. It should be added, however, that the couples in the studies with the happiest marriages before childbirth retain this higher ranking after the event, but couples who are discontented with their marriages during pregnancy remain so afterward (Belsky 8c Pensky, 1988). There are factors associated with the "turn­ ing point blues" that new parents experience to varying degrees. Some of these, discussed in the previous chapter, not only contribute to declines in marital quality but also are associated with eventual marriage breakups. Factors such as younger ages, less education, and lower incomes in couples likely to divorce suggest that persons with these characteristics are not yet ready to settle down to the more humdrum existence of parental obligations. Consistent with this interpretation is the finding that couples experiencing declines in marital quality viewed their relation prior to the baby's birth as more often based on sen­ timents likely to fade, such as romance and physical attraction, rather than on mutual concern or cooperative partnership than did other couples. Infants' temperament at 3 months also can be related to the quality of wives' mar­ riages. Wives who reported that love for their husbands had declined since the birth of their children and that marital conflict had increased also reported their infants were on more ir­ regular schedules of eating and sleeping. The unpredictable infant routines provide a nice example of feedback between the mari­ tal and parental subsystems. These irregular schedules accentuate wives' fatigue and need

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PARENTHOOD

for additional emotional support from their husbands. Irritable babies, in turn, could be affected by the emerging marital problems that might make the mothers (and fathers) less consistent and sensitive to their infants' needs (Belsky 8c Rovine, 1990). Other lon­ gitudinal studies with small samples of largely white middle-class couples support this inter­ pretation. Mothers of 3-month-old infants in 38 families were warmer and more sensitive toward them when the quality of their mar­ riages during pregnancy was good. They also commonly discussed intimate and personal matters with their mates (Cox, Owen, Lewis, 8c Henderson, 1989). Fathers, too, benefit if the quality of their marriages is high. The same study shows they received more pleasure from their infants and were more responsive and involved with them when they were in close and confiding mar­ riages (Cox et al., 1989). In such marriages, both they and their wives not only talk out their misgivings and anxieties about the new­ comer's insistent and continuous wants but also express the pride and delight they feel about the new addition to the family. When marriages are distant, fathers are more likely to remain bystanders rather than participants in the family. Because father roles, aside from being a breadwinner, are not well defined, wives in happy marriages can draw husbands into the parent-child subsystem through their praise and assistance. To summarize the research evidence I have presented so far, it appears that parenthood does represent a real break in family careers, with changes that go beyond those entailed in getting married. Although not all couples feel a decline in marital satisfaction, those who do were less happy prenatally and less prepared to take on parental responsibilities. Moreover, the interdependence of members in the fami­ ly system showed in the interrelation of mari­ tal discontent and mothers' and fathers' dif­ ficulties in caring for infants.

ities. Because women are themselves more and more coproviders for their families, it is harder to make the argument that men fulfill paternal responsibilities by bringing home a paycheck. Many fathers also want to be more involved in child rearing than were their fathers. They believe they missed out in not having fathers who listened to what went on at school or with the guys and talked to them about what was important to do besides play. The present generation usually wants to be more than disciplinarians. Fathers want to be enough of a presence in their children's lives that they can tell you what their offspring like and what goals they have helped them ac­ complish. Yet there are limits to how involved they care to be. One father wondered whether he would continue to want his children if he had to share half the care of them. He simply did not know (Thomas, 1988, p. 64). A number of men get some foretaste of fatherhood when they participate with their partners in expectant parent classes. This preparation and the coaching fathers do during the birth process involves them specifically in the period prior to the baby's arrival. Atten­ tion then is focused on the mother, and with­ out such involvement, men may well feel having babies is women's work and can be left to them. Yet the interdependence of the marital couple continues during the pregnan­ cy period. Mothers are more positive about childbirth when their partners were with them in preparation classes and during the delivery (Entwisle 8c Doering, 1981). Hospitals, recognizing how pregnancy and childbirth are a couple affair, offer couple classes and encourage family members to be present when the baby arrives. One new mother, who went to a birthing center where women without birth complications can lar­ gely determine what they do, described to me the arrival of her firstborn as a family event: Jim [ n o t his n a m e ] w a s w i t h m e t h e w h o l e t i m e , e n c o u r a g i n g a n d talking to m e w h i l e I w a s t r y i n g to find a c o m f o r t a b l e p o s i t i o n , s q u a t ­

Bringing Fathers Into Parenthood As long ago as 1910, novelist Ε. M. Forster (1943) wrote of a husband who, with respect to his wife, "gave her all his affection and half his attention" (p. 110). Increasingly today, wives are objecting to this attention deficit and especially so with parenthood responsibil­

t i n g , s t a n d i n g u p , l y i n g d o w n , y o u n a m e it. By the t i m e o u r s o n arrived, w e t h r e e w e r e s o tired w h e n the n u r s e a n d m i d w i f e left w e all w e n t t o sleep t o g e t h e r in t h e b i g b e d in t h e r o o m .

Too often, this preparation does not include instruction on how both parents can perform child care tasks after the baby is born. As a

142 consequence, traditional role prescriptions for mothers and fathers usually take over. The dynamics of how this role assignment occurs appear in the following exchange of a couple responding to an interviewer's question con­ cerning who was going to diaper the baby: Irene: Oh, he says me. He can't stand messy diapers He has no desire to change the baby. Ike: I have no outward desire to change dia­ pers, but I probably just out of curiosity would change a diaper. I mean, I don't know. Irene: I think it would be funny. Interviewer: Do you have a desire to change diapers, Irene? Ike: She likes all those things that go along with motherhood. Irene: I have never thought about it. I just knew it was something you had to do whether you like it or not. Interviewer: But Ike has evidently thought about it a little bit more. Ike: Well, it's not a male role. Let's put it that way. Irene: It's a mother's job. (quoted in LaRossa, 1977, p. 140) Studies of couples' child care during the transition to parenthood confirm that this conventional division of labor is the actuality. One-hour observations in the homes of 64 white middle-class couples and their first­ borns, when the infants were 1,3, and 9 months old, showed how mother-centered child care was. Mothers were significantly more likely to respond to their babies, care for them, en­ courage them to pay attention to something, and give them affection. The total number of such acts by mothers was 138.9, compared with 52 for fathers. Only in reading and watch­ ing television, solitary activities, were fathers significantly more active than mothers (54.1 acts vs. 29.8) (Belsky & Volling, 1987, p. 46, Table 3.1). Gender of the child made no dif­ ference in the results, and it is commonplace that mothers do more with their babies than do fathers, given equal opportunities (Berman 8c Pedersen, 1987, p. 224). Babies seldom prove as attractive or as much fun as men's customary recreational activities. One new

COUPLE RELATIONS OVER TIME

mother complained about her husband who was frequently off with his friends at night: "I'm lonesome, you know. And I'm envious because I would like to be doing a lot of things (that he does) too. And I'd rather that hebe home with me, you know, doing things together rather than, you know, doing them separately.... I don't know. I don't think I'm as nice a person as I used to be. I think it's more of a result of I've been nagging more, I guess just because he's gone so much, but I don't otherwise, I don't think I have... I think what's changed the most has been our relationship, my husband's and my relationship." (LaRossa & LaRossa, 1981, p. 174) Another study of a small sample of 46 white middle-class couples showed that both fathers and mothers wanted greater paternal involve­ ment when comparing what they were actual­ ly doing in child care with their beliefs as to what would be ideal (Dickie, 1987). What can be done to encourage this invol­ vement? Men's interest in fathering can show up as early as the pregnancy period. Those who expect to be more involved in their chil­ dren's care and to have more child-centered attitudes at that time tend to be happier later with their actual child care involvement (Cowan 8c Cowan, 1987). But generally, wives' encouragement appears to be critical. In the longitudinal study of Belsky and Volling re­ ferred to above, positive marital communica­ tion when the infants were 1 month old was related to fathers being more affectionate and active with their infants 2 months later. There was no influence of fathers' behaviors on mothers' care. Friendly conversations between partners may provide an opportunity for fathers to learn more about child care, because women generally have expected to both fulfill these developmental tasks and receive encourage­ ment to do more. Also, it appeared that at the three periods of family observations, positive marital exchanges generally occurred in the context of pleasant parent-child interchang­ es. Both spouses paying attention to their baby was also associated with their frequently stimulating the infant, another occasion for positive feedback from marital to parental subsystems. Consequently, to socialize hus­ bands into being active fathers, wives must be

COUPLE RELATIONS AND

143

PARENTHOOD

willing to work with them as both skill teachers and cheerleaders. The findings of satisfaction in the marital and parent-child subsystems being positively related need to be specified. Just as some hus­ bands may resent their wives' attentions to the baby because it conflicts with the marital relation, so some wives may view fathers' child care as a threat to their parental dedication. One woman expressed such feelings at a 6­ months-postpartum interview:" Ί love seeing the closeness between him and the baby, espe­ cially since I didn't have that with my father, but if he does well at his work andhis relation­ ship with the baby, what's my special contri­ bution?" " (Cowan & Cowan, 1987, p. 168). If such feelings are coupled with husbands' con­ viction that women are better with babies, it results in fathers quickly deferring to mothers if the babies seem uneasy under their care. The mother's quickness to step in both strengthens the father's belief that child nur­ turance is women's work and short-circuits his learning child care skills. Wives who assign less centrality to parenting, however, allow their husbands more time to turn their fum­ bling attempts with the baby into more adept handling. In turn, husbands who give greater priority to parenting are more likely to per­ severe in infant care despite feelings of in­ competence. The rewards they receive from their feelings of competence and their wives' support for this infant care contribute to fathers' later caring activities with the child at 18 months. An artful balance between marital and parental roles in both women and men is necessary for the accommodation of the two subsystems within the family unit. The right balance for couples varies in this era of role creation, when there are few givens acceptable to both spouses in family arrangements. Role making needs to occur. What does seem criti­ cal is that fathers' participation in child care and household maintenance is worked out collaboratively by the spouses and that both are comfortable with it. Whether it is a tradi­ tional or an egalitarian setup is less important than the decision process. Men seem to enjoy fathering, especially if they can determine its amount. Women have the same feelings. The change from past years is that with both being job holders, women are more likely to press fathers to share child care responsibilities.

Tradition and socialization that say child care is women's work are not the only factors standing in the way of men's taking on more family responsibilities. There is the sheer ef­ fort involved in doing often disagreeable tasks. One father realized that child care was a tough job. He spoke of the work required to clean up a baby and see that a child has food numerous times a day. He explained that such duties are far from fun (Thomas, 1988, p. 64). Fathers are understandably reluctant to take on such additional unpleasant work. There is also the excuse of job demands. Less effective now that so many women are in the labor market after childbirth, it still remains a negative factor in fathers' home participation. Men fear that if they become too active in infant care and their associates find out, they will be seen as soft. Worse still, they may be put in the "daddy track" of men seen as not committed to the company and thus unlikely to be promoted. Even with paren­ tal leave policies, there are plenty of horror stories about men whose careers are in high gear but become stalled after they take time off with a new baby. One finance manager, who resigned from his job at a pharmaceuti­ cal company to spend a year with his two preschoolers after his wife's leave was over, expressed his concerns now that he had begun a job search. He worried that prospective em­ ployers would not appreciate what he had done. He felt corporations might not under­ stand that some parents, including fathers, want time to spend with their children, not just better day care centers (Lawson, 1991, p. C8). Regardless of whether today's fathers are more active in caring for their children, they are increasingly familiar with the con­ flicting demands on women's time coming from children, partners, and jobs. THE SECOND CHILD AND MARITAL HAPPINESS

In contrast to the large number of re­ searchers looking at the initiation of parent­ hood, very few have investigated the effect of later-borns on marriages. One might argue that having had the experience of the first child's coming, couples could initiate posi­ tive feedback processes to minimize possible negative effects of the second child's arrival.

144

COUPLE RELATIONS OVER

One longitudinal study done some years ago, comparing couples expecting their first child and couples who were going to be par­ ents for the second time, did not find this to be true. There appeared to be an even greater crisis for the second group than for new parents, with less marital and sexual satisfac­ tion and more negative assessments of chang­ es in the spouse's personality (Feldman, 1971). Even in families who put the priority on the family unit and families who stress individ­ ualism or the marital over the parent-child relations, this decline in satisfaction occurs with the second child (LaRossa & LaRossa, 1981). The doubling of possible two-person rela­ tionships that results from incorporating the infant into what is now a family unit of four, not to mention the four triadic relations and one tetradic relation of the enlarged family, can play havoc with family cohesion (Kreppner, 1988). The newcomer is an intruder who destroys existing structural arrangements. The primacy of the firstborn is threatened, and there is now a sibling subsystem, compet­ ing with the adults in the marital subsystem for attention and care, that threatens the former emotional balance in marital and parentchild relations. .

A small observational study of 16 families with two children followed over a 2-year period showed the shifts in interaction patterns that occur. Mothers talk less to their older children after the second child's arrival and do less for them when both children are together. This was especially marked, as we might expect, when the second was less than 1 year old. Fathers, when present, seemingly attempted to fill in the gap by paying more attention to their firstborn. When the baby was 8 months old, neither parent devoted as much time to her or him as previously. Also, by this period, in what seemed to be a newly established family equilibrium, the parents showed no difference in activity with their firstborn (Kreppner, 1988). Thus, with the second child's arrival, both the older child and partners can feel left out. Because both parents have to give more time to a new family member, with consequent member feelings of neglect and increased demands for attention, marital quality and parent-child relations can suffer. Morale and physical maintenance family developmental tasks again take priority.

TIME

Children and Divorce It used to be a part of folk wisdom that when a marriage was in trouble, the wife's having a baby was the way to set things right. With the current high divorce rates, this belief has been put into question. This is especially true because studies covering the transition to parenthood show that couples unhappy before the coming of children tend to suffer more of a crisis after their births. Are they, therefore, more likely to divorce? The answer is, not necessarily those with first­ borns, for there is virtually no divorce during the infants' first year. This preventive effect, however, does not hold for later births, and as children get older, divorces do occur. Parents' feelings of responsibility for children and the difficulty of dividing limited assets are not enough to keep unhappy marriages from breaking up (White, Booth, 8c Edwards, 1986). Parents of daughters, interestingly enough, are more likely to divorce than parents of sons. The reason may be that fathers of sons are more involved in their actual care and so have more to lose emotionally if the marriage fails (Morgan, Lye, 8c Condran, 1988). Childless couples, however, are more likely to divorce than couples with children and after shorter marital durations (Wineberg, 1988). Unhap­ py marriages may have led couples to avoid having children, and having less to lose in the way of shared property and youthful depen­ dents, they view divorce as a iess momentous break with the past than do couples with youngsters. Thus, there continues to be some truth in the association of childlessness with divorce, although having children does not prevent it.

Single Women and Parenthood In addition to changes in the number of women remaining on their jobs throughout pregnancy and returning to work after child­ birth, another trend affecting the turning point of parenthood is the number of single mothers starting families. There is less of a stigma than in the past on being an unmarried mother, and the incidence is more prevalent. The changes are quite dramatic. In 1970, just 6.8% of children less than 18 years old in a one­

COUPLE RELATIONS AND

145

PARENTHOOD

TABLE 7.1 Children Under 18 in 1970 and 1993 Living in Two-Parent Families by Race 1970 Race All races White Black Hispanic

b

1993

N*

Percentage

69,162 58,790 9,422 4,006

85.2 89.5 58.5 77.7

N

Percentage

a

66,893 53,075 10,660 7,776

70.5 77.2 35.6 64.5

SOURCE: Based o n Saluter (1994. p. xi, Table F). a. N = N u m b e r s in thousands. b. Persons of Hispanic origin m a y be of any race and therefore do not always figure into the "All races" category.

TABLE 7.2 Children Under 18 in 1993 Living in Never-Married and Divorced Families According to Race and Gender of Parent 3

Mothers

Fathers

Never-Married N All races White Black Hispanic'

b

5,511 2,015 3,317 848

Percentage 8.5 3.9 33.6 11.3

Divorced N

b

5,687 4,441 1,032 579

Never-Married

Percentage 8.7 8.5 10.5 7.7

N

b

747 533 176 137

Divorced

Percentage

N

1.1 1.0 1.8 1.8

950 840 73 66

b

Percentage 1.5 1.6 0.7 0.9

SOURCE: Based on Saluter (1994, p p . 3 6 , 4 0 , 4 4 . 4 8 , Table 6). a. Does n o t include children living with widowed parents or married parents with a spouse missing. b. N= N u m b e r s in t h o u s a n d s . c. Persons of Hispanic origin may be of any race and therefore d o not always figure into the "All races" category.

parent home were living with a never-married parent. In 1993, the figure was 35%. Thus, the number of never-married parents has in­ creased almost seven times in the past several decades. The comparable figures for children in single-parent families where the parent was divorced were 30.2% in the earlier year and 37.1% in 1993 (Saluter, 1994, p. xii, Table G). By the early 1990s, children were only some­ what more Hkely to live with a divorced parent than a never-married parent. Tables 7.1 and 7.2 indicate the racial differences in the per­ centages of children living in the different types of families. White children are more likely than other racial groups to be living in two-parent families. They and Hispanic children are also less likely to be living with a divorced parent. Table 7.2 also shows that, regardless of race, children are much more likely to be in single-mother than singlefather homes. For some single women in the professions, parenthood is a carefully thought through choice. Particularly if they are in their 30s or 40s, such women believe they cannot wait

for an intimate relationship to develop that might involve marriage to have children. They also feel they are not so different from di­ vorced mothers, and they have the financial resources to provide for children. To be sure, there are disadvantages in not having a part­ ner to help out or at least listen to the troubles of these women who often have exhausting jobs. One such single mother, a teacher of children with learning disabilities, admitted that occasionally she wished she had a man present to give her some time to catch her breath. But divorced twice, she believed mar­ riage was not an option. She felt she wasn't cut out for it (Hartman, 1989, p. C10). More typical than these favored few are young women with limited educational or financial resources who do not consciously make the choice to become pregnant. Espe­ cially among teenagers, few women begin having sex because they want to have a child. Some are coerced into sexual activity by males who have little concern about preventing parenthood. One national survey found that three fourths of the very young girls having

146 intercourse, that is, those under 14 years of age, reported that they had been forced at some point to have sex. Among mothers 17 years or younger, just about one fourth of the fathers are that young (Vbbejda, 1994a). Other women may consent to males' active searching for sex partners, because having sex can be a source of status and is pleasurable. Most women have tried to use contraceptives but regardless of age are not always very adept at birth control (Furstenberg, 1992). Although only about one third of nonmarital births occur to teenagers and only about half of such births are to first-time mothers, ado­ lescent mothers attract major public concern (Bumpass 8c McLanahan, 1989). Their parent­ hood transition creates the most problems, for they are the least prepared to become parents. One longitudinal study of a representative sample of Baltimore adolescents who became pregnant between 1965 and 1967, indicates the difficulties faced by these most vulnerable of new mothers (Furstenberg, Brooks-Gunn, 8c Morgan, 1987a; Furstenberg, Levine, & Brooks-Gunn, 1990). As is true of some mar­ ried couples who neglect to use contraceptives, the unmarried engaging in sex often have not rationally thought through its possible conse­ quences and are unprepared to face them. In this study, the adolescent mothers came primarily from black inner-city families who were poor or near poor. Half of the teenaged mothers lived in single-parent families, and one fourth of these families were on welfare. There was a tradition of early childbearing in the families. Nearly half of the adolescents' mothers had themselves been parents before reaching their 20s. Despite these disadvan­ taged circumstances, however, almost half of the parents were employed, although in poor­ ly paying jobs, and most of the families did not live in Baltimore's poorest neighborhoods. The adolescents' early childbearing was re­ lated to an intergenerational history of low educational achievement. They were more likely to have parents with little education and to have done less well in school than their peers who avoided pregnancy. These young women's lack of educational resources, coupled with their families' poverty, made parent­ hood, if not specifically planned, at least a way out. Getting a job or more education were not realistic alternatives to the traditional posi­ tion of motherhood. This outcome could be

COUPLE RELATIONS OVER

TIME

attained without considerable formal train­ ing or hard-won achievement, depending as it does on physical coupling. Unfortunately, the consequences of early childbearing for these young mothers and other young mothers from deprived or disap­ proving families are too often foreclosure of future opportunities for themselves and their offspring. They were more likely to have larger families and to be on welfare than their peers who had postponed childbearing until their 20s. If adolescent mothers remained in school, graduated, and used contraceptives to avoid additional births within 5 years of the first birth, however, they were more likely to escape welfare. This was also the case if they married and stayed married. The transition to parenthood for these wives tended to follow along more conventional lines (Furstenberg et al., 1987a). Family support, whether from a parent or a partner, clearly makes a difference in the futures of initially unwed mothers. When mar­ riage is not a lasting alternative, sharing a resi­ dence with parents who can help with infant care during school or job hours is the next best outcome for young mothers. Baltimore adolescents who remained with their families after giving birth were more likely tofinishhigh school and become economically indepen­ dent. Black mothers are generally better-off than white mothers with respect to being part of a support network that provides housing, unpaid child care, or a good part of their in­ comes. Figures from a representative sample of young women showed 68% of single black mothers to be in such networks. Slightly more than half (54%) of white single mothers were so involved. But substantial numbers of black and white single mothers lack this support, and additional mothers in these networks receive insufficient child care aid (Hogan.Hao, 8c Parish, 1990). Regardless of class back­ ground, therefore, young single mothers face more than their share of parenting problems. There are women who, through dogged determination, find out about programs that pay college tuition or provide subsidized day care or transportation money to get to class, but they are the exceptions. One woman, who had finally obtained the college degree that enabled her to get a nursing position, ex­ plained, " Ί wouldn't have got help if I didn't continually ask questions.'" She warned that to

COUPLE RELATIONSAND

PARENTHOOD

get off welfare, you really have to be moti­ vated. Poverty pinches even harder if you have children, and welfare checks are low. They do not keep families from being poor (Bounds, 1992, p. A5). Under these circumstances, it is hard for people to take the difficult actions necessary to escape poverty, especially when jobs that pay a living wage are in short supply. Childbearing at young ages not only sets up barriers to single mothers' achievements but also negatively affects their offspring. Mothers with little education have difficulty in helping their children do well in school and in con­ vincing them that, with hard work, they might be able to go on for an advanced educa­ tion. With little preparation for good jobs, youths get into trouble. Although 63% of the children of the young Baltimore mothers, described above, had high school diplomas, more than one fifth (23%) had dropped out of school. They were also more likely than children of older mothers to drink, to be on drugs, and to be sexually active at younger ages (Furstenberg et al., 1987a). Moreover, as is true in national samples, the daughters of these teenage mothers were more likely to become mothers as teenagers than were daughters of older mothers (33% vs. 21%). A scant num­ ber of them, just 12%, married and remained married, compared with their mothers (45%), who gave birth as teenagers. Thus, growing up in poor families headed by less-educated and less stably employed single mothers dispro­ portionately results in a repetition of eco­ nomic disadvantage and a premature transi­ tion to parenthood with little family support (Furstenberg et al, 1990, pp. 55, 57). 1

Single Men and Parenthood In recognizing the fact that it takes a man and a woman to procreate, let us now turn to the men who father the children of women at the more underprivileged end of the unmar­ ried parenthood continuum. Much less is known about the fathers than the mothers, because fatherhood is presumed but mother­ hood is proven. The information I present here is better than most, because it comes from the National Longitudinal Survey of Labor Market Experience of Youth. It showed that 7% of young males ages 20 to 27 in 1984 admitted

147 to having fathered a child. These young fathers came from backgrounds similar to those of the teenage women they impregnated. Unlike adolescent males who had not fathered a child, they were more likely to be black and to come from single-parent families with parents who had not finished high school (Marsiglio, 1987). For at least one half of the young fathers, the role they played in the transition to parent­ hood was limited to conception. Half did not marry the mother or live with their children and the mothers during the 12-month period after the birth of the children. Young men who had been fathers in early adolescence, before they were 16 and thus less prepared to take on family responsibilities, were less likely to be with their offspring. Some of these youths were like one disadvantaged father in the Baltimore study of adolescent mothers. The mother of his child described their relation in the following terms: " 'He and I definitely broke up. He doesn't have enough education. Marriage with him wouldn't work out'" (Furstenberg, 1976, p. 75). White youths from conventional backgrounds, perhaps in response to family and neighbor pressure, showed a greater likelihood to be with their children, at least initially. They were more apt to come from intact families, to be Catholic, and to live in rural areas. Being older, ages 17 to 19, they may have been in a better position to fulfill parental duties (Marsiglio, 1987). There is also some evidence that just as motherhood is an available option for young women with few resources and opportunities, fatherhood may be a substitute for achieve­ ment in school or employment. The status, even when not recognized in the form of fulfilling responsibilities, is seen among lower income blacks as a sign of virility and achieve­ ment in the area of sexual conquest (Franklin, 1987). But teenage males, regardless of race, who marry and then conceive children are the most unlikely of any group of youths in the national survey to complete high school. Less than one third (30%) of them did so. This compares with 86% of adolescents who did not father a child until they were 20 or older and with 59% of 11- to 17-year-olds who had premaritally conceived a child (Marsiglio, 1987, p. 247). Moreover, even after 30 to 40 years, men who marry early have less schooling and hold poorer paying jobs than those who post­

148

COUPLE RELATIONS OVER TIME

pone marriage until they are older (Teti, Lamb, & Elster, 1987). Therefore, we see again why youthful age at marriage is associated with low incomes and high rates of divorce. Just as with single mothers, there are ex­ ceptions to the poor outcomes of the early marrieds. I think here of a graduate school friend. He and his wife were barely 19 when they wed. They had their children, and with lots of assistance from both sets of parents, he managed to obtain a postgraduate education. Meanwhile, his wife was earning the major share of the family income. Theirs was a suc­ cess story, but my friend and his wife had barely survived a number of serious threats to their marriage from overwork, fatigue, and lack of money. As a result, they are the first to counsel postponing partnerships and parent­ hood responsibilities to later ages. Summary Parenthood is a turning point in the lives of persons who take on the status. More than marriage, it forces a break with past routines and ways of getting along. For many, it sym­ bolizes the achievement of adulthood and the beginning of family careers. People tend to view children as sources of love and affection as well as a shared commitment that contrib­ utes to partner cohesion. Couples who are not childless through choice often feel they are failures, and this is especially true of women for whom motherhood has traditionally been their most valued position. Regardless of whether partners take on parental responsibilities, the sheer passage of time seems to lead to a decline in marital satisfaction among most couples. Yet parent­ hood is often characterized as a problematic time, despite all the advantages in community and kindred recognition it brings to couples who havefinancialresources, negotiation skills, and willingness to modify existing patterns. A

number of couples in high quality marriages before pregnancy, who come from families in which their parents demonstrated their love for each other and their children, survive the transition without more than passing prob­ lems. But less happy couples before the tran­ sition, adolescent partners, and those poorly prepared occupationally or educationally do less well. Women, especially, who are increas­ ingly in the labor force before and after child­ birth, are having to cope with conflicting work, marital, and parent demands while experi­ encing discomfort and fatigue. The elements that give families systemlike qualities appear in the parenthood transition. The stress that mothers in unhappy couples feel seems to feed back and relate to irrita­ bility in infants, which strains the parentchild subsystem. The interdependence of spouses comes through clearly when we look at the amount of participation of fathers in child care. The family developmental tasks of physical and morale maintenance loom large in this period. Fathers, through either their task performance or lack of it, have much to do with how successfully the family will avoid the problems of marital discontent and parental tedium. The duties and obligations bound up in parenthood make it hard for single mothers without good support networks to survive the experience. Both they and their offspring as adults are likely to be handicapped in making a living and fulfilling family responsibilities. Thus, parenthood does demand persons with adult resources and support partners if it is to be an event that contributes to a fulfilling family future.

Note 1. From Bounds (1992). Reprinted by permission of the Elkhart Truth.

δ

Partner Relations

During the Child-Rearing Years

What Is Coming This chapter continues our examination of the couple career, most often involving mar­ ried couples. I have discussed the formation of single-parent families due to unwed parent­ hood and will have more to say on the topic in connection with divorce. I have also shown the changes couples experience after they add parental roles to marital roles. The shifts in interaction patterns with the new arrivals again demonstrate the systemic character of families, the interdependencies of their mem­ bers. They share a common fate. What hap­ pens to one or two affects other family members. The coming of children also brings about alterations in family members' transac­ tions with outsiders. These changes are dis­ tinctive enough to serve as demarcating points in individual family histories. The chapter begins with a brief summary of couples' transitions into and out of mar­ riages and their passages through the childrearing years. It is followed by a discussion of the satisfaction of couples with their marriages during these years. There is a section on fac­ tors in the parent-child subsystem that feed back on the marital relation. The boundaries

of family systems are now more open as fathers and mothers are both likely to be in the labor force. Therefore, the discussion concludes with an analysis of how these paid activities affect marital quality and parenting. Throughout the chapter, the effects of the demographic characteristics of couples appear. The Demographics of the Marital Career We know from the previous chapters that persons tend to be marrying later. This defer­ ral of entering socially legitimated unions leads to postponed parenthood, especially among highly educated women in demanding and rewarding occupations. The possible conflict between children and jobs may also account for the expected greater childlessness among women born in the 1950s and 1960s. These trends have slowed the customary marital career, marked by couples marrying, bearing children, rearing them, seeing them leave home, and then settling down again as couples until one spouse dies. All these events are generally occurring later in individuals' lives than a half century ago. 149

150

COUPLE RELATIONS OVER

Today's marital careers have also been dis­ rupted by high divorce rates, and divorced persons are less often remarrying than in the past. Demographer Paul C. Glick (1947), whose early work on the timing of family events produced the markers in the original family cycle concept, has summarized its upheavals in the past several decades. The data suggest that the usual transitions following marriage of having children and seeing their departure now have been broadened to include leaving that marriage and afterward remaining unwed, cohabiting with someone, or establishing a new marital partnership. These variant paths complicate and add to the array of family careers. Some demographers, noting the in­ crease in the age at marriage and the decrease in the proportion of men and women marry­ ing, have called it a "retreat from marriage" (Schoen & Weinick, 1993, p. 737). Glick (1989), however, reminds us that about 90% of young people will eventually marry. He notes that almost one half of the couples who marry will remain together despite the competing alter­ natives available. He adds that of those who do divorce, two thirds to three fourths will eventually remarry. Consequently, marital careers continue to figure, in one form or another, in most people's lives despite a num­ ber of variations in their sequencing. Marriage and

Personal Happiness

Before looking at how marital satisfaction fares during the child-rearing years, let us examine the relation between being married and individuals' happiness at different ages. People marry in the United States primarily for reasons of personal choice, and the expec­ tation of sharing one's life with someone who will add to their happiness assumes top priority. Consequently, marital happiness should be tied to personal happiness. To see whether the relation exists, it would be good to have the persons being asked about their happiness also asked how long they have been married. Investigators who have looked at trends on this issue, using data sources such as the yearly general social surveys (GSS), however, do not always supply this informa­ tion. Accordingly, I will use age of the respon­ dents in these studies with representative na­

TIME

tional samples as a very rough indicator of where they are in their marital careers. If one looks only at women and men 25 to 39 years of age who respond to a question as to their personal happiness, the group should include most of those likely to be in the childrearing years, along with some in the initial period of marriage. With this warning con­ cerning the nature of the data, we can com­ pare the proportion saying they are "very happy" of those who are married and those who have never married. The other responses were "pretty happy" or "not too happy" (Lee, Seccombe, & Shehan, 1991). Over the years, beginning in 1972 and con­ tinuing until the end of the 1980s, there was a trend toward an increase in the percentage of married men who report themselves to be very happy. In 1986 to 1989, the proportions were one third of the samples or better. Earlier, the percentages were somewhat more likely to fluctuate around 30%. It was noteworthy that wives are still more likely to report being happy in their marriages than husbands. It tended to be around 40% in the late 1980s. This probably reflects the greater importance of being married to women in general and especially for those who want to be mothers. Married women, however, in this period showed decreases in the percentages that re­ ported being very happy. In the earlier years, it was more likely to be 44% or higher. This same analysis also showed the happiness of the never-married, in the same age range of 25 to 39, to have gone up among both women and men. For both groups, it increased from below 15% in the early 1970s to generally above 20% in the later years of the 1980s, with women generally somewhat higher (Lee et al., 1991). I shall have more to say later in the chapter on why the happiness of wives appeared to decrease over these years, but the trend was toward an increase among husbands. Here, it is worth summarizing again the earlier dis­ cussion of why young never-married persons are happier than in the past. Unlike the situa­ tion in the early part of the 20th century, in­ creasing numbers of unmarried women have the education and training to be financially independent. They can enjoy the freedom of taking advantage of job opportunities, developing close friendships and sexual rela­ tionships, and exploring particular avocations in depth (Stein, 1987). Single men have long

PARTNER RELATIONS DURING THE CHILD-REARING

been blessed with these privileges. These pluses can compensate for the minuses the nevermarried face of going against parent and peer pressures and failing to conform to tradition­ al life scripts. As one single woman summed up her situation, "What so few [of the married crowd] realize is that many of us simply are not the 'swinging singles' created by the media, nor are we society's lonely misfits, old maids, awkward bachelors, gays or bookish bores Thousands of us love our work, enjoy our friends and our solitudes and don't give a damn about scoring or settling down because that's what's normal." (Shostak, 1987, p. 366) Marital Quality During the Child-Rearing Years How couples feel about each other can be summarized by the term marital quality, al­ though labels such as marital adjustment, mari­ tal satisfaction, and marital happiness are also often used. There are longitudinal studies that highlight factors associated with alterations in husband-wife relationships during the years when children are present in the household. To provide some estimate of how much of the change occurring is due to the presence of children and how much is due simply to the passage of time, the discussion of the studies includes available comparable data from child­ less couples, along with relevant material drawn from cross-sectional research. I shall include such studies done in different years to discover trends over the marital career that appear to hold despite differences in the historical time location of couples. This analysis of marital quality during the child-rearing years begins with the landmark longitudinal study of sociologists Ernest W. Burgess and Paul Wallin. In 1939, they made contact with 1,000 middle-class, predomi­ nandy white, engaged couples. Three years after they were married, they completed follow-up questionnaires (Burgess & Wallin, 1953). Six­ teen to 20 years later, husbands and wives in 400 couples who could be reached again pro­ vided information on their marriages. Attri­ tion in the sample over time was due to broken engagements, divorce, death, refusals, and lost

YEARS

151

contacts. The primary finding was that more than two thirds of the couples scored lower in marital adjustment during the middle years of marriage than they had when reached 1 to 5 years after the ceremony. In overall terms, this meant that husbands and wives were living less comfortably with one another (Pineo, 1961). There have been several shorter term lon­ gitudinal studies in more recent years that have produced similar results (Spanier, Lewis, & Cole, 1975). One such study reported find­ ings from a national sample of married per­ sons under 55 years of age followed over 8 years. By the third wave of telephone interviews, aside from attrition due to death or divorce, one third of the original sample had dropped out. As a result, the respondents were some­ what less representative of the less well-off, blacks and Hispanics, renters, the less well educated, and younger people. This research showed, as had the research a half century before, that marital happiness declined along with couple interaction for the remaining re­ spondents regardless of marital duration. Marriages of less than 5 years showed the steepest declines (White 8c Booth, 1991). On the other hand, the sample members' specific reports of the more negative aspects of mar­ ried life, such as their considering divorce, problems with the spouses' behaviors and per­ sonality traits, or marital disagreements, re­ mained stable over time. Persons were neither better nor worse off compared with others in the sample, regardless of how short or long a period they had been married (Johnson, Amoloza, 8c Booth, 1992). Earlier cross-sectional studies with smaller samples also showed some decline in marital happiness during the child-present years, with perhaps a slight increase for still-married couples in the years after children had left home (Rollins 8c Cannon, 1974). This modified curvi­ linear pattern of reported high marital quality at the beginning of marriage, with a sharp drop-off in the early years when many are going through the transition to parenthood and continued decline until things start im­ proving around the 30-year anniversary, has also been found in more recent cross-sectional research. One investigation, using 13 national surveys conducted in the United States from 1973 to 1987, reported trends on people who said their marriages were very happy. The

152 results shown in Table 8.1 indicate that these negative duration effects are greater for females than males and for blacks than whites (Glenn, 1989). We should remember, however, that in these surveys the really unhappy have re­ moved themselves from being questioned through divorce. It is also good to note that in cross-sectional studies, trends that appear depend on the assumption that more recent­ ly married couples will experience shifts in marital happiness similar to those of couples with longer marital durations. The declines for African American wives are particularly noticeable. Less than 15% of those still married from 9 years to a quarter century said they are very happy in their mar­ riages. It also appears that when duration of marriage is controlled and those with and with­ out children under 18 at home are compared on marital happiness, white mothers are sig­ nificantly less likely to say they are very happy. There are also sizable differences between black wives and husbands who are parents and those black spouses who are not. The rearing of children falls mainly on women and, whether due to fatigue or resentment, appears to de­ crease their marital satisfaction. The fall in personal and marital happiness that coincides with the child-rearing period is related to divorce. The transition out of mar­ riage is more likely in the early years, when decreases in happiness are most apparent. But as the years go on and children grow older, even though marital satisfaction never again comes close to the "honeymoon euphoria" of the beginning months, couples tend to stick together once the early high divorce-prone years are over. The researchers who followed the national sample of married individuals under 55 years old over 8 years found that people who divorced after being married 8 years or less were significantly less unhappy than people who divorced later (White & Booth, 1991). In other words, the longer they have been together, the more dissatisfaction it takes for couples to call it quits. This makes sense in terms of social ex­ change theory, a theory discussed in Chapter 1. If we take a perspective on the family career over a period of time, the longer persons are married, the more barriers there are to getting out of it, and the fewer attractive alterna­ tives there are outside the existing relationship (Levenger, 1979). Exchanging it for single-

COUPLE RELATIONS OVER

TIME

hood or another arrangement is a more costly bargain with fewer payoffs than breaking up in earlier years. For example, when married persons consider the alternatives, the longer married report fewer remarriage opportu­ nities than those married shorter periods. Age may make them less physically attractive. In addition, wives married at least 8 years are more likely to report lower earned incomes than do wives married shorter periods. The presence of children may have shortened their work hours or lessened their opportunities for promotion. Wives in these longer unions are also more likely to be unemployed and thus financially dependent (White 8t Booth, 1991). The income that would permit their leaving the existing economic setup is less likely to be available as marriages endure. As alternatives to the existing union de­ crease, the barriers to leaving it increase in longer marriages. These couples are more likely than their more recently married counter­ parts to share greater financial assets and home ownership. They also are more likely to have friends in common and to belong to the same organizations. Thus, routine, inertia, and lowered expectations can keep older marrieds in unhappier relationships than more recent­ ly married couples are willing to accept. Pre­ dictability in how family tasks get done and how spouses are likely to react to the stress of day-to-day living can decrease partners' desires to look beyond existing family boun­ daries for better deals. One 40-year-old woman, when asked to explain what she meant when she said she needed her husband, commented this way: "Boy, this is a hard one The image that comes to my mind is getting in bed naked and wrap­ ping ourselves in each other—and I don't mean sexually! that's another thing. It's like there's not two of you anymore, just one, because you're so entwined in each other and there's nothing between you." (Rubin, 1983, p. 150) As a consequence, lower divorce rates coexist with lower marital happiness for the longer marrieds. Diminishing alternatives to existing unions and higher barriers to leaving them account for the association. As a result, they are willing to maintain less satisfactory mar­ riage bargains than are partners in shorter unions.

153

70.2 58.1 51.3 43.5 46.7 41.8 39.9 48.7 50.1 57.8 50.1

0-2 3-5 6-8 9-11 12-14 15-19 20-25 25-29 30-39 40+ Total

(252) (503) (460) (441) (418) (641) (567) (557) (1,008) (900) (5,747)

N 74.9 54.9 49.3 41.0 44.0 36.7 40.2 41.6 49.5 48.0 46.4

Percentage

N (291) (574) (550) (554) (553) (843) (687) (645) (1,219) (927) (6,843)

Females

60.5 37.5 39.4 27.8 35.6 24.7 25.6 18.8 31.7 43.8 33.4

Percentage

Males

(38) (64) (66) (54) (59) (85) (82) (80) (123) (121) (772)

N

Blach

60.9 36.3 34.2 14.3 14.7 14.1 14.3 16.1 31.9 25.5 24.3

Percentage

Females

(46) (91) (73) (91) (102) (128) (98) (87) (163) (165) (1,044)

N

SOURCE: The 1973 through 1987 General Social Surveys conducted by the National Opinion Research Center. From Glenn (1989, p. 16, Table 3). Reprinted by permission. a. Percentage of ever-married, nonwidowed persons who had never divorced or separated and who reported very happy marriages.

Percentage

Males

Whites

Marital Success Index3 by Sex, Race, and Years Since First Marriage, Combined Data From Thirteen U.S. National Surveys Conducted From 1973 to 1987

Years Since First Marriage

TABLE 8.1

154 This social exchange explanation of why persons do or do not remain in unhappy mar­ riages has been supported by other national surveys. Not many partners, only about 11%, reported themselves to be unhappy in their marriages in the National Survey of Families and Households. Of these people, about three fourths said there was very little chance of divorce or separation. As the theoretical model predicts, being older and married longer, in­ dicating more investment in the relation, dis­ courages partners from divorcing. The belief that marriage is a lifetime commitment also functions in this way. The absence of other possibilities for companionship to the marital relation— as indicated by husbands' fears that their sex life would be negatively influenced by divorce and their having fewer social con­ tacts to spend time with away from home— also push unhappy couples to stay together. And for both wives and husbands, having little sense of control over their lives—and so presumably feeling unable to exchange their present marriage for a better relationship—is related to remaining in the existing partner­ ship (Heaton &Albrecht, 1991). THE DECLINE IN MARITAL QUALITY

Having sifted through a number of studies of marital quality, my conclusion is that it declines over the years. Because the childless in the early years of marriage also become less satisfied, it appears that the petty irritations of living in close quarters with someone else mount regardless of whether there are chil­ dren (White & Booth, 1985b). Here, I shall con­ centrate on the more numerous couples in the child-rearing period. The question then arises as to what goes on in this period of parenthood to strain couple relations. Some of the reasons are fairly self-evident. There is less family income per person as the number of members increases. There is less spare cash to encourage morale maintenance through getting a baby-sitter, which would allow an evening out just for spouses. Even taking a break with the girls or boys neces­ sitates the other partner's staying home to watch out for the kids. Couples may have less leisure time, although one small-scale, 2-year study of newlyweds showed no differences in the amount of leisure time the 69 couples with and without children reported or in the

COUPLE RELATIONS OVER

TIME

activities they pursued together in their free time (Crawford 8c Huston, 1993). The amount of time and energy generally available to par­ ents for marital interaction, however, is less. Job and domestic responsibilities are heavy. Parents may have less patience to devote to getting along with each other, so disagree­ ments can sharpen into conflicts. Research findings, whether the couples were contacted recently or at midcentury, specify the changes. One of the major alterations in partner interaction that leads to less marital satisfaction is the shift toward a more tradi­ tional division of labor when children arrive. Wives are tied to meeting children's demands, but husbands, removed from domestic drudg­ ery, involve themselves in the occupational world. Something of the hectic nature of child care appears in this excerpt from the letter a mother of two preschoolers wrote to her mother. The names have been changed. I wanted to get to first night of T-Ball on time. One hour ahead I get David dressed and ready and told him to stay clean. . . . Soon he was restless and begged to go outside and water newly planted flowers... so I dressed him in boots and raincoat and turned on the hose. I went inside and got Roger all set—shoes tied. Now my turn to get into clean clothes. David was happily hosing down the car. But, oh, nol the windows were open! Roger heard me yelling, ran outside to stop David and soon was back inside sobbing, soaking wet. I turned off the water and helped dry Roger. Meanwhile, David sat in theflowerbed andfilledhis boots with mud. Burgess and Wallin (1953), in their early longitudinal study, found a wearing away in couple consensus among the unhappier couples on important issues such as child rearing, finances, and relations with in-laws. The couples' power structure became more vertical, as husbands took charge. Among the less satisfied couples, the loss of consensus was accompanied by declines in equalityof decision making. Only among those couples in which both partners decreased in dominance was marital satisfaction at least sustained, if not enhanced, from the early to the later years of marriage. Longitudinal research begun in the 1980s also showed that the period when children are present is related to less marital satisfaction.

PARTNER RELATIONS DURING THE CHILD-REARING

Associated with this decline is reduced couple interaction, less contentment with the finan­ cial situation, and a more traditional division of labor. Reduced joint activities and increased money concerns relate to both husbands' and wives' declines in happiness. As you might expect, however, the traditional division of labor reduced wives' marital satisfaction, but it seemed to increase husbands' (White, Booth, & Edwards, 1986). It makes sense that doing litde around the house and not being respon­ sible for child care would increase the quality of marriage for husbands who have more freedom to choose their home activities. It would operate in the opposite way for wives who have to pick up the slack, as domestic chores mount with children and spousal aid is lacking. The age and number of children play a part in the decrease in marital happiness over these child-present years. Because preschoolers re­ quire the most attention, couples with young children are most likely to have a traditional assignment of household roles and report the related discontent of wives. In contrast, couples do more things together when there are adolescent children (White et al., 1986). This precursor of the improvement in marital quality after children leave home seems to result from youths being out of the house more. Couples may also turn more to each other for comfort in these years, when their offspring may be asserting their autonomy at the ex­ pense of family harmony. Most of the longitudinal research on mari­ tal quality has been largely done with white couples, but cross-sectional studies of African American couples show much the same influ­ ential factors. One survey of a representative sample of black couples indicated that the perceived economic adequacy of their family income was critical. How weil families could fulfill the physical maintenance task was the basis for the marital happiness of both less welloff spouses and higher-income wives. Lowincome men were also more happy when they had fewer children putting demands on scarce resources. Wives were concerned about parenting. In both income groups, there was a negative relation between problems with children and marital quality. But regardless of income, African American husbands and wives were more satisfied when they felt they were benefiting personally from their spouses

YEARS

155

and the marriage was bringing out the best in them (Clark-Nicolas 8c Gray-Little, 1991). So far, the question as to why children are associated with declines in marital quality has been answered through an examination of the domestic division of labor and family finances. Partners' communication is another aspect of living together that can contribute to contentment or conflict between wives and husbands. One central aspect of marital com­ munication is sexual intercourse and the inti­ mate behaviors in many unions that precedes it. Here, too, the frequency of marital coitus, national surveys show, declines sharply in the first 2 years of marriage (Kahn 8c Udry, 1986). It is also in the areas of affection and sex that childless wives outscore mothers mar­ ried about the same length of time (Abbott 8c Brody, 1985). Disagreements over the usual allocation of child care to wives are related to less sex in the marital relation. One woman candidly described the process: "When I was a teenager, I vowed I would never use sex to get my way with a man. It is not selfrespecting; it's demeaning. But when Evan refus­ ed to carry his load at home, I did, I used sex. I said, 'Look, Evan, I would not be this exhausted and asexual every night if I didn't have so much to face every morning.'" (Hochschild, 1989,p. 42) The lessening of some of the pleasurable aspects of being married sharpens problems with family social control and morale main­ tenance tasks. Love can ease partners over the hassles and irritations of daily living along with the family transitions incurred in having children. When it declines or is not demonstrated, problems fester, as goodwill between spouses becomes scarce. Even relatively well-educated couples who supposedly have better interpersonal skills show this pattern. A group of 131 such couples followed over time faced more problems in the areas of communication and sex after they married and especially during the early years of parenthood. Disagreements about recrea­ tion also went up between the premarriage period and the arrival of children. These white couples were less able to either talk through their problems or use sex as a means of reas­ surance and emotional support. Moreover, doing things together to provide a break from

156 arguments also became a source of disagree­ ment. A continuing problem that added to the disappointments created by less intimacy and more conflict was discontent with the fami­ ly monetary situation. The existence of finan­ cial problems, in turn, was related to lessened marital adjustment (Storaasli & Markman, 1990). Thus, establishing satisfactory intimacy relations and ways to resolve disagreement and conflicts looms large as couple tasks in the early years of marriage, tasks whose accom­ plishment contributes to marital stability. Interestingly, gender differences appeared in the problem areas men and women see as most serious before and in the early years of marriage. Before marriage, men were more likely than women to list serious problems, such as jealousy and breaking away from rela­ tives and friends, as stemming from outside the couple. Wives focused on the internal threats to couples' cohesiveness, such as dis­ agreements about sex and communication. Men's problems require dealing with personal relationships beyond the family boundaries. Less used to analyzing and discussing inter­ personal feelings, they are better prepared to deal with such outside threats to agreeable partner dealings. Women, in contrast, with more of their status dependent on getting along with others, are more able to deal directly with couple differences. Such an interpretation is supported by two small-scale longitudinal studies of the way spouses handle conflicts (Gottman & Krokoff, 1989). The 52 couples from a range of occu­ pational backgrounds varied widely on their marital satisfaction scores. They were ob­ served while they discussed a serious and con­ tinuing marital disagreement. The kinds of behavior they used were related to changes in marital satisfaction 3 years later. Couples in which husbands were uncomfortable talking about interpersonal problems, refusing to do so by withdrawing or acting stubbornly, generally experienced deterioration in mari­ tal quality. Wives' ability to confront their personal disagreements affected couples' satisfaction. Those wives who were compliant and positive in discussions about these serious problems had marriages that were less happy over 3 years' time than were marriages in which wives expressed their anger and disgust directly during disagreements. Getting one's emotions

COUPLE RELATIONS OVER

TIME

and views on what's going wrong out on the table, which women are more likely to do, may be hard on the other partner initially. To work things through to a more satisfactory settlement in the long run, however, en­ courages marital health. And it seems to be up to wives to be confrontational. Even though husbands recognize how annoying and counterproductive their withdrawing be­ havior can be, they may be unwilling to change it. In an interview from another study, one commented, " 'Sometimes when I get angry, I don't talk. And when I don't talk, that makes her mad. It led to our not com­ municating'" (Hochschild, 1989, p. 165). A Summary of Factors Related to Changes in Marital Quality We now have an explanation for the gen­ eral decline in marital satisfaction over time, particularly after the transition to parent­ hood. As wedding guests are apt to gush to the newly married couple, they will never be happier. And no wonder. There are still many things to discover about each other, and poten­ tial disagreements have not yet come up to endanger a romantic view of the marriage. Regardless of whether couples have children, the passage of time seems to lead to a decline in marital quality. The association of the child-present years with marital disharmony and divorce should come as no surprise. The accomplishment of family tasks such as physical and morale main­ tenance, along with social control, becomes more difficult. Money has to go farther and there maybe less of it for pleasurable activities. Wives are usually left with the bulk of domes­ tic chores. Communication may get bogged down in disagreements and arguments, and sex is less good. As I noted in the previous chapter, how­ ever, there is some suggestion that the first child and the attendant responsibilities do lead to a pronounced pause in couples' break­ ing up. Later children have a lesser effect, but their presence seems to encourage parents to take more time thinking about divorce before going through with it (White 8c Booth, 1986). Thus, the arrival of children constitutes a turn­ ing point in the marital career, but children also slow the tendency for couples to divorce.

PARTNER RELATIONS DURING THE CHILD-REARING

Remarriage and Marital Quality The decline in marital quality as time goes on for both parents and the childless is related to the parting of more than 40% of young couples. These individuals, however, are not disillusioned with the state of marriage. Two thirds to three fourths of them remarry (Glick, 1989). The rates are down in recent years, partly due to the increase in cohabitation (Wilson 8c Clarke, 1992). Here we are interested in the quality of those unions in which at least one partner has had prior marital experience. These previous marriages affect the new relation­ ship, especially when children are present as living legacies from them. Reviews of existing research studies point to some commonalities between first and other marriages. Remarried men tend to be more satisfied than remarried women. Although the differences are not large, there is also some suggestion that stepfathers are somewhat more content with their marriages than are step­ mothers (Vemer, Coleman, Ganong, 8c Cooper, 1989). Men tend to receive more of the bene­ fits from the marital status but have fewer of its domestic responsibilities. Women are apt to be the ones who keep the household going in terms of hours devoted to shopping, clean­ ing, cooking, and laundry. They also organize the family's social life. This division of labor carries over from marriage to marriage (IshiiKuntz 8c Coltrane, 1992). Remarriages involving spouses who bring children to the new family add an element of complexity to the family that is absent in couples who are not already parents. Some 15% of all U.S. children live in families that include a steprelative, whether a stepparent, a stepsibling, or a half sibling (Vobejda, 1994b). The major family development task in such families is morale maintenance. To accomplish this, it is necessary to establish boundaries around the new unit, but feelings of belonging are hard to create. One partner, as a custodial parent, is part of a previously existing family unit, and the other partner is an outsider to it. This fictional account by D. H. Lawrence (1975) vividly portrays the difficulties: During the day she asked her mother several times: "When are we going home, mother?"

YEARS

157 "We are at home, darling, we live here now. This is our house, we live here with your father." The child was forced to accept it. But she re­ mained against the man. As night came on, she asked: "Where are you going to sleep, mother?" "I sleep with the father now." When the new husband came in, the little girl said: "Why do you sleep with my mother? My mother sleeps with me," her voice quivering, (p. 221)

A remarried parent can also be connected as mother or, more often, father to children in another household. In these circumstances, will these children feel the parent's new spouse is part of their family? And we may also wonder whether this spouse still feels tied to his or her children, living in another family even though they were once a part of his or hers. Family finances are involved in this issue, as they are in the reason mothers generally are likely to benefit from remarriage. Child sup­ port payments, even when awarded by the court, continue to be ignored by many absent fathers. The mothers of their children, who have less money to support their families now that they are divorced, do better when they remarry. But the absent fathers are even less likely to continue to make financial contribu­ tions when their former wives have new husbands. They clearly feel outside their chil­ dren's present residential family. These fathers might also have reestablished marital ties, which conflict with their parental obligations. New wives can resent husbands' taking funds from their current families to support the remainders from past unions. This is how one remarried mother describ­ ed the boundary setting process in her new family to an interviewer: Interviewer: Did the kids accept the [second] marriage pretty early or was that a dif­ ficult and slow process and is it still going on? Mother: Well, no. All three had accepted him but the oldest one which is in fifth grade did not accept him at all in the begin­ ning and so therefore, he decided to live with his father. The other two, there was no problem at all.. . . (quoted in Furstenberg 8c Spanier, 1984, p. 91)

158 This task of creating a family unit gets played out in stepfamily cohesiveness as well as in interaction patterns. How close the mem­ bers of the newly created family are to each other indicates whether the new unit has an identity of its own that is recognized by its residents. The extent to which the members see the new household as their family in turn affects how well they get along in their daily activities. It is in these two aspects of family life, cohesion and interaction, where remarriages with stepchildren seem to have the most diffi­ culty. Comparisons between 106 first-married and 108 remarried couples in a convenience sample, all of whom had been married at least 6 months and had one or more resident chil­ dren, indicated little difference in partner affection in the two groups (Peek, Bell, Waldren, 8c Sorrell, 1988). These persons had chosen each other as partners. The emotional support and closeness that create the "we feel­ ing" of family boundaries, however, did not carry over from the couples in stepfamilies to the children, whom at least one partner had not chosen. The remarrieds also appeared to lack the interaction skills that would enable them to work through these problems in at­ tempting to set up the new family unit. They seemed less able to express their feelings openly and were less direct and clear in what they said. Effectiveness of problem solving was also lower, and the remarried couples had more diffi­ culty understanding the viewpoints of other family members. I have already discussed how time and the coming of children can be associated with declines in the marital quality of couples in theirfirstmarriages. But what about the marital quality of remarried couples over the years? Longitudinal studies indicate that, in general, marital quality is lower and divorce rates higher for those who have lived through more than one marital career, compared with those mar­ ried for the first time. Several factors account for this greater instability among the remar­ rieds. First of all, as individuals, they have characteristics that make for more unhappi­ ness and instability in marriage. In a national sample of married persons followed over 8 years, those who had remarried, especially when both partners were starting over, were more likely than first marrieds to consider leaving the marriage (Booth 8c Edwards, 1992).

COUPLE RELATIONS OVER

TIME

They said they could survive the break up of their present marriages emotionally and finan­ cially because they had already lived through such an experience. One remarried man put it this way: "I think we also went into our second marriage with the attitude that if she woke up one morn­ ing and said 'I'm not in love with you anymore [or] it's not the same for me anymore—I've met someone else,' I'd say, 'God bless' without any animosity." (Furstenberg 8c Spanier, 1984, p. 192) Remarried persons also had more often been first married as teenagers and were of lower occupational and educational status. Conse­ quently, these couples tend to have fewer of the resources resulting from reaching maturity before taking on family commitments, which might contribute to marital happiness (Booth 8c Edwards, 1992). The passage of time is harder on remarried couples than first-married couples. Over the period of 8 years of one longitudinal study with a national sample, the remarrieds' happiness with respect to love and affection, sexual satis­ faction, and mutual understanding was lower than that of couples married just once. They did fewer pleasurable things with their part­ ners, such as visiting friends, going out, or eating their main meal together. They were more apt to think about and consult with others concerning a divorce. Such findings suggest that it is little wonder that those couples who start another marital career are more likely to end it (Booth 8c Edwards, 1992). The boundary maintenance discussion indicated how marriage the second or third time around can be complicated by the pres­ ence of children from previous failed mar­ riages. And it does appear, from the National Survey of Families and Households, that there is more marital conflict among couples mar­ ried longer in stepfamilies than when couples have never divorced. This was not true in remarriages of shorter duration or when the remarried couples had children of their own as well as stepchildren. It may be that the initial euphoria of the new commitment and a shared offspring can ease couples over tense situations (MacDonald 8c DeMaris, 1995). As far as relations with own children are concerned, however, another national study

PARTNER RELATIONS DURING THE CHILD-REARING

showed that remarrieds reported more often that their marriages harmed the way they got along with their children and that they were unhappy with the way their new spouses treated their children. These partners were more likely to regret having married again, even though their marital happiness was not as different from the never-divorced or remarrieds without stepchildren, nor was their satisfaction with general family life. In an at­ tempt to shore up their threatened marriages, parents in stepfamilies seemed to encourage their adolescent stepchildren to leave home earlier than did parents whose children are their own. Stepparents were also more likely than other couples to solve their family prob­ lems through divorce (White & Booth, 1985a). The Long Arm of the Job BREADWINNERS A N D HOMEMAKERS IN THE GOOD OLD DAYS

So far in this chapter, I have been discuss­ ing influences on the quality and continuance of couple relations during the child-present years that come primarily from within the family itself. The routines that develop as part­ ners settie down, children arrive, and the couple accumulates assets are among the influences on marital happiness over time. I also referred to the existence of alternatives to the partner as a factor in divorce, an influence that takes my analysis of this period beyond the family boundaries. One of the primary locations for meeting people outside the family is the workplace. This is also the source of the eco­ nomic resources that enable families to ac­ complish the task of physical maintenance, which has so much effect on morale mainte­ nance. Because families have critical ties to the economy, an examination of the linkages between work and couple relations in the childpresent period of the partner career helps to understand its outcomes. A generation ago, such a discussion would have been limited to the man's job participa­ tion and whether his earnings were enough to support his family. Being a good provider was the main contribution husband-fathers could make to their families. It was not what they did with their wives and children in families that was important but how strong their occu­

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pational ties were to the outside community. They were the family leaders in their daily comings and goings to and from the job. The whole family was dependent on the wage earner's pay, which was his return for meeting the demands of the work schedule. Workingclass people especially were likely to remem­ ber a good father in terms of his job perfor­ mance, as this woman did: "My father w a s always p r o u d o f the fact that h e n e v e r m i s s e d a day's w o r k a n d w a s n e v e r late. I m e a n , it doesn't c o u n t w h e n h e w a s laid off. H e b r o u g h t u s u p t o respect w o r k , t o o , a n d to b e r e s p o n s i b l e a n d reliable." ( R u b i n , 1976, p . 3 2 )

This customary picture of family life in the wake of the Industrial Revolution, when people started leaving the land for nonfarm­ ing jobs, overlooks the continuing economic role that women have played in families. In addition to their child care responsibilities, most wives and mothers a century ago had a job description that read like this: They fabri­ cated the clothing their family members wore; preserved the meats and vegetables they later prepared for their families' meals; and with water from a pump and heated on a stove, did the laundry by hand; swept and dusted; shop­ ped and did the myriad other tasks—without modern conveniences—summarized in the term housekeeping. Moreover, it is often overlooked that in this supposed era of the husband-father pro­ vider and the wife-mother homemaker, many women were also contributing to the family purse. Wives on farms sold butter, eggs, and produce to contribute to the family economy. Although only 4.5% of married women were in the labor force in 1890, larger proportions of immigrants and poor women in urban areas were also wage earners. Surveys in Atlanta, Georgia; Nashville, Tennessee; and Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1886, showed that between 44% to 65% of black wives were employed. In the same year, some 15% of Italian immigrant wives living in Chicago were working outside the home. One fifth of married women, the large majority of whom were immigrants, were employed at this time in the textile mills of Lowell, Massachusetts (Smuts, 1959, p. 57). It should also not be overlooked that before 1940, keeping boarders was a common means for women to contribute to the family income.

160 Historians have estimated that from the late 19th century through the 1930s, from 15% to 20% of all urban households contained lodgers or boarders at any one time (Modell & Hareven, 1973). The percentage was higher among working-class households and reached one half of such households, according to one 1907 New York City study(Smuts, 1959, p. 14). In 1920, two-worker families made up about 9% of all families. By 1940, just prior to the United States's entry into World War II, more than one third of married women (35.9%) were in the labor force (Hayghe, 1990, p. 15). Thus, even in an era when the bread­ winner-homemaker family division of labor was seen as the norm, a considerable number of families did not conform to it. In those fam­ ilies, both spouses were breadwinners most often because of economic necessity. Even in the other families, homemaking wives were indirecdy contributing to the collective econ­ omy by preparing the food and clothing for their mates so they could meet the demands of the wage earner role. This traditional division of labor was so widely accepted by so many people for so long a period because it had rewards for both men and women. For a husband, being a good pro­ vider was an indicator of his success as a man. Not only did it contribute to his sense of manliness, but breadwinning was also the basis for his status in the home and the community. Through his wages, he had the last word on family expenditures, and through this power, he could control family activities. Other mem­ bers performed tasks to make him comfort­ able, because he was the wage earner. Women benefited to the extent that they could devote themselves to the care of the household, in­ cluding themselves as well as husbands and children, without concern for their own and their offspring's economic support. There were costs as well as rewards to this breadwinner-homemaker bargain between husbands and wives. For husbands, there was the threat to their self-identity as men if they were not good providers. Jobs were often tedious and workplaces unpleasant. This was especially true for many lower-class and working-class men who were undereducated, undertrained, underpaid, or unemployed, a situation that continues into the present. As one woman described her husband's work, " 'He takes a lot of crap [at his job]. He gets

COUPLE RELATIONS OVER

TIME

very few rewards for what he does, and people are not very facilitating there'" (Pearlin & McCall, 1990, p. 49). Men could not afford to quit such jobs, because their families were dependent on them. This supposedly enabled them to determine what their families did, but many husband-fathers felt members took for granted the burdens they shouldered in the world of work (Bernard, 1981). Women under this arrangement also had complaints. Men often did not earn enough to support a family but blamed their wives when the dollars did not stretch to pay all the bills. The couple might also have disagree­ ments over how the husband allocated his earnings, which would be particularly true if his personal spending left too little for family needs. Wives, dependent on their husbands for money and trying to make do with little of it, could feel as unappreciated as their hus­ bands. The wife quoted earlier on the difficul­ ty of her husband's job went on to complain, '"So it's up to me when he comes home to try and fill that need and make him feel good about himself. And yet, I am not getting any reverse back'" (Pearlin 8t McCall, 1990, p. 49). The economic dependence of wife-mothers subjected them to physical and emotional abuse. But they could not afford to leave un­ happy marriages, because they were usually unable to support themselves and their chil­ drenfinancially.An adult remembered such a situation this way: "When my father got drunk, he'd get mean and pick on whoever was around. When I was about twelve, he came home roaring drunk one night and picked me up like a sack of potatoes and threw me right across the whole room. My mother stood there and watched, and she never did a thing." (Rubin, 1976, p. 32) PRESENT FAMILY WORK PATTERNS

One economist summed up what has been happening with respect to family wage earners thus: "Work patterns of families have become so diverse in recent decades that a specific family type can no longer be defined as 'typical'" (Hayghe, 1990, p. 14). By 1993, less than one third (30%) of families with chil­ dren under 18 had a traditional breadwinnerhomemaker division of labor. At that time, 65% of such families had both mothers and

PARTNER RELATIONS DURING THE CHILD-REARING

fathers serving as providers. In fact, among the one out of five families with children but not fathers, only somewhat more mothers (68.3%) were employed. There was also an additional 2% of two-parent families with children in which mothers only were in the labor force (Η. V. Hayghe, personal communication, March 14,1994). With this great change in the number of wife-mother wage earners over the second half of the 20th century, family role expecta­ tions have been shaken. Before this era, few questions were raised concerning the relation of families and the workplace. As long as men were good providers, there was little concern about how job conditions affected families. If there was an overlap in the two spheres, the comfortable assumption was that families would adjust to the demands of the work environment. With large numbers of women leaving the home to earn money, however, such an assumption seemed less warranted. Women in families often enter the labor market through economic necessity. In many families, it takes both spouses to make a living. Estimates are that men in as many as one of five white families and one of three black families do not earn enough to support a family. Men without a high school degree are especially disadvantaged. Overall, male earn­ ings have also remained the same or declined in recent years (Wilkie, 1991). Hard-pressed working-class and lower-class women have little choice but to look for work, spurred by both their families' need and the growth in jobs, since the 1970s, in the low-wage service sector dominated by women. Moreover, such jobs are relatively unaffected by economic hard times (Wilkie, 1991). The labor market has also attracted increasing numbers of edu­ cated middle-class wives who are eager to put their college educations to use. JOB CHARACTERISTICS AND COUPLE RELATIONS

A number of years ago, as I discussed in Chapter 3, social psychologist Nelson Foote (1956) explained the letdown in marital satis­ faction that partners experienced after children arrived as a mismatch in each one's development. He argued that the conjugal role segregation, caused by men's job concerns and women's child care responsibilities, led to

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a lack of fit between their respective roles. Instead of there being an overlap in partners' interests and responsibilities, they become separate. Foote urged husbands and wives to set themselves the individual developmental task of role making new interaction patterns that would encourage a good match in part­ ner preoccupations. These would involve wives' expanding their activities beyond the family circle and husbands' devoting more attention to their family roles, especially those of companion and confidant to their wives. He believed the result would be greater mutual interests and understanding. With the majority of wife-mothers joining their husbands as family providers, there is now some of the overlap in interests that Foote believed was essential for high-quality marriages. This sharing of the worlds of work and family, however, has not necessarily led to a better matching of husbands' and wives' concerns. Although both partners have to cope with job demands, the spouse and partner roles continue much as they did before. Beginning with work requirements, there is now more couple understanding of its problems and routines. At the same time, both spouses are subject to not only the stresses but also the satisfactions and power that come from receiving a paycheck. Previous studies (Conger et al., 1990; Liker 8c Elder, 1983) have shown how job loss leads to higher marital tensions. Whether the reports come from the 1930s Depression or the 1980s farm reces­ sion, they all point to the increased irritability and hostility and the decreased warmth and affection of husbands who have lost income. Their wives' happiness in the marriages went down and their thoughts of divorce went up. When both spouses are in the labor force, partners may be more aware of the feelings that go along with being unemployed but still find it hard to put up with mates' discontent. Jobless men whose identities as males are so tied up in holding a job may resent wives who continue to be employed. Wives can become angry at husbands' lack of appreciation for their now being the financial mainstays of the household. Mutual resentment can sharpen couple conflicts despite both partners' per­ sonal familiarity with the work world. The spillover of job characteristics into marital relations appears with respect to work schedules as well as job loss. For example,

162 longitudinal studies indicate the negative ef­ fect of shift work on marriage quality (White & Keith, 1990). The Bureau of Labor Statistics considers shift work to be any job schedule where more than half of the hours fall outside the 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. time period (Hedges 8c Sekscenski, 1979). One or both partners may have to take such jobs because they are the best ones available. A couple also can deliber­ ately decide to arrange their work lives so that one partner is always available for child care, even though shared couple time is less. Hus­ bands with wives on shift jobs are more active in child care of preschoolers (O'Connell, 1993). The more hours wives are employed when husbands are not, the more apt husbands are to do traditional female housework, such as cooking, cleaning, and washing (Presser, 1994). These shifts in domestic routines can make the two-earner setup work. Personal prob­ lems that result from shift schedules, such as losing sleep and being out of step with usual life routines, however, contribute to an over­ all decrease in marital satisfaction. There are more couple arguments, because it is harder for partners to find time to keep up with each other's activities. Fitting in sex can become difficult. There may even be more problems with children, even though child care consid­ erations affected wives' decisions to take shift work. For these reasons, the risk of divorce increases when nonroutine work schedules separate a couple (White 8c Keith, 1990). Long work hours that extend beyond the customary quitting time can also lower mari­ tal quality. One husband explained his un­ happiness with his wife because of her lengthy hours on the job:. "I don't k n o w if I resented it, b u t for several m o n t h s w h i l e Barbara w a s w o r k i n g t h o s e l o n g hours I would c o m e h o m e and spend most of the night w i t h Cary, w h i c h w a s okay. But I re­ sented Barbara not b e i n g there because I w a n t e d a few m i n u t e s t o m y s e l f [ w i t h o u t h a v i n g to care for the b a b y ) . T h e n I felt t h a t Cary w a s b e i n g c h e a t e d b y h e r n o t b e i n g here. A n d I w a n t e d Barbara t o s p e n d m o r e t i m e w i t h m e . I t h i n k I w i t h d r e w , then." ( H o c h s c h i l d , 1989, p . 165)

Two-earner couples, even under normal cir­ cumstances, tend to spend less time together than do couples in which there is only one

COUPLE RELATIONS OVER

TIME

earner. According to the diaries of a national sample of couples detailing how they used their time, the overall differences are not great. Hourly losses in being together, however, do show up in playtime activities, such as sharing mealtimes, watching television, and engaging in joint recreation. This lack of time for enjoying things as couples is associated with "modest" declines in marital quality (Kingston 8c Nock, 1987, p. 399). In addition to shift work and long hours, stressful work can intrude on families despite family boundaries. Arguments with bosses, subordinates, and coworkers, along with un­ usual work demands, create emotional and physical fatigue that the jobholder carries home. Understandably, these workers react by withdrawing from other family members, in a search for peace and quiet. This with­ drawal is easier for men than women, given the traditional division of household tasks. Diary accounts of how spouses in 166 couples in a Detroit area study responded to their partners' work overload show that both hus­ bands and wives tried to fill in for their tired mates. The diaries, which each spouse kept for 6 weeks, showed that wives did this more than husbands. Consequendy, husbands enjoyed more rest time after heavy days than wives did (Böiger, DeLongis, Kessler, 8c Wethington, 1989). Thus, despite couples' sharing breadwin­ ner responsibilities in today's families, mis­ matches in task performance can still occur. And even though partners have the world of work to draw on for similar interests, one partner can still outgrow another. As Foote (1956) noted, this has usually been the case of husbands whose job success is associated with their concentration on work demands. Work­ aholic husbands are now being joined by wives who find their jobs enticing them away from family activities after the lull occasioned by childbearing. In such cases, it is the husbands who are resentful at being left behind as thenwives take on new employment challenges. One wife, the mother of five, reported that her husband was " 'jealous that I was super­ charged about the new job and insecure over my working with a male store manager and colleagues who are men' " (Thomas, Albrecht, 8c White, 1984, p. 517).

PARTNER RELATIONS DURING THE CHILD-REARING TWO EARNERS A N D HOMEMAKING

In the analysis of job characteristics and marital relations, the long arm of the job was apparent. When both spouses are in the labor market, each enjoys the independence and self-satisfaction that comes with the exchange of work for pay. There is also the added finan­ cial security from two wages that together may just enable a sizable number of families to escape poverty. But the change to two pro­ viders made it easier for work problems to cross family boundaries and color domestic interaction. In no area is this more marked than in child care. When the traditional division of the family economy into husband-father provider and wife-mother homemaker positions was taken for granted, there was no question as to who was responsible for housework and care of family members. Despite the change in the assignment of the breadwinning role to both spouses, the homemaking roles continue to fall to the lot of women. Sociologist Arlie Hochschild (1989) has estimated that women who combine provider and child care roles spend 15 hours a week on family tasks that their husbands do not. Over the year, this adds up to an "extra month of twenty-four-hour days" (p. 3) that they contribute to their families' well-being. The failure of men to accept home­ maker roles, to compensate for their wives moving into earner roles, is a major factor in the higher divorce rates of women who have their own paychecks (White 8c Booth, 1991). There are few other marital issues that can so poison relationships. Inequities in home­ making particularly affect women when chil­ dren are young. Their job performance is affected by their child care responsibilities during the childbearing and child-rearing period before children reach adolescence. They are more likely than mothers of older chil­ dren to be absent, tardy, ineffective, and un­ able to accept additional tasks at work. This spillover of family characteristics to the work setting—the reverse of the previous issue of job characteristics having an impact on mari­ tal quality—is seldom a personal problem for husband-fathers, regardless of the age of their children. Child care is still not a customary part of their role clusters. A young male su­ pervisor noted how employed women are af­ fected by family concerns: " 'The women on

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my team have troubles: crazy husbands, prob­ lems with kids. This is a second job for them. If a kid gets sick, they're the ones to stay home' " (Crouter, 1984, p. 432). This one-sided division of household labor appears to account for wives' generally higher average levels of depression. A representative national sample of couples, in which both partners were interviewed, showed very high depression rates among employed women who have both full responsibility for child care and difficulty arranging it. They are higher than those of nonemployed wives with children. Husbands' child care participation, however, can ease these problems for their wives. When this happens, they have lower than average rates of depression. Moreover, husbands' care of children does not affect their own generally lower depression levels. Their men­ tal health appears to be best served when wives are employed and have no children or when they are employed and have easy child care. Employed wives in these cases enjoy both their jobs and their families. In com­ parison with them, wives who stay at home with the children experience more stress (Ross 8cMirowsky, 1988). After seeing the positive relationship be­ tween husbands' active involvement in parent­ ing roles and employment and wives' mental health, we need to ask what factors encourage greater husband participation. Two types of arguments, one social structural and the other human capital, can be used to account for how two-earner families allocate household tasks. The social structural explanation is based on the constraints that job and family requirements place on household participa­ tion. More demanding jobs in terms of hours worked, opportunities to advance, and unsu­ pervised duties call for the parents' major emotional and physical investment. They can devote less attention to their families. More children and younger children also place con­ straints on parents' abilities to fulfill job re­ quirements. Their need for hands-on care sets up interaction patterns that force parental concentration on family matters. Thus, social structural factors on the job or in the family can operate differendy to influence wives' and husbands' participation in work and family. Usually, family constraints have limited wives' work participation, and work constraints have limited husbands' family participation.

164 The human capital explanation of the couple division of labor is based on the com­ parative economic advantage accruing to wives and husbands from their respective activities. Men's earnings have generally been higher than women's, presumably because of the oc­ cupations they held and their human capital investment in terms of experience and train­ ing. It made sense for women to specialize in child care under these circumstances, espe­ cially when children were young and there were a number of them. Now that women have long-term commitments to the labor market and the college degrees that enable them to get better-paying jobs, these cus­ tomary arrangements are making less sense. When researchers using social structural and human capital arguments look at how real couples make household responsibility assignments, structural constraints appear to play a major part in husbands' participa­ tion (Peterson & Gerson, 1992). A national survey showed that men in two-earner fam­ ilies took more responsibility when house­ hold demands from a number of children and younger children were greatest. Wives with strenuous work patterns, in terms of longer hours, also had husbands who were more likely to make child care arrangements. This was more likely, too, when women were heavily involved in their work settings, as shown by their satisfaction with oppor­ tunities for promotion. It seems that men are more likely to pitch in and help when women's job and family constraints become burden­ some. Variation in men's work hours have little effect on their performing child care. The same survey, however, showed that wife-mothers still maintain major responsibil­ ities for child care, regardless of both child characteristics and their hours on the job. Gender segregation of work at home does tend to go down as wives earn more money, ac­ cording to other national studies, a finding consistent with human capital theory. But wives even then continue to spend substantially more hours in household labor than do husbands (Blair & Lichter, 1991). The greater the share of labor husbands take on and the greater their appreciation of the housework wives continue to do, the more fairness wives per­ ceive in the household division of labor (Blair & Johnson, 1992).

COUPLE RELATIONS OVER TIME

More equitable household arrangements do not necessarily feed back positively on men's marital happiness. Wives working outside the home and sharing the husbands' provider role do not appear to be the issue. Men can favor this and still indicate less love for their mates than do men who are the only breadwinners in their families. There is some suggestion, from one small longitudinal study of 20 singleearner and 20 two-earner families, that the arguments couples get into when wives push their husbands to do more child care lowered the latters' marital happiness. But the wives faced a dilemma: If they did not urge their husbands to help more, they did very little (Crouter, Perry-Jenkins, Huston, 8c McHale, 1987). Even though husbands may resent having to do more, their help adds to wives' satisfaction. Some husbands consider their wives' em­ ployment a bonus. Usually, in marriages where both partners hold managerial or professional occupations, they describe their marriages as vital and stimulating. Their wives know the score on the work scene and can be real part­ ners and companions. Their advice and in­ comes encourage husbands to try out alterna­ tive work opportunities or to turn down jobs with night work and tiring travel. With wives' support, husbands can even launch their own businesses (Rosin, 1990). As one such husband described his feelings, "I am glad my wife has a career. She is a happy woman doing what she wants to do, and I am proud of her. We do a lot of things together, and it is exciting. I cannot imagine coming home to a wife who is cooped up all day and does noth­ ing but nag when I come home from work." (Sekaran, 1986, p. 13) Summary This chapter has considered the trends in marital quality and the factors influencing it over the child-rearing years. Its decline and the number of individuals who leave the marital career in this period indicate the difficulty. The reasons for the loss in marital satisfaction lie both within and outside the family unit. Social exchange theory helps to make sense of the disenchantment.

PARTNER RELATIONS DURING THE CHILD-REARING

Adding new members, especially ones who demand much time and energy, puts a strain on the couple relation. Responsibilities expand and rewards contract. Within the family, the domestic division of labor shifts to a more conventional one. Wives are wrapped up in the children and household work. Husbands are less tied into these parenting responsibil­ ities. Partners faced with new financial obliga­ tions and domestic chores may skimp on taking time to try sorting out misunderstandings. Nowadays, both partners hold jobs outside the home. For many women, their paid em­ ployment helps the family stay afloat eco­ nomically. For others, advanced education makes job holding an opportunity to practice their skills. Wives sharing the occupational world as well as life within the family can con­ tribute to a better fit in spouses' individual development. The couple has similar concerns and shares job interests outside the family. Under these circumstances, however, wo­ men may also experience role overload, as both family and earner chores fall to them.

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Making a living eases the way for wives to leave unhappy marriages. Divorce is one out for women who see their double-time work schedule at home and on the job as unfair and the compensations of companionship and sup­ port from partners as inadequate. Although remarriage rates are down, many of the formerly marrieds are willing to try again. These new marital careers may start out with ready-made families. Children from previous unions add to the difficulties of set­ ting family boundaries. Having experienced one marriage breakup, the remarried see an­ other dissolution as less traumatic. Accord­ ingly, divorce rates in remarriages tend to be somewhat higher than in first marriages. This chapter also indicates why couples remain together during the upheaval in rela­ tionships that comes with the initial years of parenting. Over time, the building up of couple assets, shared pleasures, and comfortable routines outweighs the attraction of alterna­ tives and keeps partners together despite de­ clines in marital satisfaction at that time.

9

Alone Again Couples When Children Grow Up

The Middle Years of Marriage In this chapter, our consideration of the couple career shifts from the children-present years to the couple's life thereafter, when their children have become adults. It encompasses the stage when parents, after preparing ado­ lescents for adulthood and then seeing them move from home, are alone as a couple for the first time since before the childbearing period. The increased longevity of individuals over the 20th century has created a middle period between children's leaving home and before the spouses' retirements from work or the death of one or both. Because divorce is an everpresent alternative to marriage, the chapter includes a discussion of couples who call it quits during this period. Also covered is the degree to which marital breakup or remarriage at this time affects intergenerational relations of middle-aged persons with their aging par­ ents and adult children.

Couple Relations and Adolescents The phase of couple life when there are secondary school children present maybe char­ 166

acterized by strain and conflict for fathers and mothers, even when both parents and chil­ dren have the best intentions toward trying to get along. In family time, the so-called launching period spans the years when at least some children in the household are adoles­ cents and later leave home to be on their own. It is useful to examine in greater detail the individual developmental tasks of family mem­ bers at this stage, because their accomplishment may not always contribute to family harmony. Let us start with the tasks of the adolescent. When people think about their own teenage years, they generally remember how impor­ tant it was to become freer of parental su­ pervision. At the same time, adolescents are continuing to live at home and go to school, even while becoming more involved with their peers. Youths also often take on part-time jobs to help pay for their clothes and entertain­ ment. These tasks of completing an educa­ tion, creating social ties, and holding a job are preparing them for adult occupational and family responsibilities. While youths are getting ready to remove themselves from their parents' oversight, couples are facing complementary tasks. They are having to relax their supervision over

ALONE AGAIN

adolescents, even though they may doubt the youths' abilities to handle increased freedom. It is a truism that we are supposed to learn by our mistakes, but parents want to protect their offspring from harm. Parents resent having their advice ignored and fear the substance abuse, sexual experimentation, and other risky behaviors teenagers can engage in. As one friend said to me, with respect to a misadven­ ture of his 16-year-old son, "When hormones are raging, their brain cells go into remission." Conflicts over money are likely to increase as teenagers enter high school and want to in­ dulge in the current fads. Not surprisingly, parents' self-esteem is likely to suffer during this period, when adolescents may be critical of their parents' rules, discipline, and allow­ ances (Demo, Small, & Savin-Williams, 1987). Along with the sometimes conflicting schedules of young people's seeking indepen­ dence and elders loosening their controls, wives and husbands in this adolescent-present phase of family life are also facing midlife develop­ mental tasks in marriages and occupations. Although there are no hard-and-fast age markers for couples' entering or exiting these family stages, persons are usually in their 40s and 50s when there are adolescents at home or in the process of leaving. These periods coincide with the self-evaluation task con­ cerning their jobs and their marriages that most persons engage in around this time. Middle-class men and the increasing num­ bers of middle-class women in professional and management positions are gauging the progress they have made in their work careers and how much more they are likely to achieve. In one such assessment, a man described his failure to meet the standards of his in-laws and his parents: "Her father lets me know in a lot of subtle ways that he thinks I'm not successful enough. And my parents—well, they have a vision of what their attorney son should be like. (With a deep sigh.) And I just don't match it. I'm not headed for a partnership in some fancy law firm. I have a good job in the legal department of my firm, but in law that's not where the big money and high prestige are. (Passing his hands over his eyes wearily.) So they're disappointed, I guess." (Rubin, 1983, p. 28)

167 Working-class men and women with less prestigious jobs have worries not about get­ ting ahead but about continuing to hold a job. Often these job-related worries are so threatening to the workers' and to their fam­ ilies' well-being that they can't talk about them, even with their spouses. A mail sorter gave such a job history, which shows the dead-end nature and the unemployment that such jobs entail: "When I first started, I kept moving around. I kept looking for a job I'd like. You know, a job where it wouldn't make you tired just to get up in the morning and have to go to work. (With a heavy sigh.) It took me a number of years to discover that there's not much difference—a job's a job. So now I do what I have to do, and maybe I can get my family a little security. "When Ifirstgot out of high school, I had a series of jobs and a series of lay-offs. The jobs lasted from three weeks to three months. Some­ thing always happened—like maybe the con­ tract didn't come through—and since I was low man on the totem pole, I got laid off. A lot of times, the lay-offs lasted longer than the jobs." (Rubin, 1976, p. 156) Although many workers are facing narrow­ ing job opportunities, their adolescents are negotiating new power arrangements within family boundaries in preparation for moving beyond them. Because of these transitions at home and the closing of opportunities at work, men and women are often said to be experi­ encing midlife crises (Tamir, 1989). The couple relation is affected by the up­ heavals going on during this stage. It is tough for the two resident adults, who are facing heavy drains on their financial, emotional, and time resources. Patience and much con­ versation are needed if the required mor­ phogenesis is to occur in the family system. The demanding parental roles of adviser and listener take on greater salience as parents less often follow the more accustomed disciplin­ arian and supervisor scripts. In the delicate working out of new parent-child interaction patterns, husbands and wives may neglect the roles of lover, companion, and confidant in the spousal role clusters, roles that are sum­ marized in the term helpmate.

168 Partner attempts to make marriages com­ fortable for each other are also complicated by the self-evaluation each may be undertak­ ing. The presence of adolescents who increas­ ingly look like adults is a daily reminder to spouses of the passage of time and an invita­ tion to think about what being married means. This assessment seems to have different con­ sequences for men and women. Although some men in management are poised for promo­ tion to top leadership positions, most men in the middle as well as working classes are begin­ ning to settle for good family relations as the source for their well-being. During these years when their youngsters are entering adult­ hood, middle-class men, especially, seem to become more conscious of the value of the caring behaviors their wives have generally been responsible for in family life. Men may be wondering if it is too late to establish closer ties through increased attention to their part­ ners and children. While this change is going on in men, women, with their child-rearing days num­ bered, are more than ever looking beyond the family boundaries. They see themselves as playing leadership roles and display the more assertive and aggressive characteristics often associated with men (Cooper 8c Gutmann, 1987). For the first time since their childbear­ ing began, they have the time for new begin­ nings. Thus, there is a kind of gender reversal in this period. With respect to family matters, men are looking inward and women are look­ ing outward. Consequently, gender differen­ ces in the outcomes of the personal evaluations going on in partners' midlife years, when adolescents are preparing to leave home, may also contribute to tension. Marital satisfac­ tion, according to cross-sectional and smallscale longitudinal studies, is at a low point during this period (Rollins, 1989). Some couple dynamics that occur during this period are summarized by one small-scale study of 129 families with adolescents who were followed for more than 1 year (Steinberg 8c Silverberg, 1987). The previous discussion has shown how events in the parent-youth subsystem affect the marital subsystem. Is­ sues of personal identity also played a part in spousal relations. Reports from both the ado­ lescents and their parents in this blue-collar and white-collar sample specify these gener­ alizations. How parents and youth of the

COUPLE RELATIONS OVER TIME

same sex get along appears to be more impor­ tant for a spouse's well-being than if the youth is of the opposite sex. When there was emo­ tional distance between fathers and sons or mothers and daughters at the beginning of the study, the parents, regardless of social class, were less happy in their marriages 1 year later. It is hard for parents not to be close to offspring of the same gender, because it threatens their identity as trusted and beloved elders. They see their roles as advisers and guides to adult­ hood ignored, and their resultant bruised feelings feed back on and fray marital senti­ mental ties. Other aspects of negative selfevaluations have similar effects. Women's identity worries about what the future held for them, expressed earlier in the year, were related to less marital satisfaction at the end of the research time. Husbands taking stock, along with their lower self-esteem and wives' identity worries, also had a negative effect on husbands' later marital happiness (Steinberg 8c Silverberg, 1987). Another aspect of partner relations that can contribute to a sense of something being lost in marriages lies in the household division of labor. This nagging problem in families, discussed in previous chapters, continues into the present period as a limited linkage. Old conflicts and feelings of injustice about the usual arrangements contribute to other mari­ tal irritations. National samples show that when couples have adolescents at home, the proportion of housework husbands perform is smallest. They may argue that such a task division is consistent with their heightened job demands if they are to advance occupa­ tionally. Yet many women are also facing em­ ployment pressures while being responsible for domestic tasks. Although the time wives devote to housework begins to decline (Rexroat 8c Shehan, 1987), marital disagreements over the household division of labor result in mutual criticism. One unhappy husband complained to psychotherapist Lillian Rubin (1983), "One thing you should be sure to write about is that women carry a lot of stuff around that's plain unnecessary. That's a big issue between us. She doesn't complain that I don't do my share, but she's always mad because I don't worry about it like she does. She calls it 'baggage' and says it gets very heavy. But why the hell can't she put it down?" (p. 168)

ALONE AGAIN

The limited linkages set by communication patterns carried over from previous stages can make a setdement of such long-term dis­ agreements hard. Men, with their greater financial and physical resources, have little to gain through discussing these problems —and a favorable assignment of domestic responsibilities to lose. In contrast, women, with their lesser power, see confrontation as their only way to protect or improve their positions (Peplau & Gordon, 1985). What husbands call complaining, nagging, or bicker­ ing often constitute efforts by wives to change an unfavorable division of labor that has been in place since the early intense child­ bearing years. Despite the personal, parental, and marital strains continuing into or coinciding with this last child-rearing period, divorce is less com­ mon than in earlier years. The balance sheet from cashing out couple assets—whether in the form of home ownership or in settled routines—in exchange for risky or nonexistent alternatives and working out new life arran­ gements appears to many couples to be un­ appealing. In addition, partners can look forward to a moderation of strain. Children do grow up, and most parents are able to come to terms with how their offspring have turned out. Just as was the case when children made their first forays beyond family boun­ daries, both outsiders and the youths them­ selves have much to do with what occurs to them as young adults. Parents are also gen­ erally ready to complete the developmental task of letting them go. The older generation is then freed from having to exercise parental watchfulness. The decreased concern leaves them more money, more energy, and more time for strengthening partner ties. For the lucky couples who have remained good com­ panions throughout the beleaguered adoles­ cent period, being alone again and still to­ gether is a welcome reward for past strains from child rearing.

Couples and

the Departing of Adult Children

During the hectic years when couples are preparing their children for adulthood, wives and husbands may have mixed emotions

169 about the young adults leaving home. On the one hand, they have more time to repair part­ ner relations weakened by their parental developmental tasks. On the other, it may take getting reacquainted for some couples to re­ focus their attention on each other, un­ distracted by the competing demands from the parent-child subsystem. But just as there are temporal norms that affect when indi­ viduals feel they should come together to start their family careers and then take on parental roles, they also exist for children's leaving home. There comes a time when parents, despite possible concerns about being alone again, believe their young adults are old enough and prepared enough to be independent. If these youths have not yet taken on the associated duties of being grown-up, parents can view the situation as reflecting badly on their childrearing skills. They may ask themselves where they went wrong, because these adults—no longer children—are not yet on their own. Large numbers of youths are continuing to look to their parents for support. One form of such aid is parents providing a home for their unmarried offspring. In the early 1990s, more than one half (58.1%) of such 20- to 24-year-olds and almost one third (30.3%) of 25- to 29-year-olds reported living with their parents (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1992c, p. xiv, Table 1). Unemployment and delayed marriages, along with divorce and unmarried parenthood, are conditions contributing to the substantial numbers of young adults living at home. Black youths are especially likely to be in need (Glick 8c Lin, 1986). According to the 1987-1988 National Survey of Families and Households, about one third of unmar­ ried black mothers ages 19 to 29 with children under 5 and some one fifth of white mothers with the same family status were living with their parents (Eggebeen 8c Hogan, 1990). Other types of help parents give include money. One national study showed that mid­ dle-class parents were most unhappy about their relationship with children age 19 or older when they had to assist them with financial aid. The adult offspring of working-class parents, because their parents have less ready cash to give, ask them to provide more house­ hold and transportation services. It is this continued dependence that makes these parents unhappy when their children request such help (Kulis, 1992).

170 Couples with coresident adult children, like those whose adult offspring have moved out, are unlikely to feel good about them when youths old enough to be considered adults are unable to take on the attendant responsi­ bilities. For example, both parents in a na­ tional sample, who had adult children under the age of 30 living with them, said they had more disagreements, and the mothers reported more hostility when the children were un­ employed. When these youths were financial­ ly dependent, another indicator of failure to take on adult responsibilities, parents were unhappy. They may also see marital failure, that is, divorce or separation, as an inability of offspring to meet adult expectations. Thus, fathers of divorced or separated offspring who were living with parents reported more dis­ satisfaction than did fathers whose coresident older children had never married. The presence of grandchildren, poignant reminders of youths' attempts at independent family exist­ ence, also had a negative effect on parents' satisfaction with children old enough to be on their own but still living at home (Aquilino & Supple, 1991). Just as parents maybe displeased about the situation, young adults without partners can experience difficulties in moving with their children back to their parents' homes. One man, a widower, described to an interviewer how he came to do it: "I didn't like being by myself in the house where I lived with my wife. I wanted to get the hell out of there. And I didn't have any money at all. I was already thinking about going to my parents' house, for economic reasons. And if I moved in with my parents, there would be no problem about somebody watching the kids." (Weiss, 1979, p. 41) But the joint housing setup did not work out. The parents valued being alone. There did not seem to be enough room when their son and his two small children moved in. The father and his adult son did things differently, and these differences were a constant source of irritation. The son decided to find another home for himself and his children. As he ex­ plained it, "I got an awful lot of understanding from my parents, but I found that their patience was

COUPLE RELATIONS OVER

TIME

growing thin after maybe two or three months, and they found mine growing thin, too. My father and I are so much alike it is incredible. It was two bull elephants crashing into each other." (Weiss, 1979, p. 41) In the majority of cases, however, when living with grown-up children is not a continued reminder to parents of the youths' failure to cope with adult demands, joint residence seems to be a reasonably comfortable arrangement for both generations. Thus, 7 out of 10 parents with adult children still at home, in the national sample referred to above, reported these arrangements worked out very well (Aquilino & Supple, 1991). This is fortunate because in the 1990s so many young adults were still living with their parents. When children can leave home, there is usually an upswing in couples' happiness. The older generation can then build on the pair continuities that have been maintained or created during the child-rearing years. When these ties have weakened during this period, the persons involved, having accepted the limitations set by linkages with their past couple histories, have often left those marriages. Con­ sequently, the couples who are left are more stable and more likely to benefit from the new time alone. Longitudinal research with a national sam­ ple (White & Edwards, 1990) has shown that the benefit to marital relations of children's leaving home is greater the more recently it has occurred. The strain on parental mar­ riages of resident children is then removed. Parents, however, want to remain in contact with these children who are no longer at home. Keeping in touch contributes to parents' life satisfaction. They are bound to their children by the years they have nurtured them physi­ cally and supported them financially. These contributions are difficult to measure in terms of affection, but parents continue to watch over their human investments. They want to know how the youths are coping with their adult independence and realize they may have to step in if events go too far awry. Also, the next generation represents a sort of contin­ uance of themselves. Their descendants' present activities allow couples to speculate about how their heritage will be manifested in the future. Given these circumstances, par­ ents have the best of all worlds when they and

ALONE AGAIN

their children maintain close ties despite sepa­ rate residences. Being home alone makes for partners' greater marital happiness. Seeing their children but not having to take respon­ sibility for them contributes to their sense of family continuity.

Myths and the Reality

Concerning Midlife Couples

The so-called postparental family period occurs when couples are home alone again after the hectic years of child rearing. In ac­ tuality, parents generally do not cease being concerned about their children, regardless of their age. As described in Chapter 2, the postchild period is a product of this century. Giving birth to fewer children in a shorter period has lessened the number of years women spend rearing them. Women's longer lives have added years to the time after children become adults. They now can look forward to living some 30 years beyond the time their children are adults. This is a longer period than the women spent rearing these children when they were dependent. In the past, it was conventional to see the phase as a difficult time for them. Without children to care for, women had lost a number of roles from their family position that made them feel needed. Accordingly, women sup­ posedly felt an emptiness in their lives. The postparental period was also made more dif­ ficult for them because it indicated the onset of middle age. Even today, the double stan­ dard of aging contributes to gender stereo­ types. Men in their 40s and 50s continue to be judged sexually attractive when graying, espe­ cially if they are in occupational positions that give them money, prestige, and power. Women, in contrast, are seen as past their prime, getting old and unappealing without much purpose in life (Allgeier, 1983). The actual situation for women in midlife families today is much less bleak than that painted in this conventional picture. Far from feeling useless after their children grow up, the majority of women continue to be busy in their job and partner roles. Rather than view­ ing this period when children are adults as a problem, these mothers look forward to it with anticipation. In a study of preretirement

171 couples David Klein and I did, one woman, when asked how she would feel if her adult children returned home, fervently declared, " Oh, God, I wouldn't like it. It would be awful. I'm tired of waiting on people' " (Al­ dous, 1987, p. 232). A father exclaimed, apropos of the active parenting adult children at home might require, "Gosh, I wouldn't want it at all. I think if they moved back it would be difficult. Somehow I would feel I had to tell them what to do, and you can't tell them what to do when they are 30." (Aldous, 1985, p. 131) Among college-educated women, their 50s can be the prime of life. Most feel satisfaction that their children have taken on adult respon­ sibilities with relative ease and that they are still in close contact with them. For once largely freed from responsibilities for others, they have the time and energy to devote to their own development and to couple intimacies and companionship. Incomes for employed persons go farther at this point if child de­ pendents are gone. Job-holding couples and single parents, blue-collar and white-collar alike, benefit from their absence. When em­ ployed, working-class women and men have fewer worries about making ends meet and even a little extra money to ease daily irrita­ tions. The higher salaries of middle-class pro­ fessionals and managers contribute to the extra funds they already enjoy. Although elderly parents may require in­ creased attention, a subject I shall return to later, the prospect for the relatively affluent, well-educated person is pleasant. A crosssectional sample of 700 women's college alum­ nae, aged 26 to 80 and a longitudinal study of 118 alumnae of the same college, followed from ages 43 to 52, showed that those in their early 50s judged their present years as most fulfilling. These women gave higher ratings to their lives than did either younger or older women (Mitchell 8r. Helson, 1990). Consis­ tent with the previous discussion, quality of life was associated with the women's being in the empty nest stage and satisfied with their partners, their occupations, their health, their families, and their incomes. There was also some suggestion that women still interested in marital sex were more apt to assess their lives as "first rate" than other wives.

172 This favorable outlook for the advantaged upper-middle-class women—although not as common among those with a high school education—can hold true for both groups if their marriages are good. A community survey of 541 women showed the central impor­ tance of the couple relation for women at midlife (Costello, 1991). These premenopausal women, ages 42 to 50, came from a random sample of licensed women drivers in a Pen­ nsylvania county. Regardless of employment, education level, and presence of children at home, those who were unhappy in their mar­ riages were more likely to be depressed. Both high school graduates and college-educated wives who had children and were still in their first marriages were healthier and happier than other women. Within the group of mar­ ried with children, those with less education who were approaching their 50s tended to be four times more likely to report being depressed. There was no increase in the likeli­ hood of depression, however, if women who did not have a college degree were in paid employment. Holding a job appeared to give these high school graduates a positive feeling about themselves. Among the women with college training, job-holding made no dif­ ference in their depression levels. Thus, even though their jobs would tend to pay less and be less prestigious than those of the college educated, work roles are more critical to the mental health of wives who have only attended high school. Holding a job enables them to contribute to their families' well-being, gives them some financial independence, and may be a source of friends. The self-esteem of middle-aged black women, ages 40 to 64, is particularly depen­ dent on their being employed. Because, ac­ cording to the National Survey of Black Americans, almost half (48%) are single mothers, their incomes are particularly im­ portant for the welfare of themselves and their children. The relationship also holds among married mothers. Neither parenthood nor having a husband was as important to their sense of well-being as holding a job. Among these middle-aged black women, the combin­ ation of being married and employed did seem to be associated with fewer health problems, possibly because of the better health care two incomes provide (Coleman, Antonucci, Adelmann, & Crohan, 1987). The generally

COUPLE RELATIONS OVER

TIME

lower wages African Americans earn, combined with the long history of black women in the paid labor force, account for the crucial na­ ture of employment to their personal identity, self-esteem, and getting along economically. If having an occupation is one factor in the well-being of middle-aged women, the earlier reported findings on the importance of agree­ able couple interdependencies and intimacies counter the belief that women during and after menopause become uninterested in the sexual side of marriage. Research over the years has documented how many women, contrary to the stereotype, find menopause not only unproblematic but also a desirable change. Women unlikely to use contraceptives for religious reasons or to use them ineffectively because of difficulty in following routines, no longer need fear unwanted pregnancies. It also appears that there is no clear-cut group of signs that can be labeled a menopausal syndrome. Even the hot flash, which has been considered inevitable with the onset of midlife, is not part of the experience of all women. Many complete the transition to postchild­ bearing status without a single flash (Weg, 1989). Women who are active in a variety of roles besides their maternal ones usually report few or no indicators traditionally associated with the climacteric. The conclusions from the physiological and sociological studies done over the past two decades are that the folk wisdom concerning the difficulties women supposedly face in their 40s and 50s are just plain wrong. They often feel they are entering the prime of life with the capacity to expand their interests and activities. Far from retreating from sex, most women are reaching their highest levels of desire, capacity, and pleasure in sexual activity (Masters, Johnson, 8c Kolodny, 1985; Weg, 1983). SEX AND MIDLIFE COUPLES

But if women are ready, willing, and able to engage in sex, do their male partners have the capability to reciprocate? Because of the continuing double standard with respect to aging, men have traditionally been seen as retaining their attractiveness along with their virility despite reaching the half century mark. Research beginning in the 1960s, how­ ever, indicated that men, too, experience a mid­

ALONE AGAIN

life climacteric. The earlier discussion showed that men at this time are assessing their occupational achievements in the context of children reaching adulthood and leaving home. Their judgments of life to this point may not always be positive. They often worry about holding onto or advancing in a job at their ages and whether they have spent enough time with their children and partners in the past. This can contribute to a loss of well­ being, increased irritability, and lessened libido, the signs characterizing the male climacteric. As occurs among women, there are physio­ logical changes in men that contribute to their lessened sexual responsiveness. Social and psychological factors, such as occupational stress, overindulgence in food and drink, fear of impotence, and boredom with a usual sex partner, however, can account for their de­ creased sexual activity (Masters & Johnson, 1966). As with women, however, there is in­ creasing evidence that the postparental period for men need not necessarily be traumatic and can be a time of renewal (Weg, 1989). The threats to an active sex life can be overcome as couples develop new styles of intimacy. Although men and women tend to engage in less sexual intercourse after they turn 40, according to small-scale and national surveys (Clements, 1994; Kinsey, Pomeroy, 8c Martin, 1948), women, as noted above, continue their interest in and derive pleasure from coitus, often seeking it more than men. This gender differentiation in desire for intimacy comes in the same era as the crossover in gender characteristics previously discussed. Men are exploring some of the tenderness and emo­ tional expressiveness usually associated with women, and women are becoming more asser­ tive and independent, characteristics usually thought to be masculine. In a reversal of conventional thinking, the evidence points to women enjoying a new zest for living outside the home at the very time men are beginning to withdraw from competitive battles in the workplace and community. This change in gender personal qualities would be consistent with the sexual behavior of some couples at this time. As time goes on, more men have difficulty maintaining an erection. To save them from embarrassing failures in intercourse, their part­ ners may downplay intercourse. Misunder­

173 standings and miscommunication create further barriers to sexual intimacy. The men may interpret this supposed lack of interest as being due to their failure and be further incapacitated in their sexual activity. Some women, too, have difficulty. They experience painful coitus because of inadequate vaginal lubrication (Leiblum, 1990). These various physiological changes, occurring to couples in the postparental period, help explain the steadily declining rates of sexual intimacy. Limited linkages with couples' past activ­ ities also play a part. Couples who have had agreeable coitus in the past are likely to enjoy it during the postparental period. Intercourse takes on a more satisfying quality at this time because of the pleasure each partner has en­ joyed in a lasting relation. But women and men who have disliked sex and have seen it as a duty to be engaged in only when the partner becomes insistent are unlikely to change just because the children have gone and the physio­ logical climacteric is occurring. In fact, they may use these events as excuses for stopping intercourse as they grow older. Part of the difficulty for couples who have not been sexually active over the child-rearing years is the emphasis on coital sex in our society. With the concern about techniques of lovemaking and satisfying the partner, both legacies from the greater openness about sex following the social upheavals of the 1960s, intercourse has become another ac­ tivity Americans have to be good at. Instead of being a source of pleasure, sex becomes a worry, especially for men concerned whether they performed well enough that their part­ ners reached orgasm. As we have seen, physio­ logical changes from midlife on tend to make intercourse less comfortable and easy. Men especially can feel inadequate. It should be emphasized that tender touch­ ing, cuddling, hand-holding, kissing, and other noncoital forms of sexual communication are other ways for maintaining couple closeness and showing love. Comforting the loved one with a cup of coffee, a hug, a pillow at her or his back, or a woolly blanket to keep out the unfriendly world are all little attentions that can show deep affection. One husband put it this way: " 'Aren't we all touch animals? An infant first experiences love through touch. I don't think we ever lose that need.' " His wife

174

COUPLE RELATIONS OVER

agreed." 'For me," she said, "cuddling is as im­ portant as talking or making love' " (Branden, 1988, p. 226). Satisfying sexual lives, however, cannot compensate for unsatisfactory partner rela­ tions. Partners, whether in the beginning, mid­ dle, or last years of being together, generally rate respect, support, emotional security, com­ munication, and companionship ahead of sex in their judgments of what is essential to make marriages worth continuing. Sexual inter­ course is only one way of demonstrating love to the intimate other with whom one is shar­ ing a family life for better or for worse. Marital Breakup in

the Postparental Period

As I reported in a previous chapter, half of the marriages that do not last will break up within the first 7 years. As a consequence, fewer marriages end during the years when children are growing up and leaving home. The longer marriages last, the more couples, with or without children, have invested in the unions' continuance—and the fewer the al­ ternatives that would compensate for the financial and interpersonal disruptions divorce brings. But some couples do decide to dissolve their partnerships around the time children are reaching adulthood. The old ex­ planation for people remaining in unhappy marriages, "we're staying together for the children," no longer holds at that time. By the late 1980s, the divorce rate for women 45 to 54 years of age had doubled from the 1970 rate. Over these years, it increased from 5 to 10 per 1,000 married women (Glick, 1992, p. 1190, Table 1). Conservative esti­ mates place the number of women, born from 1945 to 1949, who will divorce when they are age 40 or older at around 11% to 12%. Younger cohorts of women are more subject to divorce and so will experience higher rates during the period children are entering adult­ hood (Uhlenberg, Cooney, 8c Boyd, 1990). For these reasons, it is important to look at what happens to parents and their adult off­ spring when mothers and fathers decide to break their ties to each other. The financial consequences for midlife women, as was true at earlier ages, are gener­ ally negative. Compared with married women,

TIME

divorced women in their late 40s or early 50s, particularly those entering this status within the past 5 years, are less economically welloff. One study based on U.S. census data showed that in the mid-1980s, only about half the divorced women, compared with 90% of married women, owned their own homes. They were more likely to be employed (more than three fifths as opposed to less than half), but their financial well-being was less. Widows tended to come between the divorced and married women on these measures but were more similar to the latter. Moreover, remar­ riage after divorce, one means for partially recouping economic status, is quite low for women older than 45. In the mid-1980s, for any one year, less than 3 of every divorced 100 women aged 45 to 64 remarried (Uhlenberg et al., 1990). For older women, therefore, losing the marital status can mean economic hardship. It may be this knowledge that ac­ counts for the finding, from a study using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Ma­ ture Women, that higher wages are a factor in women divorcing at older ages (Hiedemann 8c O'Rand, 1994). Researchers have not devoted much atten­ tion to documenting divorce and its after­ math among older persons. For this reason, I shall draw my insights from one small inter­ view study of 43 men and 50 women, living in a major metropolitan area, who had been divorced after an average of 25 years of mar­ riage. Fortunately, these people came from a wide range of income and education back­ grounds. Only one fourth of the sample had children under the age of 16 and still living at home, so a large majority were in the postparental period. Even though the men were on average 50 years of age and the women almost 49 years old, 56 of the 97 had a living parent (Hagestad, Smyer, 8c Stierman, 1984). Because a sizable number of the persons divorcing were in the middle generation, they had descendants as well as forebears who would be affected by it. The descriptions of the divorces and their consequences for the formerly married and their families differed, depending on whether a man or a woman was speaking. Consistent with the previous discussion on the varying outlooks for women and men at this time, wives seemed to have an easier time in the transition out of the marital position. Despite

175

ALONEAGAIN

possible money problems, the priority they had given earlier to member nurturance and other family roles paid off for them at this juncture. Whether adult children or aging parents were concerned, women had been the kin keepers over the years, and the sub­ jects of their solicitude were generally want­ ing to reciprocate this attention during the divorce process. Although half the persons interviewed had remained in unhappy or distant marriages while the children were young, it was mothers and not fathers who most often foresaw ir­ remediable conflicts in their marriages and had begun preparing children for the dissolv­ ing of the unions. In turn, the youths con­ tributed loving support to the women. A typi­ cal remark the mothers made was, " Ί never would have gotten through this without my children!' " (Hagestad et al., 1984, p. 255). Fathers were able to depend on their own financial resources, and adult offspring helped the more hard up mothers financially. Chil­ dren lived with them and shared rent or mortgage costs. Mothers were not always happy with this situation. As the previous discussion of grown children living with their parents indicated, these women disliked the children's postponement of customary adult living responsibilities and freedoms. The women also felt that they were less success­ ful as mothers because of their offsprings' need for the out-of-sequence shared living. One mother of a 24-year-old, well-educated daughter who had returned home mused, '"She is helping me make ends meet. . . . I could not keep the house without her help But you know it isn't fair.... She should have her life'" (Hagestad et al., 1984, p. 256). In contrast to mothers' close intergenera­ tional ties, fathers reported less favorable rela­ tions with their children. Although 9 of 10 mothers saw these links as being the same or improved after their divorces, this was true of less than three of five fathers. One man complained," 'It hurts me being close by.... They'd say, "Dad, I'll come up and clean the house." . . . They will if I pay them . . . you want them . . . they're too busy. If they do come up, what is there to do but talk a bit and then leave"' (Hagestad et al., 1984, p. 256). The connection between women's pre­ vious caretaking roles and their present posi­ tive payoffs also held for the interdependencies

of the divorced with their parents. Women were more likely to talk over problems with them; however, both women and men were likely to see as favorable any changes in their relationships with parents during the divorce transition. But divorced women and men alike were loath to turn to their parents for major support. Adult children were the persons they looked to for counsel and affection. Their parents were at an age where they were beginning to need physical help. They were not wanting to be reminded that their adult children, because of the divorce upheaval, might be less able to help them out. 1NTERGENERATIONAL RELATIONS

Aged parents' possible need for assistance from their adult children, who themselves have adult children, raises the issue of how divorce affects intergenerational help from adults in their midyears. We have seen in one small sample how divorcing midlife women and to a lesser extent men turn to the next generation, their children, and less often to the preceding generation, their parents, for help. But there is good evidence from the National Survey of Families and Households that marriage breakup at any time is associ­ ated with parents providing less aid later to their adult children (White, 1992). Whether it is affectionate concern (listening and advis­ ing), physical help (housework, transporta­ tion), or financial aid (loans or gifts), both divorced and remarried parents report doing less than first-married parents for their adult children. This negative effect holds true not only for fathers, who have generally not been a central part of their children's lives, but also for mothers. This is especially true of mothers without partners. According to adult children of such mothers in a national longitudinal study, the children gave more assistance to their mothers and received less from them than did children of women in first and later marriages. These grown-up children reported that they received as much help from first-married as remarried mothers, but they gave less to the latter. Re­ married adult offspring, however, did not receive as much support for college from divorced parents as did children from intact families (Amato, Rezac, 8c Booth, 1995).

176 Their failure to give costly financial help is largely accounted for by the lower incomes and assets of divorced parents. Divorce tends to be more common among couples with less education and restricted incomes, and leav­ ing the marriage does not remedy this situa­ tion. Remarriage, though it eases the economic hardships of divorced women, adds money complications and competitors to their chil­ dren from the earlier marriage. New obliga­ tions from stepchildren make it hard for both women and men to provide cash to needy children from previous unions. Moreover, in­ dividuals may choose to cohabit rather than remarry, thereby gaining the benefits of in­ timate companionship but escaping the eco­ nomic interdependencies of marriage. This increase in cohabitation helps account for the lower rates of remarriage described in Chap­ ter 6 (Cherlin 8c Furstenberg, 1994). Lack of monetary resources, however, does not entirely account for the decreased social support and physical aid divorced and remar­ ried parents provide. Relations between the grown-up children of divorce and their par­ ents are not always happy. They tend to live farther away from each other and have less contact than do their counterparts in intact marriages. The divorced parents also reported their relationships with their children were of lower quality. The two generations just did not get along as well as they did when the marital tie giving rise to the parental subsystem re­ mained unbroken (White, 1992). Thus, divorce and its sometimes aftermath of remarriage can be related to weakened intergenerational interdependencies. The disruption of routines and intimacies created by divorce and the conditions leading to it has a negative influ­ ence on persons getting along well with their adult children. Poor marital quality in couples remaining together also seems to be associated with fewer contacts between parents and adult children. Longitudinal data over a 12-year period pro­ vide information about which parent-child relations are most affected (Booth 8c Amato, 1994). This study has the advantage of a national sample and interviews with both parents and their adult children. There were fewer intergenerational contacts later when couples were unhappy while the children were growing up—even if spouses had stayed to­ gether. Satisfactory partnerships, as was true

COUPLE RELATIONS OVER

TIME

when children were younger, continued to contribute to intergenerational harmony when children had grown up. Again, fathers in un­ happy marriages were more apt to lose out, regardless of whether the couples had divorced. Mothers had tended the young children, and this attentiveness was reciprocated later in life. Where marital quality was low, however, sons were more apt to be somewhat less close to mothers. Daughters were not as affected. Thus, marital distance, regardless of whether it results in divorce, is reflected later in the closeness of parents and their mature children. Ties with the parents' parents are also weak­ ened. National survey data indicate that more than one third (37.4%) of the elderly who need help to carry out one or more important daily activity depend on an adult child (Stone, Cafferata, 8c Sangl, 1987). More than half of these children themselves are married and of an age, 45 to 64, when their own children either are leaving home or are already inde­ pendent. One fourth of those giving aid— about 8 of 10 are women—however, still had children younger than 18 at home. These immediate family responsibilities, along with continued concern for offspring outside the home, can diminish the ability of women in the middle generation to return to elderly parents the attention given to themselves as children. This is particularly true for middle-aged persons in disrupted marriages. Compared with their peers in continuing unions, the divorced, perhaps to preserve their own equa­ nimity, see their parents as less in need of help. They also provide less of it, due in major part to job responsibilities (Cicirelli, 1983). Thus, divorce seems to lead to a weakening of the intergenerational interdependencies with parents and children for whom the middle generation is customarily the mainstay. But contrary to another midlife belief, com­ paratively few women or men in the middle years of marriage face conflicting responsi­ bilities from their parents and their children. Whether the information comes from a na­ tional longitudinal study covering 15 years (Beck 8c Beck, 1989) or a representative crosssectional interview survey of persons in three counties in the northeast United States (Spitze 8c Logan, 1990), it appears that women are not often caught between the demands of parents and children. Beginning first with resi­

177

ALONE AGAIN

dential patterns, women 45 to 59 years of age, in the longitudinal study over a 15-year period, were unlikely to have shared their homes with parents and children. Marital status or race made no difference. Married women as well as those who were widowed, divorced, or sepa­ rated in the period—and those without husbands during all those years—did not generally live in extended families. Among white women living in three-generation homes, whether with parents or grandchildren at any time in the 15-year period, the percentages ranged from 8.4% (married women) to 13.5% (unmarried women). Of the sometimes mar­ ried women, 10.4% had parents and children living in their homes at the same time. Among African American women, the percentages were 12% for married women, 12% for the sometimes married, and 25.3% for the unmarried. Black women, although not white women, were more likely, however, to open their homes at some time in the 15 years to children and grandchildren. The greater incidence of single parenthood among African Americans probably accounts for this difference. More than one third (35.2%) of the black married women, two fifths (41.5%) of the sometimes married women, and almost half (46.2%) the unmarried women lived in such families during the 15-year period. The comparable figures for white women were 9.3%, 14%, and 11.7%, respectively (Beck 8c Beck, 1989, p. 164, Table 6). Thus, living in an extended family, in which parents or grand­ children joined the households of middleaged women over time, involved about one third of white women and two thirds of black women. But this shared housing covered only short periods of time. Just as they are unlikely to have both par­ ents and children in their homes, middleaged women generally do not have to provide care for the two groups at any one time. A majority of women through age 54 in the threecounty sample were likely to be married, to have a living parent, and to have at least one child at home. The majority of the women of this age were employed full-time. Men tended to have the same combination of positions. On the basis of this evidence, it would seem that playing the cluster of roles connected with being spouse, child, parent, and employee might lay the foundation for conflicting role expectations. Few of the women or men, how­

ever, were helping parents or adult children enough (more than 3 hours a week) to present difficulties in meeting other role demands. Only 8% of the women and 13% of the men combined child and parent care. Housing elderly parents requiring care appears to fol­ low rearing dependent children and to occur before adult children need assistance (Spitze 8c Logan, 1990). Such a schedule of intergenerational nurturance needs would not put undue burdens on either women or men. They are not likely to be caught between two generations seeking aid at the same time. Summary The middle period of couple life—when they are readying adolescents for adulthood and then seeing them take on these respon­ sibilities—is a period of ups and downs in the maintenance of family morale. This develop­ mental task looms large as social control patterns are having to shift. Youths' demands for more freedom and parents' fear of the consequences of adolescents' decisions often conflict. The comfortable interdependencies centering on parental authority that couples carry over from the preadolescent period are in flux, and parents are painfully working out new arrangements with often obstreperous offspring. This morphogenesis in the parent-child subsystem gets played out in couple relations. The strain from dealing with demanding teen­ agers contributes to marital disagreements and lack of patience to deal with partner concerns. Division of labor patterns that de­ veloped in the high-care child-rearing years continue to place disproportionate house­ hold duties on women, who, along with their husbands, are sharing breadwinning respon­ sibilities. Marital satisfaction for couples tends to be at a low point during these years with adolescents. The so-called postparental period, when adult children are no longer dependent, is a time of myths. Popular opinion views it as a hazardous period, especially for women. They are seen as losing their child care roles and thus a major portion of their reason for exist­ ing. Though it is true that the time when youths take on adult responsibilities generally coincides with the climacteric in women and

178 men, this is often a period of rejuvenation for women. Busy with jobs outside the home, freed from child care duties, and not having to assist ailing parents, women in their 40s and early 50s can have the time and the money to explore new activities and enjoy deeper at­ tachments to their partners. Men also are reviewing their lives in this period, but unlike their wives, they may be turning back to family matters. Most middleclass men have reached as far as they will go in their occupations. Working-class men are content if they enjoy some employment security. In both groups, many are looking for married lives that are less hectic than in the crowded child-dependent years. Limited link­ ages with the past make it easier for some husbands to renew their ties to wives who are experimenting with lighter household work­ loads and expanded community opportunities. Physiological indicators of aging, again contrary to popular beliefs, need not preclude

COUPLE RELATIONS OVER TIME

continuing interest in coitus among women. Couples who have enjoyed sexual activities previously continue them in the present, even though the sexual capacities—for psycho­ logical and physical reasons among some men and women—begin to decline at this time. Those uncomfortable with sexual intimacies in the past do not change just because they are freed from parental responsibilities. Divorce is still an option for the unhappy, although most persons in this category have left their marital unions at earlier stages in their family lives. Those who are no longer married are likely to experience some dis­ tance between themselves and their children and parents. Men, particularly, are likely to be separated from intergenerational support. For a majority of couples, however, good rela­ tions with spouses complemented by contin­ uing ties with adult children make the midlife period one of greater marital satisfaction.

10

Elderly Couples and

the End of the Family Career

Closing Years This chapter covers the stage after spouses have generally retired and before the end of the marital career when one of them dies. As we shall see, the present generation of older persons is different from previous genera­ tions. Its members are more likely to be mar­ ried, to be healthy, and to be relatively well fixed financially. Thus, the final couple stage can be one of comfort and contentment. The chapter begins with the demographic situa­ tion of those persons customarily considered old, that is 65 years of age or older. It will then go into the couple and individual develop­ mental tasks of this marital career period. The marital quality of older couples follows. Their relations with earlier and succeeding genera­ tions is also covered. The chapter ends with a consideration of the family life of those per­ sons, more often women, who are widowed or divorced at this period.

A Demographic Description Life expectancy has been increasing over the 20th century, as shown by a comparison

between persons born at the turn of the cen­ tury and those born in 1989. In 1900, white female babies could expect to live 48.7 years; black females and others, 33.5 years. White male babies born then had a life expectancy of 46.3 years; black males and others, 32.5 years (Wattenberg, 1976, pp. 99-115). For per­ sons born in 1989, white females could expect to live 79 years and black females 74 years. It was 73 years for white males and 65 years for black males (Taeuber, 1992, p. v). The length­ ening of lives that has given parents the op­ portunity to see their children become adults has also enabled couples to share years after the ending of their active work lives. One example of just how extensive the increases in life expectancy have been among older cohorts appears in Table 10.1. In 1940 and 1971, there were only en ough elderly to divide marital status into two age categories. These were 65 to 74 years and 75 years and older. There are now enough persons 85 years of age or older to add this third category to recent U.S. census figures on the marital status of older individuals. Table 10.1 illustrates how couple existence can continue into late old age. Moreover, there is some suggestion from ongoing research that 179

180 TABLE 10.1

COUPLE RELATIONS OVER

TIME

The Marital Status of Older Americans by Age and Gender: 1940,1971, and 1991 in Percentages 0

Male

Female

Marital Status

55-64

65-74

75+

55-64

65-74

75+

Never married Married (Spouse present) (Spouse absent) Widowed Divorced N

10.7

10.1

9.1

9.0

9.4

9.0

74.5 4.0 9.0 1.8 5,409

65.4 3.7 19.3 1.5 3,167

46.8 3.4 39.8 0.9 1,239

59.8 3.2 26.4 1.6 5,163

39.1 2.5 48.1 0.9 3,209

15.8 1.9 72.9 0,4 1,404

5.8

7.7

6.2

6.4

7.8

6.5

84.2 3.2 3.5 3.3 8,815

76.1 2.9 10.0 3.2 5,402

59.6 2.9 29.5 1.8 3,071

64.9 3.3 21.2 4.1 9,880

44.5 1.7 43.0 2.9 6,854

20.1 1.7 70.2 1.4 4,766

Year 1940

9

Year 1971 Never married Married (Spouse present) (Spouse absent) Widowed Divorced N*

Year 1991 Female

Male 65-74

Marital Status

55-64

65-74

75-84

85+

55-64

Never married Married (Spouse present) (Spouse absent) Widowed Divorced Ν *

5.9

4.7

4.1

1.8

3.7

4.8

5.5

5.4

79.0

79.0

69.5

47.5

67.1

51.4

28.1

8.8

2.9 3.2 8.9 10,161

1.9 9.2 5.3 8,156

2.5 20.2 3.6 3,597

3.5 45.6 1.7

3.2 15.2 10.7

1.9 35.3 6.6

1.3 61.1 3.9

1.2 82.4 2.1

794

11,184

10,081

75-84

5,867

85+

1,597

SOURCE: T h e 1940 data are from U.S. Bureau of the Census (1948, pp. 10-11, W e 1). T h e 1971 data are from U S . Bureau of the Census (1971, p. 9, Table l ) . T h e 1991 data are from U.S. Bureau of the Census (1992b, p. 15, Table 1). a. N u m b e r s are in thousands.

the elderly are living longer without disproportionate increases in disability rates (Duncan & Smith, 1989; Manton, 1989; Taeuber, 1992, p. v). The table also suggests that to view persons over 65 as being frail and in need of care is to overlook the great age diversity in the group characterized as elderly. Longer lives mean that couples rack up more marriage anniversaries than in the past. I recently attended a wedding that occurred 3 days after the grandparents of the bride had celebrated 60 years of marriage. The widowed and divorced also have a lengthened period in which to live alone—or to look for another partner with whom to end their lives. The table shows that in recent years, being married characterizes a larger proportion of the elder­

ly. But gender differentials in life expectancy result in a lack of potential partners for aged women. The greater proportion of women than men without spouses is one characteris­ tic of midcentury that continues to the present. These aged widows are more likely to be in poverty. They were less apt to be employed earlier and have outlived couple savings. One change from the past that we can safely predict will be even more apparent in future years is a greater percentage of the divorced and the unmarried among older people. The birth cohorts from the 1920s and 1930s are more likely to have married and stayed with the same spouse over more years than will be true of succeeding cohorts.

THE END OF THE FAMILY CAREER

181

There is another factor besides marital con­ tinuity that differentiates the present group of senior citizens from both earlier cohorts and those that will come after them. It is these elderh/s relativefinancialwell-being. A smaller proportion of this cohort are counted among the poor, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, than children and youths under the age of 24 (Taeuber, 1992). In terms of net worth, that is, ownership of real estate, stocks, bonds, and savings, those 65 to 74 years old in the late 1980s were better-off than any group under 65. Their individual assets were valued at more than $82,000. This compared with $80,000 for the most well-fixed younger group, those 55 to 64 in age. The median net worth for householders 75 and older was something in excess of $60,000. This was still higher than the $57,500 median worth of those 45 to 54, the second most wealthy group among younger persons (Longino 8c Crown, 1991).

the current group of the elderly is the wealth­ iest in history (Longino 8c Crown, 1991). But the financial diversity among the elderly should not be overlooked. The top fifth in wealth in 1988 were more likely to be white, male, and still married, and the bottom fifth in wealth at that time were more likely to be women, widowed, and nonwhite (Longino 8c Crown, 1991). To summarize the demographic data on current birth cohorts of persons 65 and older, they are likely to live longer and to be in reasonably better health than the elderly of previous eras. They are also celebrating longer marriages and enjoying more economic well­ being. Thus, the common view of the elderly as lonely, hard up dependents needs revision.

The favorable economic situation of most elderly is not due to their being employed. The number of older men in the labor force has been dropping in recent years. By 1993, it was 11.3% of those 65 years and older, com­ pared with 24.4% for this age group as recent­ ly as 1972. Women in these cohorts have never been in the labor force in large numbers, but comparable employment figures also indicate a slight drop. In 1972,9.3% of women 65 and older were employed. It was 8.2% in 1993 (Hayward, Grady, 8c McLaughlin, 1988; U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statis­ tics, 1994, p. 184, Table 3). The elderly who came of age in the 1930s and 1940s benefited from a number of favor­ able governmental and economic factors. Many of the men who had been soldiers in World War II were subsidized by the federal govern­ ment to continue their educations beyond high school. As a consequence, they were well prepared to advance themselves economically in the postwar boom years. This birth cohort was also able to buy housing at low interest rates, and these assets have appreciated con­ siderably in value over the years. The wealth of those holding stocks was boosted by the mid-1980s stock market boom. Finally, they are the beneficiaries of generous federal in­ come entitlements. These include subsidized health care and Social Security payments tied to the cost of living. As a consequence of these governmental policies and economic trends,

Having learned the general marital status, health, and economic situation of senior citi­ zens, we can now turn to the individual and couple tasks these life conditions create. The major task individual partners in this period are facing is the family career's ending, due to their own or their spouse's death (Ullman, 1986). Couples often come to grips with this inevitable event when a husband or wife retires. Men particularly are likely to surprise their wives with remarks such as, "Since you'll prob­ ably outlive me, we need to think through where it would be best for you to live after I'm gone," or "I'm not going to be around forever, and I don't want a fuss made to keep me alive." These statements by a partner in couples who have been able to maintain close rela­ tions over the years can be the opening for conversations about death and their feelings about it. At such times, some spouses may be able to express their grief at the thought of losing longtime companions and their con­ cerns about what will happen if they are the one to survive. Such conversations, however brief, however halting, can push individuals as couples to make plans for funerals and the disposition of treasured possessions through wills. Later, the partner who is left will have the memory of these talks to ease the pain of final separation (Cole, 1986). Other mates less able to handle such emotional issues directly may still be able to remember together the good times they have shared, good times

Developmental Tasks for Elderly Couples

182 that have eased the bad times they have lived through as a couple. They may even get around to mentioning desirable qualities in the other that have kept them together. Conversations about death, even if brief, can also help couples deal with the possibility of physical decline and the need to prepare for a time when they may require some form of assisted living. Though facing the end of life is an indi­ vidual developmental task that can become a couple task, other issues clearly fall to couples, including physical maintenance. As far as money matters are concerned, this task is one that has to be addressed in earlier family stages. While husbands and wives are employed, if they have adequate incomes, they can be saving for the retirement years. As couples enter the years when this transition approaches, others who will be dependent on monthly Social Security checks must take on the task of decid­ ing how they will allocate the smaller incomes that generally follow. Present-day couples are better-off than in the past, but those with slender incomes have to make hard decisions on how to spend what is available. Being finan­ cially independent is important to elders' own sense of competence in a period of declining physical capacities (Hennon & Burton, 1986). One important aspect of these money mat­ ters is the couple's talking over how they want to dispose of their assets. Deciding which child should receive what possession, making out the will that puts into effect these decisions, and telling the future recipients of these pro­ visions are part of the couple's financial task at this period. These decisions are difficult. It is hard to allocate resources among loved ones in a fair way and yet recognize the par­ ticular situations of offspring that require special attention. It is even more wrenching for partners to think of a future in which both maybe inactive and one eventually absent. The difficulty is accentuated if finances have not been something the partners have customari­ ly discussed, and the effects of the possible physical decline and death of the one respon­ sible for their handling is a forbidden topic. Who does what to keep the household going may have been a bone of contention between mates throughout the previous years of their marriages. Now, when both partners are facing a time with diminished occupational demands, a different situation exists. Men have

COUPLE RELATIONS OVER

TIME

more time to be at home and, for the first time since the early married years, may want to take an active part in the daily chores. But wives, having worked out comfortable routines on their own, may not want to negotiate new ar­ rangements. This is particularly the case if the new help is fussy about the tasks he wants to take on or wants to play the role of supervisor. Unlike earlier periods in the marital career, this is not a time when readjustment of house­ hold work assignments is caught up in touchy issues concerning the excess burden women assume. Both partners are now less encum­ bered with extra-couple responsibilities. The physiological realities they are facing also push them to make division of labor changes. Their health and energy levels tend to decline with age. Simplifying their lifestyles is one way to take into account these trends. Another is to prepare each spouse to take over domestic tasks in case the mate becomes disabled or dies. Just as men need to learn to cook, clean, and shop, so must women know about the financial task of balancing income to outgo. In these individual and couple develop­ mental tasks at the last period in couple lives, limited linkages with past events in the mari­ tal career threaten their accomplishment. For persons living in holy deadlock, the ability to avoid destructive interchanges and the will­ ingness to try experimenting with more benign interdependencies is often lacking. The past continues to shape the present. Adding to the difficulties of making a break with past un­ happy couple patterns, there may well be a lack in an aging person's sensitivity to the other's wishes and the willingness to be responsive to them (Kelley, 1981). One elderly friend ex­ pressed it this way in a letter: I havefinallybeen fed up with trying to get along with other people's idiosyncrasies and have decided it is now their turn to get along, if possible, with some of mine. What's the use of wasting breath saying anything except what you really think? An unwillingness to step outside customary routines and personal preoccupations makes change in couple relations difficult, if not impossible. This is particularly likely if spouses have handled problems in the past by avoid­ ing talking about them.

THE END OF THE FAMILY CAREER

Retirement and Marital Quality A transition that can serve as a marker for the aging family is the retirement of one or both spouses. In past eras, this was often viewed as a negative event. It meant a lower standard of living, poor health, and increasing finan­ cial and personal care dependencies. Nowa­ days, however, as the demographic data in the first section of this chapter showed, this piti­ ful picture of the elderly does not hold true. Leaving the paid labor force, however, does affect marital relations. Concern about lack of income contributes to a lowered sense of well-being among some seniors (Ferraro & Wan, 1986). Husbands particularly must cope with many additional hours at home. In the present co­ horts of elderly persons, wives are less likely to have been employed. Because men have generally not been involved in household management, they must develop new and more time-consuming activities at home or expand their present leisure activities. This is not always easy for men wary of wives and domesticity. As one working-class man put it, " 'I've always sort of preferred men's com­ pany, no disrespect to my wife or anything like that'" (Crawford, 1971, p. 259). Wives also have to adjust to having a man around the house more. Supposedly, such discontinuities with the preretirement period create marital tensions. But among couples recruited for a Veterans Administration study of normal aging among men in the Boston area, marital complaints did not differ between couples with retired men and those with men who were not. Among the 92 couples in which the husbands had been retired 1 year or less and the 125 others, their marital quality interests centered on af­ fection and companionship. Wives, who were in their late 50s or early 60s, had stronger complaints than husbands about spouses fail­ ing to show enough love and appreciation. Their husbands, generally in their early 60s, were less satisfied with the frequency of coitus in their marriages. Wives often wanted their husbands to do something about their ap­ pearance and to drink less, complaints that might help to explain their husbands' dissatis­ factions with the couples' sex lives. Wives of retired men were also more likely to wish their husbands were involved in addi­

183 tional hobbies and outside activities; how­ ever, they were not more unhappy about their husbands' use of time or about household task issues. The difficulty for most did not seem to lie in husbands having to be enter­ tained and waited on. But the one third of the wives who were still working while their hus­ bands were retired complained that their hus­ bands did not help enough around the house (Ekerdt 8c Vinick, 1991). These women felt their double job burden continued to be unfair. Among aging couples though, such problems may not be lasting ones. Working wives even­ tually retire and then seem to accept domestic arrangements without confrontations. The relatively small influence retirement has on marital disagreements is consistent with research evidence indicating its minor effects on marital quality. Limited linkages from past periods in the marital career make for continuities despite the retirement transi­ tion. Couples who have been comforting each other and showing they care about each other while children are growing up and later are unlikely to change just because work routines stop. Men continue to seek intimacy with their wives, although wives have a broader range of confidants. Mutual support does be­ come more important in times of trouble, when one partner becomes ill, or when an aging parent needs care (Anderson, 1992). These long-time cohabitants look to each other to do things with as well as to care for them in times of illness. Their increased time together in retire­ ment can enhance what gerontologist Robert C. Atchley (1992, p. 147) labels the three pos­ sible functions of marriage: affection, belong­ ing, and interdependence. Having more time to be together enables partners in continuing high-quality marriages to talk through dis­ satisfactions and establish new rules for get­ ting along. Husbands, 75 years and older without work or parent responsibilities, are generally happier than younger men under 65, still likely to be in the labor force. One longitudinal study showed that even among these younger men, those who were retired more often reported being extremely happy in their marriages. Continuity with what has gone on in the past characterized these older unions. Less than 15% of the 399 retired per­ sons in the Ohio longitudinal sample said their marriages had changed since retirement. The

184 following are some of their judgments:" 'We have more time together, more pursuing of mutual interests, more loving* " (woman, age 64). A 63-year-old man reported," Ί did not believe it was possible, but retirement has enhanced our marriage. We spend much more time together, have more time to share, more time to do for each other.' " There were a few negative comments when a wife was still employed, a husband's com­ munication was restricted, or housework for wives increased. A 68-year-old husband said, " 'Since I retired, what I expect of my wife is sometimes unrealistic. I do not communicate with her like I should. When she comes home from work, I expect her to go places with me—places I want to go.' " A woman aged 66 complained, " Ί found it to be more confus­ ing being with my husband 24 hours a day and giving up much of my privacy and quiet times. There are more meals to cook and more housework' " (Atchley, 1992, pp. 154­ 155). MARRIAGES THAT STAY TOGETHER

There is a marriage prayer in the Book of Tobit from the Apocrypha, quoted by novelist George Eliot (1871/1977) in Middkmarch that says, "Mercifully grant that we may grow aged together." When both partners share this sentiment, marriage can indeed make a sub­ stantial contribution to the personal satisfac­ tion of elderly persons. One Washington State large sample of 4,122 persons 55 years and older showed marital satisfaction to be second only to good health in being related to selfesteem among these older respondents. Con­ sistent with the generally lower economic and social status of single women entering their 20s in the 1940s and 1950s, never-married women had somewhat lower self-esteem than others. The researchers, sociologists Gary R. Lee and Constance L. Shehan (1989), had hypothe­ sized that older persons would feel better about themselves if the relationships in which they had some choice were satisfactory. This was true of getting along with their spouses. Contacts with friends, another social tie based on choice, also contributed to self-esteem. But as they hypothesized, having or not having children and the frequency of interaction with them and with grandchildren had no

COUPLE RELATIONS OVER

TIME

effect on positive self-feelings for either gender. Older persons do not have much choice in these contacts. Among the women of this gen­ eration who often suffered from the power­ lessness that comes with dependence, the homemakers and the retired wives in the sample thought less well of themselves than did women holding jobs. For these older women, there may have been an element of positive choice in getting out of the house and being paid at the same time. Such an interpre­ tation fits well with the previous chapter's argument. Many middle-class older women see the time after their parental responsibil­ ities are lightened as an occasion to broaden their horizons and try out new activities. This is a freedom their partners have often taken for granted throughout their active years. In analyzing the quality of lasting mar­ riages, it should be noted that, by definition, unions that fail to meet some minimal stan­ dard of acceptability have dissolved before this period. Only the happier or more committed couples are generally left from the cohort of couples marrying some years before. The cur­ rent elderly, however, less often viewed di­ vorce as an option than do their offspring and grandchildren. But what do the long married say keeps them together? We might wonder if, as one husband, a veteran of 75 years of mar­ riage was reputed to have said, it is a matter of frequent absences and growing deafness. Actually, when 100 wives and husbands mar­ ried 45 years or more were asked what had been important in their remaining together, both agreed on two major factors. The re­ spondents, recruited from retirement com­ munities in eight states, reported being happy in their marriages. Ninety percent said that living intimately with someone they liked and enjoyed being with was central to their satis­ faction. The second factor they mentioned was seeing marriage as a commitment both to their partner and to the institution itself. Even the unhappy stayed together because to them, as noted above, their vows were unbreakable (Lauer, Lauer, 8c Kerr, 1990). Husbands and wives, who were interview­ ed separately at intervals over a half century, expressed much the same sentiments about staying together. Five of the 17 couples remain­ ing from a representative sample of young adult parents in Berkeley, California, first contacted in 1928 and 1929 and finally in

185

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1982 to 1984, reported satisfying marriages over the years. They made comments such as, " 'We enjoy our own company more than any other' " [husband] or " Ί am still in love with him, and he's in love with m e ' " [wife]. In contrast were the explanations for remaining married of the two couples who had been unhappy throughout their more than half century together. One husband said," Ί think I could m a r r y . . . any number of women and feel happy.' " He continued, " 'So, I wouldn't say that my relationship with her has been a perfect sort of thing 'cause I could have been comfortable with marrying someone else But on the other hand, when I made the vow to stay with her, I stick to it.'" All of the couples, even those who over the years reported being happy with their spouses, had their marital ups and downs due to financial setbacks or emotional upheavals. Consistent with the ar­ gument in the previous chapters concerning the decline in marital satisfaction during the child-rearing years was the satisfaction trajectory of seven couples. One wife remarked that she and her husband " 'began to live as a couple after the children moved out' " (Weishaus & Field, 1988, pp. 768-769). It was only then that they became close. But even in long-term marriages, where partners have recovered from the satisfaction downers during some periods in the family career, limited linkages have an effect. Couples who manage to either maintain intimate ties or reestablish them in the middle years, when parenting pressures subside, accumu­ late quality advantages in later years. Living together through commitment to each other —and not just to the institution of marriage— makes it easier for spouses to depend on each other in a period of lessening health and ener­ gy. Well-being is interdependent for couples who stick together. Large representative sam­ ples of persons 66 to 71 indicate that couples who get along well are able to help each other in morale and physical maintenance tasks (Ferraro 8c Wan, 1986). If partners in com­ fortable unions need help getting out of the bathtub, a hot meal when sick, or some other special attention, they have fewer feelings of discomfort or diffidence at asking and less fear of being turned down by the other. For unhappy couples, even though they have celebrated many wedding anniversaries, the

forced interdependencies that come with get­ ting old add to the constant irritations. The importance of marriage to elderly people is shown by the number of remar­ riages that occur after the death of a spouse. Because women as a rule live so much longer than men, the transition of starting another intimate relation is easier for men than for women. There are advantages, however, for both parties in setting up partnership at ad­ vanced years. It provides a companion for doing things with and talking over events of the day. They can also provide health care, even if it is only calling a taxi to go to the emergen­ cy room. The other lightens heavy loads of troubles with expressions of sympathy. Some of this aspect of family life among the elderly is reflected in a couple description taken from my local newspaper. The husband is 91, and the wife is 82. He had been a widower for 10 years, and she had never married. Because they both live in a retirement home, having each other to turn to had less to do with physical care and health requirements than to provide sociability. Mary, who had been an independent job-holder throughout her ac­ tive years, commented about her marriage, " Ί have had no regrets; we've had a lot of fun together.' " Husband, Jim, reported that he had initiated their moving into the same apart­ ment by asking Mary, " 'Why don't we just decide to get married and whatever years we have left can be together?' " His assessment of their relationship was, " 'Married life at the senior years is very, very comfortable and rewarding' " (Tull, 1993, pp. Gl, G4). 1

SEX A N D THE ELDERLY

Contrary to the myth of the elderly as frail asexual dependents, sex need not be absent from the lives of aging partners. Popular opinion would have it that sexual intercourse among golden-agers is not only nonexistent but somehow rather indecent. For example, I was telling a friend about a couple I knew who were unhappy at having to spend the night in a guest room with twin beds. When I went on to say that it was uncomfortable for the two to share a twin bed, my friend was amused. After I remarked that the spouses were in their late 60s, her amusement turned to dis­ belief, tinged with not a little disgust. With

186 our society's emphasis on the desirability of a youthful appearance, it was difficult for her to imagine persons with sagging, wrinkled bodies taking pleasure in each other through coitus. In actuality, research does not support the stereotype that older people necessarily lose interest in sex and that its importance to them declines as their years increase. Continuities with the past exist with respect to sex, as is true of companionship and communication among the elderly. One psychologist, A. R. Allgeier (1983), characterizes the situation this way: "Sexy young people mature into sexy middle-aged and elderly people. The sexually disinterested elderly person was probably not very enthusiastic about sex in youth" (p. 144). Physiological declines in men affect their erectile and ejaculatory capacities. For both men and women, their sexual reactions are slower and less intense. As a result, although most older couples remain interested in sex and are capable of erotic arousal, the frequen­ cy of coitus declines beyond the age of 60. This is especially true for women because of the shortage of older men. But older couples who have remained sexually active through­ out their marriages constitute an exception. For them, there is little decrease in inter­ course as long as the partners are in reasonab­ ly good health. It is psychosocial as well as biological fac­ tors that appear to influence the cessation of sex among elderly couples. Beliefs that it is unseemly or unimportant for golden-agers, boredom with the partner, and appearance changes are all negative factors in their con­ tinuance of intercourse (Griffitt, 1981).Itwas possible to determine the sexual activity of 2,283 individuals 60 years and older living in a southeastern city who had first been con­ tacted for a heart study 29 years earlier. The data showed that factors related to more fre­ quent intercourse simply were being married for black and white women, higher education for white men, higher income for black men, and the men's perceptions of being healthy. The explanation for these findings seems to be that education and income are related to being more healthy as well as contributing to more pleasant living. They can encourage in­ timate couple relations, just as having a cus­ tomary partner makes possible having sex on a regular basis (Keil, Sutherland, Knapp, Waid, & Gazes, 1992).

COUPLE RELATIONS OVER

TIME

Among the very elderly, sexual intimacy may be replaced by other types of cuddling and touching that compensate for its loss. A 93-year-old man interviewed in an early study of the aged in San Francisco maybe permitted to have the last word on males' sexual abilities in old age. Mr. Ed Hart, by his early 80s, had outlived three wives, the last with whom he had enjoyed a platonic relation. Consider­ ing this, he said, " 'It's just deterioration, I presume. But it is certainly nothing to get upset about. This seems to be what happens to all male animals as they grow older—but you don't stop loving or living'" (Clark 8c Anderson, 1967, p. 274). Kin Contacts We have seen how good marriages can serve as buffers for the elderly from the in­ evitable changes coming in the final period of the family career. Contentment with spouses is especially important for men's well-being, as they are less likely to have others to turn to for comfort and companionship. The earlier discussion showed that the ties older indi­ viduals found most satisfactory were those where they had some choice. These included friends and spouses but not necessarily rela­ tives. Contacts with kindred such as children and parents, however, are built into family life. For that reason, an analysis of these social networks is necessary in any consideration of later-life marriages. I shall be drawing heavily in this section on research that colleague David Klein and I did. We were interested in the contacts that couples in their early and mid-60s main­ tained with adult children. We deliberately selected a sample of relatively healthy and well-fixed people who had a varying number of children. We wanted to see how much these couples, who had no obvious problems, kept in touch with their adult children and if fami­ ly size made a difference. Did those having more children receive more attention from them? According to an acquaintance, this relation does not always hold true. She said that she and her seven sibs shared parent contact responsibility, so no one person was overburdened. My friend's thinking was that parents of few children could expect close at­ tention from each. Parents with more offspring

THE END OF THE FAMILY CAREER

would have as many contacts, but they would be fewer with each adult child. It seemed an in­ teresting speculation to examine with younger, still vigorous couples. In Chapter 4,1 looked at the effect of size on family interactions. The focus there was on the expanding family due to the coming of children. Here, the focus is on parent-child contacts when the children are adults and no longer living at home. The basis for the research was three theories of why families of varying sizes would remain in contact and how parents would feel about the ties (for com­ plete details, see Aldous & Klein, 1991). They are the size constraint, competing loyalties, and familism theories. Briefly summarized, the size constraint model assumes that social control and morale maintenance are problems in larger families because of the greater numbers of interpersonal relation­ ships centering on the parents. They have less time and energy to nurture the individual child. An emphasis on rule-oriented disci­ pline might be necessary to preserve order. For these reasons, their adult children, per­ haps unhappy with parental treatment while at home, might minimize contact with their parents. As a result, the parents would feel less satisfied with their offspring. The competing loyalties theory looks at how persons from work, friendship, and voluntary community settings might interfere with parents giving care to their children. In-laws and the marital partner can also compete with children for attention. Couples with larger numbers of children, however, might have had to be more involved with them in the childrearing years. Busy mothers would have been less likely to work or be involved in other activities outside the home. Thus, parents with a number of children would be more likely to stress ties with them than other commit­ ments. When children were grown, parents would continue to maintain them. The familism theory, unlike the size con­ straint theory but like the competing loyalties theory, predicts parent-adult child relations would be closer in large families. The ration­ ale is different, however. According to it, large families have a collective emphasis in work and play activities, which makes it difficult for children to remove themselves from the web of family network contacts in later years.

187 The data to examine how well these theories accounted for intergenerational relations among older couples came from interviews with 124 couples in their late 50s and early 60s. To ensure their having large families, we sampled male alumni from a Roman Catholic university. The number of children in their families ranged from 1 to 11. As an idealized view of family life might suggest, there were more contacts between these relatively wellfixed, healthy parents and their children who had left home if families were larger. This, however, was because they had more children to interact with. The average frequency of parent-child contacts was about the same across family sizes, although the absolute amount of intergenerational service (house­ work and child care), financial support, and emotional support was considerable in larger families. But with respect to sociability ex­ changes, parents and children in smaller families did more things together. It appeared that organizational character­ istics of families underlay these intergenera­ tional relationships. Parents and children tend to be joined by sentimental ties, which serve to soften the unhappiness adults may associate with the control strategies their parents used in rearing them. Thus, of the three theories, competing loyalties seemed to work best in accounting for the findings. But contrary to the hypothesis, the more overlapping the de­ mands from fathers' jobs and their adult children, for example, the more the contacts. Although we lacked the longitudinal data to test the explanation, it appeared that parents with many demands from children divided their interchanges with them according to their neediness. Parents could thereby set resource allocation priorities based on competing re­ ponsibilities and use these as reasons for failing to fulfill some requests (Aldous & Klein, 1991). Parents were most likely to provide services and emotional support to never-married daughters and divorced daughters with chil­ dren (Aldous, 1985). These were obligatory demands that parents could not ignore. But as the discussion earlier in the chapter noted, older persons feel more satisfied with rela­ tionships, such as spouses and friends, over which they have had some choice. The pres­ sures from needy children minimized the element of choice and maximized the degree

188 of obligation. Parents were less content with these ties. Fathers who felt overloaded with children's demands expressed less agreement about the way these offspring treated their parents, their sibs, or their own children. By and large, however, the parents in this sample were satisfied with the interactions they had with their children. Only when the distance between them was too great for easy visiting did they tend to be unhappy. This finding is consistent with research over the years that has shown the extensive contacts between aging parents and adult children, especially daughters. There is a social norm that prescribes par­ ents' equal attachment to all their children. It encourages family harmony by removing a strong source of sibling rivalry. Yet these par­ ents did single out those children whom they found either most understanding or most disappointing. For example, one husband dif­ ferentiated among his four children like this: First child:" 'He is divorced and I think it affected him a little. We are not always comfort­ able with him.'" Second child:" 'Same problem. Has emotional problem over divorce also. We are con­ cerned about that.'" Third child: " 'She has children. Her marriage is stable. We feel good with her.' " Fourth child: " 'Have best relationship with him, because he is the closest. We can lean on him.' " (Aldous, Klaus, 8t Klein, 1985, p. 303) The children who provided comfort and sympathy in the previous year to the couples we talked with were also likely to be the ones the parents turned to in times of trouble. When the favored children were compared with their sibs, the parents were more likely to say they shared parental values on matters such as their treatment of their siblings and parents and their child-rearing practices. Par­ ents were also more likely to see children as understanding when they held the same fami­ ly positions, that is, they were also parents. Daughters more likely to be concerned with raising children most often served as confi­ dants for mothers and comfort givers to both parents. In contrast, parents reported

COUPLE RELATIONS OVER

TIME

sons to be the most disappointing of their children. They did not like the way their sons treated them. Generally, parents felt that disappointing offspring, unlike their more satisfactory sib­ lings, did not share their interests. Fathers were more likely to label negatively children who were not parents and thus had not taken on those responsibilities. Children's failure to match their fathers' educational achieve­ ments and their lesser religious commitment also set them apart as disappointing. In their fathers' eyes, these lapses would suggest that they as parents had been unsuccessful in transmitting their values to their children. One father summarized his sentiments this way: " 'John frustrates me by his lifestyle, his lack of ambitions and goals'" (Aldous et al., 1985, p. 315). Thus, these middle-class fathers' concerns with achievement were reflected in their assessments of their children as adults. The results from our research on couples around the usual retirement age of 65 were consistent with what previous research has shown concerning intergenerational relations of older families (Mancini 8c Blieszner, 1989). Their contacts with their adult children were numerous and mostly satisfactory. Because the parents were not physically or financially dependent, the interchanges were relatively voluntary. The closer kin ties women gener­ ally maintain also appeared in this sample. Despite competing demands from jobs and other children, parents were especially in­ volved in the lives of daughters with greater needs due to divorce or being single. When parents sought comfort or advice, it was more likely to be daughters to whom they turned. Parents with a choice selected those who had taken on the caring roles of parenthood usually associated with women. Presumably, these daughters who had started their own family careers would be more sympathetic to their parents' concerns. Thus, the web of female kin networks caught up the next generation. Such findings from white samples of older couples also tend to show up in studies of elderly African Americans. The importance of females in the kin keeping process is ap­ parent. A national survey of individuals 55 years and older showed that among the blacks in the study, men received many fewer visits and telephone calls from their children than

189

THE END OF THE FAMILY CAREER

did women (Spitze & Miner, 1992). This was true even though they were a bit more likely to be living with a spouse and had more diffi­ culties with daily living activities. Presumably, wives would be helping them. The men also had somewhat more income, which would seem to give them the means to keep in touch. Men who lived alone were particularly likely to be cut off from contacts with children. Because they were unlikely to have had cus­ tody of their children when they were young, their separation from them was a continuity from the past. In contrast, women were active in visiting with sons and daughters, whether living alone or with someone. They also were busy with telephone calls, especially when they had daughters. Another representative national survey, this one limited to African Americans, showed life satisfaction among older blacks to be linked to close family ties (Ellison, 1990). Again, as was true of white families, the importance of close intergenera­ tional relations to the well-being of older African Americans appears. Those persons—and they are more likely to be women—who have nurtured their ties with their children as they were growing up, reap the benefits of attention and caring when they are older. The situation of divorced men is especially instructive in this regard. Regard­ less of race, national surveys show they are less likely than married men to have frequent contact with their adult children. When they have divorced earlier in their lives, they are especially unlikely to mention adult offspring as persons they could turn to in times of need. Nor does having other children or stepchildren after the divorce seem to make much of a difference. Only when adult children are in proximity and fathers are better-off, as sug­ gested by their having more education, do closer relations appear to exist (Cooney & Uhlenberg, 1990). Divorced fathers are less likely to have had the daily contacts with children that create later strong relationships. The effort to keep in touch, especially when children are living at a distance and funds are limited, can be too much for warm father-child relations to develop. Contact may be reestablished when children are adults, but in general, divorced fathers also have less satisfactory intergenera­ tional relations then than do married fathers.

HEALTH A N D INTERGENERATIONAL RELATIONS

We have just seen that a father's being able to call on an adult child for help is related to marital status and the limited linkage it en­ tails with children's growing-up years. Such intergenerational emotional and task assis­ tance can be important to the welfare of aging parents. In fact, there is even some suggestion that those who are joined to their adult chil­ dren by close affection may live longer despite stressful events. The death of a spouse is one of the worst occurrences that individuals who have been married a long time can experi­ ence. Yet having a loving child to provide comfort at this time appears to cushion the loss and ease the sorrow. It may even contribute to longevity. This appeared among grand­ parents sampled from a large Los Angeles-area health care organization for a three-generation longitudinal study. When they were contacted after 14 years, those who had earlier reported being widowed within 5 years but who had an affectionate child available, were more likely to have survived longer. This was true among these 435 elderly even when mortality risk factors such as age, gender, health, and pre­ vious marital status were taken into account in the analyses. A child's love appeared to counter the health declines associated with the loss of a long-time companion (Silverstein & Bengtson, 1991). Sheer longevity can create health problems that also force aging persons to turn to their nearest and dearest kin for physical help. The helper they turn to in the transition of becoming less independent is often a spouse. When singlehood, divorce, or widowhood remove this source of aid, adult children or a sibling are the elderly's next choice. Such a request presents offspring with the new developmental task of filial maturity (Blenkner, 1965). These adult children now have to see parents lose their status as author­ ities and caregivers to whom the younger generation could turn in times of hardship. Now, they are the mature ones on whom their parents depend. This reversal in the power balance can be wrenching for both generations. A friend told me of the following exchange she had with her 85-year-old mother on a recent visit. The

190

COUPLE RELATIONS OVER TIME

daughter lives some distance away and had noticed how dirty her mother's kitchen floor was. She offered to wash it. Her mother turned the offer down, but the daughter in­ sisted. Then the mother asked how she planned to wash it. Her daughter replied she would have her husband buy a mop at the nearby mall. At this, the mother said indignantly, "You mean after 65 years, that floor is not going to be scrubbed?" This incident demonstrates how the younger generation can be rebuffed in attempting to care for their elders. They may resent their children's making decisions for them and offering them help, even when they often recognize the need and may even have requested assistance. Relatives, however, are the elderly's choice for needed assistance. National survey data show that more than one third (35.6%) have spouses as caregivers, and a roughly compar­ able proportion depend on children. More than three fourths (77.5%) of the caregivers are women, whether wives, daughters, other female relatives, or employees. Daughters are likely to be middle-aged, 45 to 64, although one in eight is elderly herself. This was true of a little more than 1 in 12 (8.4%) of the sons (Stone, Cafferata, 8c Sangl, 1987, pp. 16-17, Table 1). As we saw in the previous chapter, adult children are generally not highly involved in caring for the elderly. They do assist more with money and advice when parents are ill. If very old parents, including widows, appear to be getting along all right, children do not pay much attention. Busy with their own lives, the middle-aged understandably give help epi­ sodically, in periods of particularly acute par­ ental need. Having a number of children to prepare for adulthood or to assist if inde­ pendence seems elusive lessens the care adults give their parents (Eggebeen 8c Hogan, 1990, p. 229). For the frail elderly, though, intergenerational relations are their sources of as­ sistance when things are not going well. Being Grandparents A family position most older persons with grown children acquire is that of grand­ parent. This status ensures that older persons will have a living stake in the future, and some men are pleased to know their lineage will be

continued. To many persons, grandparenthood brings new children to love, children for whom they are not responsible. This freedom from the more difficult tasks of child sociali­ zation adds zest to these relations. It is a rare grandparent who does not mention how much he or she enjoys being able to leave the dos and don'ts to parents while they spoil their grandchildren. Grandparents have bragging rights in their children and grandchildren. One grandmother nicely expressed this sentiment: "The best part of being a grandmother is just thatyou can say, 'Come here,' and then, 'Go over there, go, go.' And they go. I mean, you can love them and then say, 'Here, take them now, go on home.' You know, something like that. See, the responsibility, all that responsibility, is not there. So you can take them whenever you feel that, you baby-sit when you feel like it, and then you can go. It's nice." (Cherlin & Furstenberg, 1986, p. 56) There is a diversity among grandparents as to their age and health, but the picture of them as old and unwell is not correct. One estimate places about half the grandparents as being younger than 60, with one third younger than 55. Only onefifthmaybe 70 years of age or older (Schwartz 8c Waldrop, 1992). These figures suggest that far from being con­ cerned about their own health, grandparents may relish the absence of responsibilities in this status because they are still occupied with rearing children and holding down jobs. But even as we put aside our view of grand­ parents as generally elderly and somewhat sickly, we must broaden our conception of the carefree grandparent to include the highly involved grandmothers. Research shows them to be closer to their grandchildren than the grandfathers, and this is especially true when there is a daughter in the middle generation. This female tilt in the kinship structure means that grandparents are generally less impor­ tant in the lives of their descendants through the male line (Cherlin 8c Furstenberg, 1986; Kennedy, 1990). As a consequence, if there is a divorce in the middle generation and the mother receives custody, the paternal grandparent-grandchild connection is likely to weaken. The in-law relation for the mother no longer exists. The couple's dislike that con­ tributed to the marriage's breakup can work

THE END OF THE FAMILY CAREER

against her wanting the children to be in touch with their father's parents. This is how a grand­ father, whose son was divorced and without custody of his children, described the situation: "Should I call them more often? Write them? Forget about them? I don't know what to do. Maybe they want to forget us, although they do write often. Should I go visit them? I don't want to interfere. Maybe their mother doesn't want to see us. They have a new life now. Different. I don't want to disrupt it. If I call they might be happy—or sad, even. If I don't... I don't know what to do." (Kornhaber & Woodward, 1981, p. 81) The previous chapter indicated that it was not uncommon for black women in their middle years to be sharing their homes with children and grandchildren. Proximity and gender are the two factors that most influence grandparents doing things with grandchildren (Rossi & Rossi, 1990). As I noted earlier in discussing my own research with David Klein, the older generation is especially likely to help daughters who are single mothers due to di­ vorce or unwed parenthood. It is also parents with children under 5 living nearby who are more likely to be receiving intergeneration­ al services of child care, household help, ad­ vice, and emotional support (Eggebeen & Hogan, 1990). Yet despite the sentimental picture of grandparent relations, the grandmothergrandchild involvement can have real costs for the middle and older individuals in the kinship lineage. It appears that for the greater proportion of black mothers and their chil­ dren who are living with their parents, it is more the result of hard times and not a chosen arrangement. The coresidency does result in grandmothers giving more financial support and free child care. A national sample, how­ ever, showed that many of the mothers still complain of inadequate child care and that the money parents give is less because they can afford it than because of the daughter's needs for it (Hogan, Hao, & Parish, 1990). A 17-year follow-up of a sample of largely black, poor adolescent mothers also indicated that living with parents gave them only a temporary boost. Living together may lead to later economic problems because it en­ courages dependency or because less success­

191 ful divorced or separated daughters return home to their parents (Furstenberg, BrooksGunn, & Morgan, 1987b). Moreover, a small questionnaire study of mainly middle-class white mothers indicated that they, too, found living with their mothers troublesome. Joint living can lead to parents taking a hand in their daughters' lives, which might cause the daughters to see them as meddling, more in­ tent on raising the grandchildren than spoil­ ing them (Thomas, 1990). Grandparents face two contradictory norms in dealing with their descendants: the norm of noninterference and the norm of obliga­ tion. The first calls for boundary maintenance between families and a hands-off approach to their offsprings' family relations (Cherlin 8c Furstenberg, 1986). The second demands that grandparents do all they can to assist when close relatives need help. Ties to parents and children take priority in kinship structures. It is through these primary kin that the next priorities of obligation to children-in-law, grandparents, and grandchildren are created (Rossi 8c Rossi, 1990). With these conflicting norms, grandparents giving help that will assist grandchildren, even if needed and appreci­ ated by the grandchildren, may lead to resent­ ment in the middle generation. Grandparents, too, may feel unappreciated and hurt. This grandmother described the boundary main­ tenance rule: "I don't think it is right for any family to know what is going on in the other family. I think there should be a period of time—weeks—when I haven't the faintest idea what anyone is doing. I wouldn't like it if they knew my business. If we were too close I might become critical of them. It's better for me not to be a busybody." (Kornhaber & Woodward, 1981, pp. 94-95) It is clear that regardless of place of resi­ dence, grandmothers are less available now­ adays for child care, due to their own employ­ ment status. One third of the grandmothers, in a national survey, who were caring for grand­ children were also employed (Presser, 1989b). Mothers who were dependent on relatives for child care also found it less satisfactory. They reported working fewer hours because these arrangements were inadequate (Presser, 1988).

192 We have seen how gender, race, proximity, and marital status of adult children—and grandmothers' employment status and social class—all affect grandparents' conforming to the norm of obligation. Unemployed grand­ mothers living nearby, especially if they are black and low-income, are most likely to be giving child care, emotional support, or mone­ tary aid to daughters who are single parents, holding jobs, or just in financial need. Aside from grandchildren whose parents require special attention, other factors play a part in how active grandparents are with their children's offspring. The age of the elders makes a difference. Younger ones are more likely to have the energy and patience to enjoy being with young children. Moreover, there appears to be a perceived "right" time, at least among women, when it is appropriate to become grandparents. A case study of black women in their 30s, whose teenage daughters gave birth, described women who were sure they were off-time grandparents. They were overbur­ dened by having to care for their own still young children and also take on child care for their daughters (Burton & Bengtson, 1985). Here are the comments of one such off-time white grandmother: "Would you believe it? Here I am with a child ten years old and my daughter goes ahead and has twins. I need a rest. I said to myself that I'll be bringing up kids until I'm ninety. . . . But that's what I'll have to do—after I finish com­ plaining, of course." (Kornhaber & Woodward, 1981, p. 58) Similarly, older women may feel they lack the strength to enjoy active grandchildren. The age of the grandchildren also makes a dif­ ference. Infants and preadolescents are apt to be more content with grandparents than ado­ lescents who have developed their own inter­ ests and strong peer ties (Troll, 1983). For these reasons, not all older persons choose to be heavily involved in grandparent­ ing (Aldous, 1995). This is especially true where step relationships are involved. The older generation then lacks prior investment in rearing the middle generation who are the parents of the grandchildren. Parents, unlike stepparents, have self-interest in seeing that their nurturance paid off in the sense that their children do well as adults. When their

COUPLE RELATIONS OVER

TIME

own offspring become parents, it makes sense not to lose sight of the third generation even if contact is infrequent. The grandchildren who do even better than their own parents further enhance the grandparents' sense of lasting accomplishment. The Last Transition Today's marital careers can be marked by a number of transitions, such as cohabitation, single parenthood, marriage, parenthood, di­ vorce, remarriage, and divorce again. But for the elderly, the death of a spouse is the final event in the intimate career. Because men generally die earlier, this is more likely to be true for widows than for widowers. As with so many other aspects of the marital career, limited linkages with what has preceded the death of a spouse continue to influence the time after. Women's greater involvement in nurtur­ ing family roles enables them to better survive the ordeal of losing a long-time cohabitant than men do. They have cultivated close ties over the years, both within their families and among friends outside. These confidants can ease the trauma of death and aid the widow in rebuilding her life. Men are less likely to have built up close relationships with individuals outside the conjugal unit. The loss of a wife leaves them bereft of persons who can help them to overcome their loneliness. A 66-year­ old man widowed for 2 years recognized his past dependence on his wife: " Ί think I was more selfish in my thoughts. Only because I did not have any idea what I would have to go through when she died' " (Silverman, 1987, p. 187). Women, because they are younger on aver­ age when they marry than their husbands, expect to live longer. They are more likely to prepare for their husbands' passing. An­ ticipatory socialization for loss of a partner is especially likely if the partner has been ill prior to his death. These episodes of acute sickness or hospitalization can force both spouses to face up to the consequences of death. As one friend told me after her husband had a mild heart attack, "Jim [not his real name] is already after me to think about moving nearer to my sister if anything happens to him. He doesn't want me to be alone." Wives, therefore, can

193

THE END OF THE FAMILY CAREER

consider and make plans for their future after their husbands are gone. If marital communi­ cation channels have been open over the years, the couple may agree together on the best strategy for optimizing the well-being of the surviving partner (Heinemann &Evans, 1990). Men are not only less likely to have this anticipatory socialization, but they have also had less immediate experience with family changes over the years. The departure of the last child from home, as the last chapter showed, has meant to mothers the loss of a number of child nurturing roles. After this event, they have been the ones with time to take on greater job responsibilities or engage in more sociability or community activities. Moreover, many men have been content over the years to remain in ignorance of how to perform domestic tasks. This dependence on their wives' services handicaps them in re­ establishing a viable daily routine when the wives have died. Having to manage a house­ hold alone can add further stress to the husband's emotional upheaval from the death of his wife. There is considerable research evidence from cross-sectional and longi­ tudinal studies that men, perhaps because of their lack of close social ties and daily house­ hold management skills, suffer more risk to their health than do women following the death of a partner. It appears that in comparison with their married peers, widowers are more likely than widows to suffer acute depression and distress, physical illness, and higher mor­ tality rates (Stroebe 8c Stroebe, 1983). It is understandable then that men are more likely to remarry. They have more choices, and they need a marital helpmate. In contrast, widows may prefer not to begin another marital career—not only because there are few eligible men but also because they may not want to give up their new independence and freedom. This would be particularly true if they have sufficient income. When income disparities were controlled in a national rep­ resentative sample, widows were as satisfied and happy as were wives in the same age cate­ gories (Heinemann 8c Evans, 1990). Women who remain widows do not face either the pos­ sibilities of future caregiving duties for an ailing spouse or the loss of another intimate companion (Gentry, Rosenman, 8c Shulman, 1987). They are somewhat like the well-off, well-educated married women at midlife, in

the previous chapter, who were exploring new opportunities. Widows, at the end of their marriage careers, may want to live a little on their own before their own deaths close down their options. This is the way a 68-year-old widow described herself: " Ί was an echo of my husband's voice when he was alive. Now I see things with my own eyes, have my own opinions, live through my own senses. My iden­ tity is now my own' "(Silverman, 1987,p. 182). The favorable outcomes for widowers who remarry and widows who either remain un­ married or remarry depend heavily on having enough money to live well. Widowed and especially divorced elderly women who lack pensions from husbands are more likely to live in poverty than widowed or divorced men or married couples. These "single" women, according to samples of Social Security beneficiaries or persons entitled to Medicare benefits in their middle 60s, experience eco­ nomic hardship under the following circum­ stances. They have had shorter work histories in which to build up retirement benefits than more prosperous widows or divorced women. These less well-off women were also more likely to have had less education as well as more children. These are two factors that would limit the kinds of jobs they could get and the number of hours they could work when younger. As we would expect, those who were still employed were also better-off financially (Choi, 1992). Contentment for surviving partners after the marital career ends depends on contin­ uities with the past. Having trusted associates, whether friends or relatives, who sympathize and comfort the person left eases the loss of a longtime partner. Being able to live without fear of running out of money or not being able to take care of oneself also makes life alone easier. Widows more than widowers can count on such intimates to assist them in their re­ maining years; however, widowers more than widows have the financial means to maintain an adequate living level, and widowers more than widows, to recover the close relation they lost through death of a spouse, remarry. Summary The final stage of the marital career is a longer one than in the past for couples who

194 have stayed together until they reach their 60s. The present cohort of elderly persons, less affected by the higher divorce rates of younger individuals and enjoying more years before death, have the opportunity to savor the rewards of a good marriage. The previous discussion indicates how important a spouse can be in the life of an aged person. This intimate other supplies the companionship and emotional support that make life worth living. Such spouses also enable individuals to face their inevitable end and prepare to make death as easy as possible for their survivors. Limited linkages from the past place con­ straints on how satisfactory the closing years of marriage will be for couples. Whatever the area, whether it is talking things over or sexual intercourse, unless agreeable interaction pat­ terns have been developed over the preceding years, they are unlikely to be present in the last years of the relation. Women, because the responsibility for cultivating family ties has been largely theirs over the marital career, have children and friends to turn to if spouses are not close. Men tend to lack these alterna­ tives to a good companion within marriage, because their focus has often been on earning a living rather than maintaining connections with others. Divorced men, who have not kept in touch with their children as they grew up in the custody of their mothers, are espe­ cially likely to be without intimates as they grow older.

COUPLE RELATIONS OVER TIME

Family positions at the end of life often include grandparent roles. Here, too, the kin­ ship tilt toward women means that grand­ mothers tend to be more involved with this generation than do grandfathers. Just as daughters are more likely than sons to be physically looking after the ailing elderly, grandmothers more than grandfathers tend to be assisting offspring with child care. Aid to needy divorced or single daughters also assumes top priority for this relatively welloff generation of elderly couples. The material I have presented here indi­ cates that elderly couples today are no longer the sickly asexual dependents many were in the past. Instead, when lucky enough to enjoy good marriages and parent-adult child rela­ tions, they are the givers not the receivers of assistance. Even their last days, with adequate finances, reasonable health, and good com­ panions, can be spent relatively pleasantly. To ensure having a good companion, many widowers and some widows start a new mari­ tal career at the end of life.

Note

1. From Tull (1993). Reprinted by permission of the South Bend Tribune.

PART

III



Parent-Child

Relations Over Time

11

First Acquaintance

With this chapter, I begin my examination of the parent-child relation as it continues over time. The focus of this and the following two chapters will be on the parent-child sub­ system. Parenthood marks a critical transi­ tion point that ushers in a new family stage. In the earlier chapters on the partnership career, we have seen the changes parental roles create in couple relations. The first child's ar­ rival results in the addition of parental roles to the role clusters of husband and wife. The coming of children also brings parental roles to cohabiting couples and to single mothers who are not in stable unions. Intergenerational relations are now present in the family unit. The parent-child subsystem includes family members in a new generation whose histori­ cal time perspective will be different. As in­ fants become children and then adolescents, their developing views of their experiences may not always coincide with those of their parents. As a result, they broaden their own perspectives. During the years when children are present in the household, the progress of the oldest through school can serve to mark off periods in the family's biography. The associated learn­ ing from teachers and peers contributes to the

varying ideas children bring to families, which encourages change. Family life modifications also come as other family members shift roles or their content alters. Different jobs or job losses can affect family living, and the partner subsystem may disintegrate. Divorce or separation can remove one parent from the home, and the later establishment of a new partnership adds an adult and fills the vacant parent position with a step relation. This chapter is concerned with the arrival of the first child and the parenting respon­ sibilities that result. I look at selected aspects of parent-child interaction patterns, partic­ ularly those having to do with socialization, a major family developmental task at this time. The part that fathers play in child rearing is assuming increasing importance, as more mothers are sharing the breadwinner role. For this reason, there is a discussion on father­ ing. There is also a consideration of shifts in family membership due to divorce or the ar­ rival of other children. To provide a basis of comparison with families having children, I have also included material on couples who choose to remain childless. This supplements the discussion in Chapter 7 on the involun­ tarily childless.

197

198

PARENT-CHILD RELATIONS OVER

Prior Influences on

Parents' Socialization Styles

One of the main developmental tasks fam­ ilies perform throughout their careers has to do with socialization. Whether it is within the couple subsystem, between parents and chil­ dren, or among siblings, there is usually at least one person trying to get another person to change his or her ways. Children, because of their ignorance of family and social patterns, their dependence, and their relative power­ lessness, are prime targets for their elders' teaching. They are, however, active agents in whether the teaching takes and role learning occurs. They have to want to acquire the be­ haviors and the associated values and attitudes that come together in roles if the socializing attempts of parents are to be effective. As early as infancy, parents are beginning to set the stage for whether the new members easily follow their teachings. Linkages with the parents' past set limits on this initial get­ ting acquainted period of infants and parents. Mothers who get along well with their parents and have close ties with them are more likely to provide their infants the responsive love and care that create infants' feelings of attach­ ment to them (Crowell & Feldman, 1988; Main, Caplan, 8c Cassidy, 1985). Without this parent-infant bond, infants are less willing to be inducted into approved family interaction patterns. We also saw in Chapter 7 how important marital satisfaction was for effective parent­ ing. Partners are family coresidents and are usually the only other adults customarily around to call on when trouble arises. Good relations in the marital subsystem carry over to the parent-infant dyad. This comment from a new parent illustrates how couple relations feed into parent-child interdependencies. The gratitude of the mother to her husband for his help in easing her task of feeding the newborn is apparent: "I remember the first two weeks that she was, right after I got home from the hospital. I felt like I loved him more than I ever had in my life. And I think it was because he, I just remember that one, two [o'clock] in the morning and he, 1 ike I would feed her, and then maybe she would scream for two hours... and he would come in

TIME

here and rock her and let me lie in bed for an hour, and then I would get up and feed her again, and all that kind of stuff, and just things like that. I mean, he helped me a lot, and I really felt a whole lot of love for him then." (LaRossa & LaRossa, 1981, p. 157) One of the few longitudinal studies that has followed couples from the time they started marriage plans through their marriages until they had toddlers 1 to 3 years of age, under­ scores the interdependencies of the parental and marital subsystems (Howes 8c Markman, 1989). Even though there were only 20 couples in the sample, the results are worth considera­ tion. Because the researchers observed the couples interacting before they married, there was premarital material on their communica­ tion styles (Markman, 1981). There was also prebirth data on marital quality. We can see from the study how what goes on between partners before they were married and later affects their parenting effectiveness. The study findings were that women who prior to their marriages had fewer arguments with their fiancis were blessed with more sociable and secure youngsters. Men who also experi­ enced fewer premarital conflicts had less de­ pendent children later on. As far as the quality of the partnerships after the couples had mar­ ried was concerned, similar relationships appeared. Persons happier in their unions before becoming parents had children who developed more desirable characteristics. Thus, this research suggests that partners who seem able to handle their disagreements construc­ tively and are satisfied with each other have children who are better-off. These parents have fewer marital conflicts that could threaten constructive parenting styles. Other longitudinal research also shows a relation between satisfied couples and happy offspring. According to the longitudinal study I discussed in Chapter 7, in which 119 families were followed from the pregnancy period through the time after the firstborns' births, good mothers tended to get along well with others. Pregnant women who were more "in­ terpersonally sensitive and emotionally stable" (Belsky 8c Isabella, 1988, p. 86) seemed to experience lesser declines in their marital satis­ faction after the infants arrived and developed more secure ties with them. When spouses are comfortable with each other and are confident

FIRST

ACQUAINTANCE

of partner support and assistance in child care, parents can do a better job. Thus, what went on in the past when individuals them­ selves were being parented as well as their later transactions with their partners before they had children both constitute limited linkages with how well they get along in their own parenting. The children, too, play a major part in the socialization process. If children are to have the desire to fulfill their development task of learning to be human, parents must take into account, in their training attempts, what kind of youngsters they have. Some children early on display high activity levels and tenden­ cies to be disobedient. Such temperament characteristics often frustrate parents' attempts to make them more comfortable housemates (Goldsmith et al., 1987). Children's irritating behaviors can elicit hostile reactions from parents, setting up an annoying action se­ quence. Parents whose children as infants developed trusting relations with them, how­ ever, have a positive resource to draw on in preventing occasional negative interactions from becoming habitual patterns. The infants' feelings that they can depend on their care­ takers for security and help when they are uncomfortable or afraid have later payoffs for both generations. Social class is related to the ways parents socialize children. Although there are many exceptions, mothers with more education and income, who themselves or whose spouses hold more prestigious jobs, are more likely to be less restrictive and punishing. They are also more likely to be affectionate and sensitive to their children and to be more involved with them than less well-off parents (Belsky, 1990). Better-educated parents are more aware of expert views on child rearing and have the money to purchase substitute parenting ser­ vices when children's fussiness is becoming unendurable. Parents with lower incomes tend to be less warm and more punitive, empha­ sizing obedience rather than the children's understanding or autonomy. Such a parentcentered regimen does not encourage chil­ dren's wanting to acquire their parents' ways. Not enough money to meet daily needs, crowded and uncomfortable living quarters, and other continuing irritations as well as a lack of knowledge of alternative child-rearing

199 ways are factors in accounting for the less welloff's concern that children obey. One low-income woman's comments in­ dicate how lack of knowledge of a range of techniques can tie parents to traditional ways: "I always thought I didn't want to be the kind of mother that my mother was, 'cause I thought my mother was so strict.... But I find myself bein' a lot like her, more than I ever thought I would. My mother was not a punisher, she did a lot of spanking. But she did it, she got it over with, and then that was it. But now—I do it, but I do it after I've threatened two or three times or I'm really, really mad. But she didn't have to be really mad So in that way I wish I could be more like her." (Rosier, 1993, p. 14) There is information on the consequences of differences in ways of socializing children. A child psychologist who has done consider­ able research on how certain child-rearing practices result in more competent children is Diana Baumrind (1989). She and her as­ sociates studied 134 preschoolers from white middle-class families to see what child-rear­ ing practices were generally associated with parents' socializing of achievement oriented, (socially assertive) and cooperative (socially responsible) children, her definition of com­ petence. Several different types of parenting styles appeared, a finding that points to the diversity of child-rearing styles within any one social class. One group of parents she called authoritative. They provided a firm structure of demands, which they clearly stated and saw to it their children obeyed. These parents, however, did not fail to cultivate the feelings of attachment that would encourage children's conformity to the house rules. They were loving and supportive. In beginning to set standards for more advanced behavior in a challenging environment, they recognized their young children's current abilities and particular interests. These parents also seemed able to encourage their children to go beyond the gender-stereotyped behaviors of agreeable little girls and assertive little boys. Their daughters were generally more dominant, and their sons more cooperative than children of other types of parents. These children met the definition of being competent.

200

P A R E N T - C H I L D RELATIONS OVER TIME

In contrast to those preschoolers were the children of parents Baumrind (1989) labeled authoritarian and permissive. Authoritarian parents emphasized obedience to rules that centered on preserving order and respect for authority, and they used punitive discipline to obtain it. They were less responsive to chil­ dren's interests, so their children may have lacked a desire to cooperate. Their sons did show more hostility and their daughters less independence and assertiveness than other children. Permissive parents were warm, but they set few maturity standards. Children regulated their own activities, and parents avoided exercising control or guidance. Com­ pared with the children of parents Baumrind categorized as authoritative, these youngsters were less concerned about achievement, and the girls were less assertive with their peers. Among this sample of parents, therefore, it appeared that too stringent enforcement of rules without warmth and too much un­ restricted warmth without rules were related to less desirable child outcomes than respon­ sive affection and feasible behavioral demands.

To summarize what the research on paren­ tal practices and young children's competen­ cies tells us, parents need to make demands of children appropriate to their understanding. Parents then have to back up their rules with explanations and insistence that the children comply to them. This parental responsiveness includes encouraging the child to express his or her views just as parents can confront the erring child with her or his misdeeds. At the same time, parents must be affectionate so that the youngsters will want to comply to parental rules. Effective socialization appears to consist of parental demands that are ap­ propriate to their children's ages, coupled with plenty of affection of the kind that allows children to become independent. Interesting­ ly enough, Baumrind (1989, p. 365) suggests that because of the many changes in the broader society—and I would add within fam­ ilies themselves—there is increased need for family discipline and standards to be set for children. They tend to thrive in an environ­ ment they can count on. Routines and inter­ action patterns make for a structure that en­ courages youngsters because of its stability.

When 104 of the original preschoolers Baumrind (1989) studied were followed, along with 64 others, when they all were 9 years old, she again identified different types of parents and children. The general results were consis­ tent with findings from the preschool study. Parents who were demanding but were also responsive tended to have children who were cooperative and stood up for themselves in peer contacts. In contrast, parents who were not demanding and were not responsive were more likely to have less assertive and less cooperative offspring who fit gender stereo­ types. Their sons tended to be socially assertive but not cooperative, and their daughters tend­ ed to be cooperative but not socially assertive. Parents who were highly demanding and not responsive had daughters who were asser­ tive but not cooperative, although their sons were much like other boys. Finally, parents who were warm and responsive and not de­ manding in their behavioral expectations had daughters who were fairly friendly but tended to give in to others and sons who were similar to other boys. This study suggests that girls are more affected than boys by parental restrictive­ ness without warmth or parental warmth with­ out accompanying standards of behavior.

Fathers and Child Care Baumrind (1989) writes of parents' sociali­ zation practices in her analysis of the out­ comes from various parent-child interactions. For most of the feeding, dressing, setting of rules, discipline, and other child-rearing chores, however, mothers are the actual task performers. For roughly the first 60 years of the 20th century in most middle-class and many working-class families, the gender-based allocation of child care could be accounted for by husbands being the breadwinners while their wives stayed at home. This is no longer the case as a majority of women, even those with infants, are in the paid labor force. But employed mothers, as described in Chapter 8, continue to carry the second shift of family household and member care tasks. Because mothers are actively involved in child care while fathers may remain peripheral figures, children and adults most often see their mothers as the central figures in their lives. National surveys show that people feel closer to their mothers than to their fathers.

FIRST

ACQUAINTANCE

Nine of 10 persons in a Gallup poll reported their relationships with their mothers were "warm and affectionate" and felt close to them. Three fourths, 76%, of the persons interviewed said they felt close to their fathers. Consistent with the predominance of mothers having custody, just one third (31%) of the adults whose parents were divorced felt close to their fathers. In similar fashion, people are more likely to name mothers rather than fathers as the individuals, after their spouses, in whom they would confide when they faced a serious personal problem (Hugick, 1989). A graphic example of how fathers manage to maintain role distance from child care responsibilities, even while seeming to fulfill them, is provided by sociologists Ralph LaRossa and Maureen M. LaRossa (1981, p. 58). They describe a father holding an in­ fant. Often he will express fear that he will somehow drop the infant and nervously asks for instructions as to how to carry out the assignment. His posture will stiffen even as he cradles the infant, indicating to himself, the infant, and others in the room that he is main­ taining his distance from the caretaker role. Observers are apt to hover about him and his child, adding to the impression that the father is not to be trusted. In contrast to this father's role distance is the wholehearted way in which most new mothers embrace the child care role. Many are equally as inexperienced as their male partners, but convention and the centrality of the maternal position to women's gender identities encourage them to seek out infor­ mation from hospital personnel and relatives on child rearing. Women are prepared to take on caretaker roles wholeheartedly, but men seek to maintain some distance from such stereotypical female tasks. The following two descriptions of child care responsibilities, the first from a father, the second from a mother, suggest the priority differences the two genders typically, although not always, assign to hands-on parenting: Stuart: "I have the baby to be in charge of, [which has] really been no problem for me at all. But that's because we worked out a schedule where he sleeps a pretty good amount of that time. He gets up and nurses and stays awake for about an hour and goes back to sleep about 9:00

201 and sleeps for about anywhere from two to three hours. "He generally is up thirty minutes before she gets home, and he gets fussy, and I will use that time. I generally sort of have to be with him in the sense of paying attention to his crying or dirty diapers or something like that for any­ where between thirty to forty-five minutes, sometimes an hour, depending. But usually I can have two hours of my own to count on each morning to do my own work, so it's no big problem." (LaRossa & LaRossa, 1981, p. 185) This father is juggling the physical care of his child with his job demands, and as long as he gets the latter done, he is satisfied. In contrast is a mother's brief and matter-of-fact descrip­ tion of what she sees as of primary importance in her life when faced with job demands: " Ί would like to be doing more writing and research, b u t . . . I've made a decision I'm not going to take time away from my family' " (Emmons, Burnat, Tiedje, Lange, 8c Wortman, 1990, p. 76). The question arises whether fathers' par­ ticipation in child rearing makes any differ­ ence in the well-being of the child. We have seen in Chapter 7 that it does have a favorable effect on mothers. They feel less overloaded when fathers pitch in with task aid and more appreciated for their own extra work with infants when fathers express their gratitude. Mothers are better with their infants when their partners are active fathers, because fathers stand first in the social networks that provide support to inexperienced mothers in the form of service, suggestions, and sympathy when nothing seems to be going right with the baby. At the same time, they can be quick to applaud mothers' successful strategies for quieting fretful children and controlling the exuber­ ance of unthinking toddlers. There is also increasing evidence that for infants and children, fathers' active participa­ tion in child care is positive. Fathers who change diapers, feed children—and set rules while showing their offspring of whatever age that they love them—have children who are better adjusted and achievement oriented. As far as serving as models for what their sons and daughters would like to be when they grow up, fathers' traditional masculinity is not as important as their warmth. Again, we see the importance of parents using methods

202

PARENT-CHILD RELATIONS OVER TIME

that encourage their children to want to be socialized into parental ways. Children whose fathers choose to split child care roughly 50­ 50 with their wives are better-off intellect­ ually, have fewer gender-stereotyped beliefs, and are less influenced by others in making decisions (Lamb, 1987). These favorable results from paternal child rearing make sense. Because parents are dem­ onstrating daily nonstereotyped role playing, this aspect of children's socialization learning is to be expected. Having two highly involved parents also gives children a more diverse experience to set them thinking. Thus, to take one illustrative example, 79 6-month-old in­ fants from a range of socioeconomic back­ grounds showed higher general development in crawling and adjusting to others when their mothers had support from husbands, kin, and others. The greater diversity among helpers and fathers' performing a variety of child care tasks had the most to do with these favorable infant outcomes in the small sample from one U.S. hospital (Parks, Lenz, & Jenkins, 1992). In addition, parents more content with their domestic duties may be calmer and warmer in their interactions with children. Mothers are able to hold jobs and still not be overbur­ dened with home responsibilities. Fathers are fulfilling their wishes to be active physical caretakers and teachers of their children. Part­ ners who share the chores that prepare infants and toddlers to fulfill their developmental tasks of sleeping through the night, eating, and toileting make it easier to accomplish the family's socialization task at this stage.

a result, husband activities appear to be more important. When fathers do take on child care tasks, they most often are accessible to children but not actually engaged in interaction with them. That is, they are doing something else, such as repairing a leaky faucet, reading, or watching television, while their children are playing nearby. Engaged fathers are actively involved with their children, whether playing with them, showing them how to do something, or just listening to them. The father whose comments appeared earlier is an example of accessibility but not engagement. Men are least likely to take responsibility for the children's well­ being, the third category in child psychologist Michael E. Lamb and his associates' (Lamb, Pieck, Charnov, 8cLevine, 1987) classification of parental involvement. The parent who has child-rearing responsibility is the one who, among other things, sees that child care is avail­ able when needed, makes the doctor's appoint­ ments, and takes the child to the doctor or ensures that someone else does. In other words, the responsible parent is the one who makes sure the child is cared for in sickness and in health and when the usual physical main­ tenance arrangements have broken down.

Variation in Fathering Regrettably, men who play active child care roles and choose to do so are still uncommon. Most men still appear to lack the motivation to be active fathers, and many feel forced to participate in child care. Their employed wives urge them to do more to restore equity in the household division of labor. Paternal child care under these circumstances is likely to be grudging, limited, and avoided when at all possible. Whether wives are in the paid labor force makes little difference. Very often, when the proportion of child care fathers perform is higher in two-earner families, it is because mothers are doing less around the house. As

Why do men maintain role distance from active fathering? It might be argued that it starts with the biological gender differences. Women literally carry the unborn child until its birth. Then, if the mother exercises her biological capacity to nurse, the father has less to do with feeding the infant. This pattern might give rise to the broader child care task division. Studies show, however, that fathers are as competent as mothers with respect to being aware of infants' cues that they need attention and then responding to them (Parke 8c Tinsley, 1987). Men may plead lack of bio­ logical capacity to nurse the child, but the evidence suggests that this is an excuse not an explanation for their failure to perform other nurturing duties. Men, like women, can learn infant physical maintenance skills. Factors in men's social environments play a part in their nonparticipation in nurturing children. Child care among many men is seen as something women do. They label as sissies their friends and acquaintances who press for paternity leave or keep strict work hours to have time to do things with their children. This attitude carries over to bosses. They may

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downgrade such workers and give them fewer opportunities to get ahead. Men, to maintain their self-esteem and reach their achievement goals, may choose to follow convention and leave parenting to their partners. After all, it saves energy and maintains their "masculin­ ity" to conform to peer opinions. One active father told how he got around negative peer judgments: " Ί announced I was going to a meeting.... I just neglected to mention that the "meeting" was to watch my daughter play tennis' " (Gibbs, 1993, p. 55). Supplementing biological reasons, peer pressure, and workplace policies, mothers themselves, despite the role overload they experience, often discourage men's active in­ volvement in parental matters. Mothers may accept at face value partners' statements of in­ competence and believe that the youngsters' welfare depends on themselves. This surpris­ ing negative factor that influences men's limited participation in child care stems from some women's fear of losing the unchallenged power source that comes from being the homemaker and nursemaid. As yet, their occupational op­ portunities continue largely to be limited to lower-paying, dead-end jobs. This is also true of many men, but generally they earn more than women. The work world does not pro­ vide a sure alternative source of power through status and wages for women in families. Cling­ ing to their maternal roles and the associated prerogatives makes sense under these circum­ stances. It is, however, at the expense of men obtaining the rewards from playing paternal fathering roles and children acquiring the added competencies that come from having two involved parents. Having looked at why men don't father, it is worth considering how they can be en­ couraged to be active fathers. A small sample (45) of African American fathers from intact middle- to lower-middle-income families provides some clues (Ahmeduzzaman & Roopnarine, 1992). These men generally spent only about one third as much time as their wives on primary child care duties for their 5-year-olds. This was the case even though only five of the wives were full-time home­ makers. But support and encouragement from kin and friends in their social networks were related to fathers' greater involvement. Not surprisingly, those who said they were always

203 willing to pitch in to help out their families and had been married longer, both indica­ tions of family commitment, did more physi­ cal care and setting of limits with their children. The more involved men also reported being able to talk over their concerns and feelings with their partners, talk that could cover child care issues. Finally, the higher educated and more affluent fathers were more active par­ ents, perhaps because they felt they were bet­ ter able to fulfill their breadwinner roles. As we saw in Chapter 6, economic capabilities are central to African Americans' marriage decisions and to their subsequent satisfaction. For these black fathers, then, greater commit­ ment to their families, a preexisting willing­ ness to perform household roles, ability to talk things through with partners, and sup­ port from their social networks were all re­ lated to their doing more child care. An absence of money worries also was a positive factor. Most of these men were in dual-earner marriages, so it is worth seeing if it makes a difference in influences on fathers' child care participation when wives are not employed. For some evidence on this issue, we have the longitudinal study of 119 working- and middle-class couples, referred to above, who have been followed since the last trimester of the wives' first pregnancies (Volling & Belsky, 1991). This white sample from Pennsylvania consisted of 65 couples in which the father alone was the job holder and 54 couples in which both parents were employed more than 10 hours a week. Because mothers were at home full-time in single-earner families, their husbands should have had more choice about child care. One hypothesis would be that their own characteristics would play a larger part in how much they participated in taking care of their infants at 3 and 9 months. This hypothesis was supported. Breadwin­ ner fathers who had higher self-esteem and were more concerned about the feelings of others, an indicator of interpersonal sensitiv­ ity, were more active in child care. In contrast, personal characteristics had little influence on fathers who shared earning responsi­ bilities with their wives. In their situations, aspects of the marriage played a larger part. Limited linkages with the past were apparent. These more active fathers had performed more traditional female household tasks, such as

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cooking and doing laundry, before the birth of their offspring than had less active fathers. Single-earner fathers were also influenced by the social context of their marriages and their work situations. Men who were in hap­ pier marriages before their children were born and reported less of a decline in their satisfac­ tion after their arrival did more for the infants. When these fathers reported conflicts between their family and work responsibilities, how­ ever, they gave priority to the latter. Their homemaker wives apparently took over do­ mestic roles. Dual-earner fathers did not enjoy this luxury of leaving child care to their wives, who had less time to perform infant nurture unassisted. But these fathers who did do more child care reported more problems in trying to fulfill their job and family require­ ments. They also had a greater increase in marital disagreements over the period of their infants' lives. Some of the marital unhappiness that can occur when overburdened wives push their husbands to help out appears in the following comments. The husband is talking about his child care tasks:

Amanda: And that makes me mad. (quoted in LaRossa & LaRossa, 1981, pp. 161-163)

Interviewer: What's the bad part about it for you? Alex: Too much pressure on her. When she doesn't have time to do anything at home, that puts more pressure on me to do more things; so that puts pressure on anything that I would do. Interviewer: What kinds of things? Alex: Right now, for instance, we got, this has just started the last couple of weeks. The first three months was bad too . . . but I've been involved with some plays, player's group over the past several years. And I didn't participate last year be­ cause of the baby, the pregnancy and all. But this year I decided I was going to go ahead and do it, and so I'm gone quite a bit at night and . . . Amanda: Not to be specific (laughing), he's off every night of the week till about 11:30. Alex: Yeh, from about 7:30 to about 11:30. Amanda: Well, he still does everything, and I've given up everything. Alex: That's not true.

TIME

The role distance that men maintain from fathering, regardless of their wives' job status, also appeared in the Pennsylvania study. Fathers whose 9-month-old infants had more difficult temperaments (were fussy and hard to quiet) were less affectionate and responsive to their children's cries. But social-context factors more active fathers shared, regardless of the job status of their wives, had to do with the quality of their marriages and their oc­ cupational payoffs. These men were happier in their marriages 1 year previously and had higher incomes and more prestigious posi­ tions (Volling 8c Belsky, 1991). Among these men, as was true of the African American fathers described above, the factors of doing well on the job and with their wives was re­ lated to more active fathering. In addition, precedents set previously in the marital career played an important part in men in dual-earner families playing father roles. Prior participa­ tion in household tasks that went beyond conventional male chores was central. Personal characteristics also appeared influential, espe­ cially when men did not experience pressure from wives in paid employment to do more child rearing. These include self-esteem, want­ ing to take on such duties, and being sensi­ tive to the needs of others, whether children or wives. One final factor that seems to be related to fathers' participation in bringing up children is the gender of the infant, a factor difficult to control compared with the previous influen­ ces. As reported in Chapter 7, studies show that divorce is less common among couples having sons rather than daughters (Block, Block, 8c Gjerde, 1988; Morgan, Lye, 8c Condran, 1988). Fathers of sons tend to be more involved in the actual care of sons, per­ haps because they perceive them to be carry­ ing on the family tradition and name. Fathers may also feel more comfortable with sons, because they have a better notion of what grow­ ing up male entails. A number of fathers feel they have the personal experience required to nurture budding talents in little boys but are less capable of dealing with little girls. Also, many parents still tend to center their ambi­ tions for the next generation on sons rather than daughters.

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Leaving Children With Others We have read how mothers of infants can feel overwhelmed with responsibilities and isolated from adults. Many are delighted to get back on the job after taking time off for childbearing. The need for a paycheck is the main incentive for most, but the opportunity to get out of the house, see different faces, and have conversations with outsiders on topics other than child care are also attractions of returning to paid employment. In the past, the general public tended to view with disap­ proval mothers working outside the home. Women, too, thought that their children would suffer in the care of others, particularly if they were infants or preschoolers. Thus, even mothers who had to return to their jobs for financial reasons usually felt guilty about it. An example of why employed women may continue to experience guilt feelings due to the negative remarks of others comes from this letter to the columnist, Miss Manners: Dear Miss Manners: On a recent business trip, I invited a work colleague and his wife to din­ ner. During the conversation, the wife asked to see a picture of my 4-month-old daughter. As she was looking at the snapshot, she said, "Oh, she doesn't look like a daycare baby." As you can tell, this lady stays home with her children full time. (Martin, 1993, p. C8) 1

It is noteworthy and consistent with the pre­ vious discussion on fathers' performance of parenting roles that the concern has always been about mothers, not fathers, leaving child care responsibilities to others. Traditional no­ tions of the household division of labor ac­ counted for the one-sided disapproval. But with the breakdown in assigning the bread­ winner role only to men, people are begin­ ning to be more accepting of women going off to work, even those with young children. Most preschoolers whose mothers are job­ holders are not in day care. A 1991 represen­ tative national sample of the U.S. Bureau of the Census showed that many young children whose mothers are employed continue to receive family care. Fathers watch over one fifth of the preschool group, and an addition­ al one fourth (23.5%) were cared for by other relatives. Unrelated persons watched over the

same proportion. Child care centers or pre­ schools (23%) and facilities in the mothers' place of employment (8.7%) accounted for the rest of the children this age '(O'Connell, 1993). These types of preschools are increas­ ing, but family members and individual sit­ ters watch out for sizable numbers of infants and toddlers. The outcomes for young children under the age of 2 who are in nonmaternal care is a matter of controversy among scholars and laypeople alike. Many are of the conviction that mothers need to be available to their young children. They believe only negative conse­ quences can come from maternal absence due to employment. Feelings can be strong. Dis­ agreements can even arise over the interpre­ tation of research findings. For example, researchers reported the results from a longi­ tudinal study with a national sample that oversampled black, Hispanic, and economi­ cally disadvantaged white youths. The study showed that 4- to 6-year-old children whose mothers were employed full-time prior to their second year were more noncompliant, com­ pared with those children whose mothers were employed less or not at all (Belsky 8c Eggebeen, 1991a). Several other scholars were asked to com­ ment on the article, an addition to the usual publication format that indicates the interest in the topic of nonmaternal child care and its effects. One child psychologist pointed to the great differences in the characteristics of the employed and the unemployed mothers sampled in the study. The former were better educated, more intelligent, and had higher incomes, which cast doubt in this person's view on the legitimacy of the comparison between the children of the two samples of mothers (Scarr, 1991). Other critics found that the association of maternal employment and chil­ dren's adjustment was "weak" when they reran the analyses using more recent data from the same longitudinal study (McCartney 8c Rosenthal, 1991, p. 1106). The original re­ searchers continued to stand behind their original findings (Belsky 8cEggebeen, 1991b). Because of this controversy concerning the effects of nonmaternal child care on infants, let us see what another smaller scale study showed. This study specifies the conditions under which maternal employment may have less than optimal results for young children.

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It concerned maternal employment and in­ fants' attachment to their parents, a sentiment central to their socialization. The importance of fathers in fulfilling this family develop­ ment task, however, was not overlooked. The study reported the reactions of the first­ born 1-year-olds of 97 primarily middle-class couples to brief separations from each of their parents. (Three infants were observed only with their mothers and three only with their fathers.) Forty of the mothers were employed full-time. They had returned to work on an average when their children were 3 months old. The other mothers were full-time home­ makers. There was no difference in the in­ fants' reactions to homemaker mothers or employed mothers after the separations. Al­ though the great majority of infant sons were securely attached to their fathers, however, those whose mothers were employed were statistically more likely to show insecure at­ tachments to their fathers (Chase-Lansdale & Owen, 1987).

developmental tasks involving social com­ petence (friendliness, self-reliance, coopera­ tiveness) and intellectual skills (language comprehension, knowledge of concepts, prob­ lem solving with toys). It appears that several factors taken together account for the differences in child develop­ ment between the children at home and those in preschools. Teachers in care centers of good quality present lessons that encourage the learning of social and intellectual skills from a diversity of nonfamilial adults. Moreover, trained adults foster independence or selfdirection in more systematic ways than do parents. As a consequence, differences among children in various child care contexts are especially pronounced when the children are from disadvantaged families or the centers are of high quality. In either situation, young­ sters gain more developmentally in centers, with their greater demands for advanced be­ haviors, than in home environments, where there may be less pressure for children to learn cognitive and interpersonal skills.

The researchers account for the results by suggesting that these fathers may have been less sensitive to their infant sons' needs. They note that fathers tend to be more concerned about gender typing and are less emotionally supportive with sons than are mothers. Jobholding mothers who are gone daily, but still having the major share of child care to perform, may be less able to provide a compensatory warm environment. If there are differences in the attachment of infants to their parents when mothers are employed, this study indicates it is sons and fathers, not infants and mothers, whose relationships are affected (ChaseLansdale 8c Owen, 1987). Even more contrary to the former conven­ tional wisdom on the effects of other than mothers' care of young children were the find­ ings from an assessment of the social and cognitive development of 150 2- and 3-year­ olds (Clarke-Stewart, 1991). They were in six different child care settings. Three involved home care by parents, home care by a sitter, or being looked after in another's home. The other three settings were centers or nursery schools. The children were observed over the period of 1 year in their home and in the child care settings. Controlling for children's ages and socioeconomic backgrounds, the chil­ dren in centers rather than home arrange­ ments showed greater accomplishment of the

TIME

The Coming of Other Children So far, the discussion in this chapter has been on the arrival of the first child and how the parents or parent and infant get along. But what happens when a sister or brother ar­ rives? Although I shall devote a later chapter to the sibling career, here I will look at shifts in parent-firstborn relations when another dependent enters the family constellation. A generalization from research and folk wis­ dom is that the older children usually resent losing the position of being the one and only offspring. Terms such as dethronement or dis­ placement were sometimes used in the past to describe children's feelings about their status after the birth of a sibling. These terms grew out of clinic observations where older chil­ dren with severe problems of jealousy were the patients. Presently, there is a tendency to interpret the imitative behavior older chil­ dren may borrow from their infant sibs less as regressive behavior than as the youngsters' attempts to maintain close contact with their parents (Stewart, Mobley, Van Tuyl, 8c Salvador, 1987). Even though there are dif­ ficulties for both parents and children in in­ corporating the newcomer into the structure

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of family routines, the older child can benefit. She or he has to grow up a little faster, and the demands for maturity lead to greater inde­ pendence. The youngster now elevated to elder sib in the birth order often shows spurts of development in the tasks of language, feed­ ing, and toilet behaviors. Because families are systems of interdepen­ dent members, both parents and the older child are affected by the newcomer. The adults are more aware of possible problems in relationships that may result from the birth and can prepare for them. If the child is old enough to understand, one parent, usually the mother, will try to explain what will hap­ pen with the arrival of the new baby. It is seldom, though, that the firstborn will be able to accept without some pain the lesser time the mother will have to devote to her older child. Just how firstborns change in response to the births of siblings was shown in a small, 15-month longitudinal study of 41 collegeeducated parents anticipating the birth of a second child. Age did not seem to make as much dif­ ference in the older children's reactions as gender did. When the infant was of the same gender as the older sib, the latter did seem to have more difficulty adjusting. Asked when the sibling was about 1 year old whether they would like another brother or sister, the older children who agreed clearly wanted one of the opposite gender to the one they had. In their words, they wanted "one of each" (Stewart, 1990, p. 187). The age differences that appeared showed up 1 month after the second child's birth. The 13 4-year-olds were using more baby talk than before the birth of their sibs, probably to gain parental attention. Younger children, as late as 8 months after the sib's birth, were demanding a bottle at night, wanting some security object, or having toilet problems. The children did tell about helping their mothers, statements that all but one mother confirmed. So despite some babyish behaviors, they were becoming more helpful (soothing and enter­ taining the baby and bringing diapers to their mothers when asked) and independent. The firstborns, according to their mothers, were also starting to cooperate and share toys with their infant siblings. In such situations, problems arose more often again in same gender dyads, when infants snatched away the

207 older children's toys, interfered with their play­ ing, or pulled their hair (Stewart, 1990). In these interdependent family systems, parents also modified their behavior to the firstborns. Although mothers reported, "I have no complaints" or "Oh, things are pretty good," with respect to the older children, there was some indication, from observations of the families over time, that they were decreasing their interactions with their older children. In semistructured play situations at 4-month intervals in the younger children's first year, however, fathers showed more continuity in their treatment of their older children (Stewart et al., 1987). For some fathers, the second child seemed to provide the excuse for them to be more active fathers. The first child made these middle-class men aware of their need to tend to their jobs and provide financial security for their families. With the second child's arrival, they finally felt they could af­ ford to be daddies. As one man explained," 'It took only one child to make my wife a mother, but two to make me a father' " (Stewart, 1990, p. 213). Fathers were also doing more about the pileup of household tasks that resulted from the two children. Some of this paternal ac­ tivity was due to pressure from wives. Accord­ ing to one husband, his wife "made him do it, or else!" But one wise father said that he " 'helped out by getting the kids their baths and getting them to bed'" to enable his wife to leave her "'housewife and mother'" roles and play her " 'wife and lover ones' " (Stewart, 1990, p. 216). Although homemaker wives do not have to work the second shift of domesticity that goes with paid employment, college-educated women express misgivings at being stay-at­ home moms. In contrast to the situation of the women who expected to and continued to hold jobs throughout the arrival of both children were the unemployed women in this small sample who had been job holders prior to the birth of their second child. The nine who were still at home at the 4 months' post­ partum interview, like the women who were homemakers before the arrival of the second child, told of feeling more isolated from others and having more difficulty with their hus­ bands than did the mothers who went back to work. One of the former described herself as " 'stuck at home'" and complained that she

208 had not obtained her college degree to " 'bake cookies all day " (Stewart, 1990, pp. 211-212). These women needed partner encouragement and assistance to have the time for other than homemaker roles if the couples' developmen­ tal fit was to continue. Socialization in Mother-Only Families Although the discussion on the beginning of the parent-child subsystem has focused on families in which there are two parents, a sizable number of children do not live with both parents. For example, as noted in Chap­ ter 7, an increasing number are in homes where the mothers have never married. A 1992 U.S. census survey showed that 15% of such white women 18 to 44 years of age had given birth. Ten years earlier, the percentage had been 7%. Among comparable black women, the figure was 56%, which was up from 49% in 1982. The percentages for Hispanic women were 33% and 23% in 1992 and 1982, respectively. To look at family life, therefore, it is necessary to see how single parents, whether divorced, separated, widowed, or never married, manage their family development task of socialization. From Chapter 7, we have already learned that being a single parent is not easy. In more than 8 of 10 cases, women are the parents in charge. Often, their children suffer the hand­ icap of generally being poorer than children who have two parents. Census figures indi­ cated that in 1992, almost half (47%) of chil­ dren in single-mother families were poor, compared with 8.3% of children with two parents (DeParle, 1993). Fathers who are not living with their children are less likely to provide funds for their support, and those that do are not as generous as residential fathers. This is especially true if the children are born out of wedlock. Mothers in single-parent homes usually lack a second adult to compliment them when their child-rearing strategies are going well, make suggestions when they are not, or step in to relieve them in either good or stressful times. Because single mothers are more likely to suffer the disadvantages of litde education and lack of job skills, they face the daily frustra­ tions that contribute to poor parenting prac­ tices. The condition of a number of single mothers is summed up in this woman's wish:

PARENT-CHILD RELATIONS OVER

TIME

"If I could get some relief from the kids, I think I could cope better. Mornings around here are the worst. The two girls are fighting and screaming from the minute they get out of bed. I just don't want to face it. I want to bury myself in bed and pretend it's not there." (Spanier & Thompson, 1984, p. 222) How single mothers manage to be the warm but demanding socialization agents who pro­ duce competent children is a critical issue. An adequate income, which the mother can use to purchase domestic services, is one answer. Having relatives or friends to turn to for aid is another. One sample of 58 somewhat bettereducated, divorced mothers with preschoolers told how outsiders helped out. The women were either employed or going to school. Their family incomes averaged less than $15,000 a year. All their children were in some kind of day care. Relatives and friends seemed to serve different functions for single mothers. Social support from friends was related to the mothers' feeling in control of their children. In contrast, mothers who relied on kin for companionship rather than on friends used problem solving less as a coping strategy for dealing with their difficulties and were less effective parents. They appeared to follow sug­ gestions from trusted relatives without seeing if theyfittheir own parenting situations. They coped with their problems by avoiding or distancing themselves from their children. One reason the mothers turned to relatives and not friends for help may have been be­ cause they could be more open with them about problems. They also appeared to feel comfortable talking with them. Mothers who received aid from kinsfolk reported less dis­ tress (Holloway & Machida, 1991). When they are feeling blue and are facing a number of difficulties, having a mother or sister to pour out their troubles to can be good. But friends who come from somewhat different back­ grounds may be more able to supply alterna­ tive and better ideas for handling problems with children.

Divorce and Its Outcomes The conventional belief that divorce leads to socialization problems with children for the custodial parent should be viewed with

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some skepticism. Certainly, the lower in­ comes and lack of partner assistance that cus­ todial mothers face make it harder for them to do a good job in rearing children. But small and large samples that have been followed over time indicate that divorcing couples are more likely to have been poorer parents, even before the dissolution, than couples who stay together. To take one example, a group of researchers, who studied preschoolers from a wide range of socioeconomic backgrounds in two nursery schools, contacted them later when they were 14 to 15 years of age (Block et al., 1988). Forty-two of these 110 adoles­ cents had parents who divorced or separated. As early as when these children were in nurs­ ery school, there were indications that they were receiving less adequate parenting. Their fathers had reported themselves to be more in conflict with their sons and to expect a good deal of them. They lacked warm ties with their preschoolers, which may have accounted for the conflicts. Sons might not have wanted to live up to their expectations. Mothers who later divorced, compared with women who re­ mained married, also told of having more trouble with their sons and wished that their husbands were more involved with the youngsters. As far as preschool daughters of parents who subsequently split up were concerned, their fathers more often said they were rela­ tively relaxed and tolerant. In sharp contrast, mothers pushed daughters to achieve and used physical punishment to enforce their de­ mands. Marital quality was poor. Wives who divorced later were feeling shortchanged in marital love. They were more likely than other wives to describe their husbands as being critical and not affectionate. From studies such as this, therefore, we can see that the sepa­ ration and divorce transition in many couples does not necessarily usher in poor parenting practices. In a number of cases, families who experience divorce are characterized by pre­ vious poor partner relations and ineffective parental socialization practices. There are also longitudinal studies of the outcomes of divorce for young children after it occurs. In one I referred to in Chapter 3, child psychologist E. Mavis Hetherington and her associates began with a sample of 144 middle-class, well-educated white parents, half of whom were divorced. All the children were

4 years old when the research began. Those in single-parent families were in their mothers' custody. In the first years after divorce "most children and many parents" had experienced some health, emotional, and behavior prob­ lems. The disruption in family life demanded new role behaviors to cope with the changed family situations. Because both mothers and children had to learn new ways, the possi­ bilities of conflict and misunderstanding were great. Mothers described what had gone on during this period as a " 'declared war' " or a " 'struggle for survival.' " One woman even exclaimed it was" 'like getting bitten to death by ducks' " (Hetherington, Cox, & Cox, 1976, p. 425). After 2 years, however, most divorced mothers and their children were doing fairly well in getting along with each other. There were some continuing problems between mothers and their sons. Compared with same age peers whose parents were together, sons tended to be more disobedient and acted out more at home. They also had difficulties getting along with age-mates and in school. Daughters were doing well, however, and they and their divorced mothers had good rela­ tions. Fathers were becoming less nurturant and more detached from their children (Hetherington, 1989, p. 2; Hetherington et al., 1976). Because this was a relatively ad­ vantaged group of single-mother families, it is good to remember that most single mothers and their children generally have less money and education available to handle stressful conditions. They would be likely to experi­ ence more difficulties. In later chapters on the parent-child career, there will be more on what happens to these relations after the divorce transition, when children are older and their parents may have remarried. Married Without Children Any chapter on the childbearing period has to consider those partners who choose to remain without children. Unlike the couples I wrote about in Chapter 7, they would not have it any other way. Their numbers are few, as the decision to remain child free is uncom­ mon. Less than 2% of both husbands and wives in the National Survey of Families and House­ holds (NSFH) reported not having children

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P A R E N T - C H I L D RELATIONS OVER TIME

(Jacobson & Heaton, 1991), and for some of these individuals, being childless was prob­ ably involuntary. One child psychologist, Jay Belsky, whose longitudinal research with couples and firstborns I have previously dis­ cussed, has noted that childless people often nurture the younger generation in alternative ways. Knowing they are not contributing to the overpopulation crisis, they serve children as teachers and child care workers (Kutner, 1991, p. 4D). Others look to nearby relatives or the less well-off across town to cherish and aid. They help organizations such as Big Sisters and Big Brothers and bring special attention to children whose parents gave birth but not care. Despite the pressures from pronatalist out­ siders and from parents wanting grand­ children, couples without children find other options more attractive. One 37-year-old woman, who has a public relations firm and is married to an electrical engineer, summar­ ized their views:" 'My mother-in-law doesn't miss a chance to mention how darling some­ one else's baby is,' " she declared. She con­ tinued, however, " Ί know we'd be making them happy if we decided to have children. But we'd be making them happy, not our­ selves' " (Kutner, 1991, p. 4D). Child-free couples put a heavy emphasis on the marital relation and its being egalitarian. As we have seen, the coming of children pushes couples toward a more conventional division of labor. Couples must shift their attention from their partnerships to the parent-child relation and its responsibilities. The childless have more time to work at marital contentment. Child­ less couples are also more likely than couples with children to turn to each other rather than friends or kin over the family career for emotional support (Ishii-Kuntz & Seccombe, 1989). Studies with small samples generally indicate that the child free are happier in their marriages than those with children (Somers, 1993). This is the way one childless husband talked about the reactions of his friends with chil­ dren and compared his marriage to theirs: 2

"Most of our friends had had children by now, so we were aware that we were different. Friends seem to take one of three approaches once they accept that we probably will remain childless.

Some guard us from their children assuming, I guess, that childless couples dislike children, an invalid assumption in our case. Others encourage our interactions with their children, seemingly in the hope that this will show us the error of our decision. The third group of friends pay us no special attention, treating us as if we were a normal couple, except for our childless state. "In looking back over the years, I think the decision has been more difficult for Helene than for me. In social situations, men are less likely to discuss their children. But for women that often becomes the main topic of conversa­ tion. This either leaves Helene out or creates an awkwardness as the others realize she doesn't have children. In general, we have become closer as a couple because there are no children to take up our time. We are good friends and seem to share more activities than most of our friends who have children." (Robinson 8c Barret, 1986, p.20) 3

These partners who choose not to be par­ ents also are often more highly educated and caught up in exciting, demanding occupa­ tions (Jacobson 8c Heaton, 1991). This is par­ ticularly true of wives, who customarily would have had to bear the brunt of child care responsibilities. Other persons who grew up in unhappy homes may not want to run the risk of carrying on that experience. Therefore, the childless by choice have a number of reasons for deciding not to follow the usual family career. Summary The variety of issues that have to be covered in any consideration of the arrival of an infant within a family indicates the break the event represents with the past period. Moreover, conventional wisdom is sometimes at odds with reality when it comes to family living in the present era. One continuity with the past is the person mainly responsible for the socialization and physical care of the young child. Until recently, the breadwinner-house­ wife assignment of roles on the basis of gender was seen as normative in most middle-class and many working-class family partnerships. This convention no longer holds true, as the majority of women are now performing bread­ winner roles. Yet contrary to what many

FIRST

211

ACQUAINTANCE

believe, men are still not generally sharing child care chores. We saw that this disparity in parental role responsibilities is not due to the biological incapacities of fathers or to their failure to make a positive contribution to mothers or offspring if they are active parents. Instead, self-interest, views of mas­ culinity, peer pressures, workplace policies, and mothers' own wishes to retain childrearing responsibilities are factors that dis­ courage change in customary child care task assignments. Men who do enjoy fatherhood and perform its chores turn out to be successful on the job and in their marriages. They have played household task roles prior to the arrival of the infant. With parenthood, they have contin­ ued their domestic involvement. The support and praise these family men receive from wives, as well as the pleasure they feel from seeing the young child thrive under their care, make their wholehearted fathering a positive change from past customs. For raising competent children who are assertive but still cooperative in social situa­ tions, research suggests parents need initially to be responsive to the changing needs of the infant. While caring for the young child's physical and emotional demands, parents are laying the foundation for children's fulfilling future socialization tasks. Care that gives infants a sense of security prepares them later to meet the standards parents set. In this fashion, parents sensitive to the growing abil­ ities of their offspring can actively encourage their learning new behaviors. The preschoolers comfortable with parental demands are will­ ing to take on the socialization tasks geared to their developmental level. Although newborns bring parenthood re­ sponsibilities to fathers and mothers, single mothers head large numbers of families with young children. Whether due to divorce or unwed parenthood, more children presently than in the past are facing daily life without fathers. Divorced mothers generally have cus­ tody of the children. They and other single mothers tend to suffer from the deficits of time, energy, and money that may create sociali­ zation difficulties. Contrary to what many

believe, divorce does not necessarily usher in family problems. The families of divorced chil­ dren were often characterized by poor paren­ tal socialization practices before the break. Bad marital relations contributed to the dif­ ficulties in the parent-child subsystem. Most mothers and children get their lives back together and interaction routines on an even keel by 2 years after the divorce transi­ tion. Aid and emotional support from kin, friends, and other partner substitutes, if avail­ able, help to ease the way of these families. Single mothers particularly who are earn­ ing their families' livings are likely to have to turn to outsiders for child care during work­ ing hours. Despite the conventional wisdom that only their mothers should care for young children, there is increasing evidence that this judgment may be untrue. Small studies indi­ cate that children as young as infants who are in child care with other than their mothers maintain secure attachments to their mothers and fathers, although the relations of some fathers and infant sons may suffer. Fathers, however, seem to change less than mothers in their interactions with children when another youngster has arrived. The explanation for both findings probably lies in fathers' lesser direct involvement with children. But regardless of the degree to which par­ ents are active in child care, demanding in­ fants alter the marital subsystem. The child­ less by choice are able to concentrate on the marital partnership, although that does not preclude their attentions to other people's children. For parents, however, the childbear­ ing period is a time of change that continues long past the period of acquaintance with the first newborn.

Notes 1. From Martin (1993). Reprinted by permission. 2. From Kutner (1991). Copyright © 1991 by The New York Times Company. Reprinted by permission. 3. From Robinson and Barret (1986). This and all subsequent excerpts reprinted by permission of Guilford Press.

12

Child Rearing in

School and Work Contexts

Families and the World Outside The discussion of the parent-child sub­ system to this point has been largely con­ cerned with interactions of members within the boundaries of the family. The material on fathers' participation in the household division of labor and mothers' paid employment did indicate that child rearing occurs within the context of work. In this chapter on family relations in the middle years of childhood, formal schooling joins job holding among the transactions between members and the world outside. School and work careers not only occupy significant portions of the time and interest of family members, but events in these careers, such as the oldest child's school progress and parents' retirement, can also be used to dif­ ferentiate periods in the family career. There is little selective boundary maintenance in family members' performance of work and school roles if by selective we mean freedom of choice. Economic necessity and legal re­ quirements demand family transactions with both occupational and educational organiza­ tions, and these interchanges affect family life. In this chapter, we will see how what goes on 212

at school and on the job influences socializa­ tion, particularly in the family stage when primary school-aged children are present.

Preschool Experience and

the Primary School Transition

Fathers and a majority of mothers have been working outside the home from the time their firstborns were infants. For this reason, a number of infants and toddlers have already been in child care facilities before they enter primary school. But their entrance into kinder­ garten or first grade in the formal school setting can represent a break with the past, just as it does for children whose past daily routines were within the family. As the son of a friend remarked after taking his child to her first day of kindergarten, "It was almost too much for me. She looked so young to be in a school building." This child had been in pre­ school, but the facilities had been designed for play, not instruction. Formal education places new learning demands on the child. His or her ability to handle these tasks is affected by past parental socialization. What knowledge the child acquires in school will influence

CHILD REARING IN SCHOOL AND WORK

CONTEXTS

family interactions, just as do the experiences of adults on the job. Although parents and children spend much of their time doing dif­ ferent things in different institutions, both parties bring to the home results from these extrafamilial agencies (Kohn, 1983, p. 4). There are linkages with prior experiences that set limits on the ease with which children handle their entrance into primary school. One of the positive factors is the anticipatory socialization that preschool attendance pro­ vides. As the last chapter indicated, having to deal with other youngsters and conform to the rules of adults outside the home can in­ crease children's social and intellectual skills. Children who enter kindergarten from pre­ schools have less anxiety than children used only to their families. It is not an entirely new departure from their usual routines. They are better able to get along with their school peers and thus concentrate on the teaching pro­ gram. The longer they attend preschool, ac­ cording to one study of 58 kindergartners followed through the initial school year, the less anxiety they show in the classroom (Ladd 8c Price, 1987). These were middle-class chil­ dren who presumably would have had more experience with books and other learning resources at home than their less advantaged peers. Many of these latter children, conse­ quently, would also benefit from the antici­ patory socialization for primary school that being exposed to the routines of a day care center provides. But as shown in Chapter 11, and contrary to popular belief, a sizable num­ ber of preschoolers continue to remain in a spouse's or relative's care when mothers are employed outside the home. The benefits a child may derive from pre­ school for subsequent entrance into a formal education setting depend on several factors. These include the age at which children enter preschool. The results from these studies have been contradictory, some showing benefits, others not. The conflicting findings may be due to their concentration on either family background or preschool quality. There has been a lack of longitudinal research in which the effect of both factors on children's later school adjustment have been looked at (Howes, 1990). Regardless of age, children's later suc­ cess is affected by whether the centers are of high or low quality in terms of staff turnover, staff training, and the number of children

213 per adult caregiver. Better-quality preschools, in which adults stress problem-solving tech­ niques, mediate disputes, and pay special at­ tention to children, help them accomplish their developmental tasks of acquiring social skills. Findings from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth suggest that children from poorer families do not receive lower quality preschool care. Parents did not pay more for care that met child-staff ratios or recommend­ ed group size levels. Families with more re­ sources in terms of income, education, and the presence of two parents to socialize the child did not typically obtain higher quality care for their offspring (Waite, Leibowitz, 8c Witsberger, 1991). Family difficulties in chil­ dren's homes, however, do affect the kind of preschools they attend. Unhappy families are less likely to choose quality centers, perhaps because of their child-rearing problems or be­ cause better child care, through its positive support of children, reduces the number of such families (Howes, 1990). Just how factors of age at child care entrance, quality of child care, and family characteris­ tics affect children's transition to kindergar­ ten were investigated by child psychologist Carollee Howes in her longitudinal study (1990) of 80 middle-class children. She had begun her research when they were infants and continued it until they had completed kindergarten. Using teacher and parent ratings as well as observations of the white, black, and Hispanic children, she found that for children enrolled as infants in child care, its quality played a large part in their later kindergarten adjustment. Children who as infants entered high-quality care were not different from those entering such care at toddler ages. Both groups got along in kindergarten without difficulties. Children who were in low-quality care as in­ fants seemed to have more difficulty later in school, in terms of being considerate and task oriented, and were more hostile and more distractible. Children who entered less optimal care facilities at older ages also were more hostile and less competent in getting along with their peers in kindergarten than were children enrolled in high-quality care at any age (Howes, 1990). Family characteristics, as previously noted, affected the kind of center parents chose for their children. Parents who first enrolled their children in less optimal settings when they

214

P A R E N T - C H I L D RELATIONS OVER

were older than 3 years were more likely to be less effective socializing agents. In observa­ tion sessions, they were less responsive to their children and less insistent on their com­ pliance to parental requests and demands. Their children were less obedient and selfregulating prior to entering care, and this pat­ tern continued in the school setting. It appears, therefore, that children as young as infants in good care facilities can function well in formal school settings when they are older. For these children, effective teachers in the care centers encourage them to learn the social skills that will enable them to adjust to the demands of teachers and peers when they are in school. Positive parental characteristics, along with the quality of the care centers, affect how well older children who enter centers do in kindergarten. With these youngsters, par­ ents have had more time to influence them, and as we have seen, poor parents are less likely to choose preschool environments that might compensate for their own shortcomings. This discussion of preschool effects on chil­ dren's transitions to primary school addresses a continuing concern of parents as to how well outsiders can function as socialization agents. As we saw, when trained and in suffi­ cient numbers to pay attention to individual children, they can do a good job in preparing young children for the demands of formal iearning. But the importance of parents in bringing up infants and toddlers was ap­ parent. It extends from the behaviors parents encourage at home to their choice of other caretakers. Children, even after entering the broader world of the formal educational in­ stitution, continue living within the family. What goes on there influences how well they do in school. Parental Socialization and

Primary School Performance

Based on the discussion in the previous chapter, it was clear that demanding but re­ sponsive parents were more likely to have assertive and cooperative children. It also turns out that similar parental strategies are related to children's coping well with teachers' de­ mands. Take the relation between mothers' socialization techniques when children were 4 years old and their later school performance.

TIME

White mothers from a range of social class backgrounds, some one third of whom were single parents, were asked how they would go about changing or stopping their pre­ schoolers' behaviors in common situations. These included their child's hitting another child with a block and refusing to eat a vege­ table or to take prescribed medicine. Some mothers said they would demand obedience to their demands or punish the children without giving reasons for their requests. Among their comments on what they would do were, " Ί would spank her,' "or the command," 'Go tell that boy you are sorry.'" These socialization techniques of appeals to maternal authority contrasted with other mothers' appeals to consequences. They said things such as, " 'If you don't eat, then you won't be healthy or get bigger,' " and " 'If you take it [medicine], you will get better quicker' " (Hess & McDevitt, 1984, pp. 2019-2020). These same mothers also were observed while they taught their 4-year-olds how to do a block-sorting task. Their instructions were differentiated between direct commands and attempts to get the child to respond through requests, questions, or indirect commands. The following is an example of an interchange high on a mother's direct commands. Mother: Okay, now put all the big ones to­ gether in one square. Child: Okay. Mother: Very good! Now, I want you to take all green ones. Child: Yeah? Mother: ... and put them in one square. Child: Okay. Mother: In one square... in one of the three squares . . . one of the two. Mmm. Put the green one with the other green one . . . all the green ones in one square. Child: With X's on it. Mother: We'll do those later, (quoted in Hess 8c McDevitt, 1984, p. 2021) In contrast are this mother's strategies to en­ list her child's active participation in the task. Mother: What's that letter? (Mother points at short block with an X on top.) Child: X—and sometimes they have O's.

CHILD REARING IN SCHOOL AND WORK

CONTEXTS

Mother: Yeah. Sometimes they have O's. What's the difference between these two? (Mother presents a tall X and a short X.) Child: Short. Mother: Short. Okay. Some are tall and some are short. And some have an (pauses and points at mark of X on the block). Child: X. (quoted in Hess & McDevitt, 1984, p. 2020) These reports of mothers' socialization strategies with their preschoolers, although brief and age specific, turned out to be related to their family and individual characteris­ tics at that time and their children's school achievements later. Married women living with their husbands, of higher socioeconomic status and higher IQs, were less likely to use direct commands with their young children. Their offspring, whom they also more often asked what they thought they should do, did better at ages 4 to 6 and later at 12 on the kind of skills that contribute to school achievement. To explain their results, child psychologists Robert D. Hess and Teresa M. McDevitt (1984) point out, as did Diana Baumrind (1989) whose research I discussed in the previous chapter, that some control is needed to indicate to the child what it is the parent or teacher wants done. Once the parent has caught the child's attention, however, how well the child per­ forms depends on her or his involvement in taking on the requirements of the task. Again, we see that socialization is a two-way process. The socializing agent can indicate the rule or skill the child is to learn. But unless the child has been encouraged to ask questions and give ideas, the power difference between the agent and the child is not enough to get the child to accomplish the task. The child must want to do it. Having some sense of why the task or rule is important encourages the child's will­ ingness to learn. Parents' style of discipline is related not only to their children's academic performance but also to how well they get along with their schoolmates. Another study of 144 mothers of first and fourth graders in a midwestern community showed that those who were power assertive in their discipline, that is hostile and insistent on obedience without listening to their offspring's explanations, had children who used similar techniques with

215 other pupils. The youngsters expected to get their own way when they gave commands in an unfriendly way to their peers. Not too sur­ prisingly, these "bossy" children who believed such behaviors were effective were chosen less often as preferred playmates by others in their grades (Hart, Ladd, & Burleson, 1990). Thus, parents pass on to the next generation, through their example, ways of dealing with others when disagreements arise. But although parents have the power to assert their will over dependent children, children who follow their parents' ways, lacking superior power with peers, are less successful in gaining their ends and lose out in making friends. The importance of the mutual involve­ ment in socialization of both children and parents for children's school performance holds across class and racial groups. Children observed as preschoolers in a small sample of 15 low-income black families, who received more explanations from parents and schoolaged siblings, were better readers in the second grade. Their parents and sibs had encouraged the children's own verbalizations and taught them their ABCs and played school with them more (Norman-Jackson, 1982). Their elders by these means had made the children active participants in learning. The children were prepared to want to conform to teacher demands. Research such as this again suggests how parental socialization attempts and chil­ dren's resultant predisposition to take on learning tasks, regardless of class and ethnicity, carry over to their school achievements. Parental monitoring of children's daily ac­ tivities including their school performance also affects how much children acquire in the classroom. Just as parents influence chil­ dren's willingness to accomplish academic tasks, parental interest and watchfulness over school assignments influences learning. Whether it is setting aside a time and place for study free from television and other distrac­ tions or inquiring about what children are studying, parents continue to influence their academic progress. Two-earner parents have less time than single-earner families with two parents to su­ pervise their children's schooling. As we have seen, regardless of whether mothers hold jobs, their husbands generally do not perform child care tasks to any great extent. Consequently, employed mothers may have too much to do

216 with job and domestic tasks to monitor their children. When parents in a study of middleclass two-parent families, however, were asked about their children's daily activities, there were no group differences in monitoring based on the mothers' employment status. Less well-monitored boys, whether in the 77 twoearner or 75 single-earner families, however, did receive lower grades than did other chil­ dren. Less adequate monitoring in two-earner families was associated with more negative conduct among sons, as rated by their parents and themselves. The children in the sample, all 9 to 12 years of age, also had more learn­ ing problems when they received less pa­ rental supervision. Learning problems were more often found among boys, less well monitored children, and children in twoearner families (Crouter, MacDermid, McHale, & Perry-Jenkins, 1990). Keeping up with what sons are doing seems more critical than supervising daughters for parents seeking to head off learning and be­ havior problems. Just as girls are more likely to suffer from overdependency and being too willing to accept the commands of parents, boys are more likely to do poorly if allowed too much freedom. The aggressive independence traditionally associated with males can prove harmful if it takes the form of bad behavior and academic problems. When parents let supervision slide, they seem less able to con­ trol their sons' behavior problems. Less wellsupervised children, regardless of their family background, do more poorly in school. You will have noticed that this discussion of parental monitoring was based on a re­ port of middle-class families. It is much harder for lower-income parents, especially single mothers residing in inner cities, to keep track of their children. Living in crowded high-rise apartments, children can quickly escape pa­ rental supervision. Employed mothers are especially disadvantaged in trying to monitor what their children are doing. Supervising children's learning is also hard when mothers' own lack of schooling makes it difficult for them to understand their children's grade school lessons. Their own learning deficits prevent them from helping their children ac­ quire the necessary reading and arithmetic skills. One such mother expressed her frustration with her second-grade daughter's homework:

PARENT-CHILD RELATIONS OVER

TIME

"A lot of that stuff, I either just didn't know, or just don't remember, and I have to sit there and read the whole thing before I can even get to answerin' her, you know. In science, or—in all of it." (Rosier, 1993, p. 19) SCHOOL DAYS A N D FAMILY LIVING

The discrepancy between the expectations of teachers in schools and the ability of their pupils' parents to meet them raises the issue of family interchanges across their boundaries with the personnel in educational institu­ tions. To this point, our focus has been on how parents influence their children's readi­ ness for the transition to primary school. The teachers and peers with whom children come in contact, however, broaden the range of ideas and behaviors they display. These new ways may clash with family customs so that children with their new learnings disrupt es­ tablished family patterns. What third-grade teacher, Mrs. Jones, says about the correct way of doing things, which may range from keep­ ing clean to what to eat, can take on extreme importance for young scholars even if at odds with family customs. A low-income mother reported the experience many parents have in dealing with the different rules teachers set that children feel they should follow. Her daughter had explained to her, " 'Well, Mommy, that's not the way you taught me how to do it.'" The daughter then had to decide between the teacher's procedures and the parent's. Her choice? " 'I'll just do every­ thing my teacher says. Don't you tell me how to do anything* " (Rosier, 1993, p. 19). But when the separation between family and school is too wide, children tend to stick to family ways and do less well in school. Inner-city children are too often in this situa­ tion. These parents are less able to keep an eye on their children, see that they are not absent from school, or supervise their homework. Consequently, parental involvement through contacts with their teachers may be the major way they can influence children's academic achievements. Teachers who see parents at school meetings tend to watch out for their children. They feel these parents recognize that formal learning is a two-way street be­ tween families and schools. School visits also are a way for parents to check up on how what is going on in the classroom and with the

CHILD REARING IN SCHOOL AND WORK

217

CONTEXTS

teacher will affect their child's learning. This African American single mother expressed her determination to see that her children were doing all right: "I was always one to go to school and check on all of them very unexpectedly, on the children and on the teacher. Some of the things from kindergarten up until right now.... I've had my debut in schools in Chicago in every school they attended. I can assure you they know me. And I've never had any problem with Sheila. Like I say, I've gone to PTA meetings and went to school for her and a lot of times I'd get off work early and I'd just go by the school some­ times and check on the kids and the teachers, because they're people just like me. I've made mistakes and teachers can be wrong too. They are respected by the people, but they can be wrong." (Clark, 1983, p. 91) Parents, through meeting others with sim­ ilar concerns, receive social recognition and support for their interest in education. Those who take an active part in their children's school can also do a better job in encouraging their children to learn. To take just one ex­ ample, a group of 683 kindergartners and first graders followed over 2 years showed the benefits of having parents who kept in touch with teachers about their schoolwork. These ethnically diverse students from poor neigh­ borhoods had fewer absences, less problem behavior, and higher reading and mathe­ matics achievements when parents were in contact with teachers (Reynolds, Weissberg, 8cKasprow, 1992). Before leaving the subject of the inter­ changes between families and schools as chil­ dren make the transition to primary education, let us review some of the ways school demands shape family lives. Parents supply the pupils, who vary in how well they are prepared to become scholars. Regardless of the extent of this preparation, families have to adjust their routines to school opening and closing times. They are also responsible for seeing that their children are on time for classes. Teachers will expect parents to maintain certain minimal standards of school attendance, behavior, and learning achievement in their children. These standards have legal backing that schools can use if necessary for their enforcement. In ad­ dition, teachers often assign homework so

children can acquire the required skills. Chil­ dren need to have a place to work and possibly someone to monitor their completing the assignments. Just how hard it can be to find space in overcrowded, low-income homes —and the distractions competing with homework—is indicated by the complaints of this girl who does poorly in school: "You can't study here, you've either gotta go to one of your friend's houses. We just can't study and hear record players, the record player was so high everything on the wall was just shaking. I felt I couldn't study at home. There was so much noise, you know. And I'd probably be jumping off into whatever my family was doing and forget about my homework." (Clark, 1983, p. 188) The breadth of material schools cover in course work also affects family life. Schools' promotion of healthful diets, smoking pre­ vention, and physical exercise programs can put them at odds with some families' customs. Parents are likely to resent their offspring informing them that the teacher says fried, high-salt dishes, a staple of mom's cooking, are not good for family members. Heavy smokers may also be unhappy when a child reports the latest U.S. surgeon general's findings concern­ ing the consequences of tobacco use that she has heard about in health education classes. Sex education is a particularly controver­ sial classroom topic that can set up barriers to constructive family-school interchanges. Many parents have difficulty talking about sex with their children and choose to overlook their children's interest in sexual matters. But despite this difficulty, a number of parents believe such information should be left to them to pass on to their offspring. Some hold that discussing sex is an immoral classroom topic. Others believe that teaching about sex will encourage children's engaging in it. Young people, however, often disagree. They argue, as did one teenager, that even though adults can continue to emphasize abstinence, they should " 'tell us how to practice safe sex, or a lot of people. . . are going to have AIDS' " (Minton, 1993b, p. 5). In actuality, research with a large nationally representative sample of 15- and 16-year-olds indicated that those without a sex education course were more likely to have engaged in sexual intercourse 1

218 than those who had taken such a course. This finding held when family income, family composition, and mother's education were controlled. It was also true within all gender and racial groups, with the exception of black males (Furstenberg, Moore, 8c Peterson, 1985). Some programs, however, have been set up to reflect parental concerns about sex edu­ cation's possible encouragement of children's sexual activities. These programs attempt to not only encourage communication between students and parents about sexual matters but also increase students' sexual knowledge. Taking into account parents' criticisms, the courses do not just present the facts and let the students decide what is best for them. These new curriculums emphasize the value of students' delaying sex and the necessity for all young people, if they do engage in coitus, to use effective contraception. Quasiexperimental evaluations of such programs exist, in which high school students surveyed 6 months before they enroll in such a pro­ gram are randomly assigned to it or another program and followed up 6 and 18 months later. These evaluations show that youths en­ rolled in these new curriculums who had not initiated sex before taking the course were significantly less likely to have had intercourse 18 months later. Among sexually experienced females and better students from two-parent families, the program was related to increased contraceptive use. All the students in the pro­ gram had increased knowledge and had begun talking with their parents more about sexual abstinence and contraception (Kirby, Barth, Leland, 8c Fetro, 1991). Consequently, in the sensitive area of sexual norms, schools can contribute to more openness between parents and children. If parents are willing to discuss these topics, both parties have better concep­ tions of the other's beliefs and the reasons for the beliefs. There maybe better understanding and less conflict between the generations. But if parents are really serious about being responsible for their children's sex education, they should begin comfortably answering their children's questions at an early age. For ex­ ample, a Connecticut Department of Educa­ tion survey of 5,000 children in kindergarten through high school found that at all ages children were asking questions about sex 2 years before parents and teachers either ex­ pected or wanted them to. One father expressed

PARENT-CHILD RELATIONS OVER

TIME

the dislike a number of adults feel in dealing with sex education when he compared his oldest son with his 7-year-old. The former had asked few questions about sex. As far as the younger child was concerned, his dad said, " 'He's asked me something about sex al­ ready.' " The father did not welcome the situa­ tion. As he put it, the younger son was " 'going to be harder than Jeffrey, Jr. was'" (Cummings, 1993, p. CI). Because many parents continue to have difficulty recognizing that children are sexual beings much less talking to them about sexual issues, any program that increases family talk about sex, its pleasures and responsibilities, is all to the good. Sex educator Mary Calderone (1985, p. 74) dramatized the outcome when parents do not address children's sexual inter­ ests by using the example of a child's fear if he or she were smacked every time for trying out a new word. How long, she asks, would it take the child to learn language if he or she were punished for each attempt to do so? She con­ tends that we have a nation of sexual stutterers and stammerers. When not talked about, sex can seem frightening and yet attractive, due to the many depictions of its pleasures in the mass media. Parents, accordingly, have an obli­ gation to use frank talk to emphasize the re­ sponsibilities involved in sex. Some schools are making an effort to help by encouraging students to discuss sexual matters with parents. 2

Children can feel caught in the middle, wanting to do well in school but fearing their parents' disapproval if they mention some ideas they hear about in class. There are new departures in education, however, that most parents welcome. Computers are a good ex­ ample. Bored students sometimes become excited about learning if they have access to such equipment. Parents seeing their enthusi­ asm may become computer literate them­ selves or encourage their children to be. One primary school student from Abita Springs, Louisiana, hated writing before a computer company donated computers, printers, and other equipment to his school. Now he is writing up a storm. He says," Ί like it because it's fun, and you get to get out of class.' " The teacher reports that even though 45% of her students are from poor families, they are buying computers." 'We've had many of our parents come to see us about purchasing for the home'" (Larson, 1991, p. 12), she says. She keeps an

CHILD REARING IN SCHOOL AND WORK

CONTEXTS

eye on the classified ads for used computers they might buy. To summarize the discussion on the trans­ actions between home and school, how well children do in school has much to do with their parents' socialization techniques and the language and book resources they have provided. Children's involvement, compre­ hension, and acceptance of school goals are also related to their parents' encouragement. Not all of what children bring home in the way of comments on what they are learning is acceptable to parents. Sometimes they recog­ nize that the teacher is probably right and go along with the new ways but frown on other ideas. As children grow older, the new ways they more often expound come from peers. "But all the other kids can do it" becomes a refrain parents dread. Whether from peers or school personnel, pupils introduce different ways to their families that could set in motion change processes. Children link families and schools and thereby serve as the carriers of ideas between both institutions.

Work and Family Life Throughout the discussions in this book and particularly in Chapter 8, the impact of the work world on families has been apparent. The income wage earners receive for their ef­ forts determines the kinds of purchases their families can make. These extend from essen­ tial items, such as housing, apparel, and food, to luxuries such as orthodontia, higher edu­ cation, and vacation trips. The level of living that either provides opportunities for family members or limits the ones they have is not the only job consequence affecting families. The employment of husbands and wives sets domestic schedules and the time they have to devote to each other, their children, and house­ hold tasks. We have seen in previous chapters how the traditional division of labor, based on one family breadwinner and one stay-at­ home housekeeper, has not changed much, regardless of most families having two adult job holders. When job demands infringe on the domestic time of both partners, the potential for conflict builds because wife-mothers can­ not keep up with member needs, and husbandfathers do not share household workloads.

219 In this section on how job requirements cross family boundaries, I will begin with a consideration of the importance of paid work for family well-being. Receiving money for services rendered enables families to remain solvent and, at the most basic level, stay out of poverty. Families with higher incomes have more control over what happens to them. If families are unable to pay the rent, make mort­ gage payments, or buy food, they lose inde­ pendence. They open their family boundaries to interference from outsiders. Government officials, moneylenders, friends, and relatives to whom families must turn for help usually expect them to present both evidence of need and plans for how they expect to get out of their problems. Holding down a job, especially for a man, is also central to individuals' sense of identity and self-worth. Being a wage earner provides meaning to life by giving a tangible payoff to effort. Paychecks are also a measure of in­ dividual achievement. Earnings supply an in­ dicator of the prestige people should receive. Community reputation is based on the neigh­ borhoods in which families live and the life­ styles they display, thanks to the family purse. Some indication of the importance of a pay­ check to the jobholders' feelings about them­ selves and their purchasing power is revealed in this statement of a successful manager in a firm: "At some point, when the new fiscal year had begun and I'd find out what my pay would be, my wife would always try to figure out what that meant in terms of could she do this or do that. Whereas payment, for me, is sort of a measure of how well you're doing." (Weiss, 1990, p. 24) Wages also provide power to negotiate ar­ rangements within the family. The generally lower pay women receive in comparison to men is one factor accounting for the dispro­ portionate burden of tasks that employed wifemothers shoulder at home. Being employed, like attending school, not only ties members into the community but also gives them a broader perspective that goes beyond their narrow family goals and purposes. Meeting people and finding out what they are about adds to the spice of life. Having to go to work keeps people busy. It structures daily living in the hours the work requires.

220 For these reasons of independence, selfidentity, physical maintenance, prestige, family power, and setting daily schedules, job hold­ ing is central to making life worthwhile for most men and increasing numbers of women. Consequently, being fired or being unable to find a job is a devastating experience for the wage earner. It has an impact on many aspects of individual and family living. Beginning in the Great Depression of the 1930s (Angell, 1936; Jahoda, Lazarsfeld, &Zeisel, 1933/1971; Stouffer & Lazarsfeld, 1937) and continuing into the present, studies document the suffer­ ing families undergo when wage earners are unemployed. Certain groups are more subject to joblessness. They include blacks, younger persons in their teens and 20s, and those with less education. Because of their generally higher salaries, persons in their 50s are sometimes asked to take early retirement. Lack of job seniority, or so much of it that employers let long-time employees go to lower costs, ex­ plains who tends to be without work. Families at the formation stage and in the years when children are coming of age are dis­ proportionately affected by these unemploy­ ment patterns. Young people may have to postpone marriage and settle for the lesser responsibilities of singlehood or cohabitation. The middle-aged find it difficult to fund their children's college educations. Recently married couples or those just embarking on parent­ hood are especially hard-pressed when pay­ checks stop. They have not been in the labor force long enough to put aside money for savings and do not earn enough to do more than keep up with current bills. Single mothers, a disproportionate number with low wages, are also likely to be living from hand to mouth. Economic hardship can contribute to fami­ ly breakup if one of the partners has a source of income. Data from the National Longi­ tudinal Surveys of the Labor Market Experi­ ence of Young Women, whose subjects were followed over 15 years, show that married women are more apt to divorce and form their own families when they hold a job and have wages to support their families. Marital disruption is more likely to occur among women who are employed 35 to 40 hours a week and more than 50 weeks a year. Black women's decision to divorce is especially af­ fected by their weekly job hours (Greenstein, 1990). Before we decide wives' employment

PARENT-CHILD RELATIONS OVER TIME

makes for marital difficulty, however, it is important to note that the data also showed that the higher their earnings, the less likely women were to divorce. Apparently, the addi­ tional monies they added to the family purse ease family life and add to the collective family resources in the form of durable goods and home ownership. These, in turn, lessen the attraction of divorce or separation as an alter­ native to marriage. Thus, women who feel they can avoid economic stress after divorce may be more likely to end unhappy mar­ riages, but their personal financial contribu­ tions to a well-fixed partnership discourage divorce (Greenstein, 1990). In the 1930s, wives and children tried to get jobs to make ends meet. Nowadays, most families already have two adult breadwinners, and there are laws restricting the hours underaged youths can work. There is state unem­ ployment compensation, but not all workers are covered, and the benefits pay only a small percentage of the earned wage. The unemployment of one adult, or in worse situ­ ations both in a household, constitutes a family crisis. Listen to the desperation of this man whose business failed: "I went without any income to my family for almost six months. The mortgage was in ar­ rears. I was just paying the interest on it. Hadn't paid a bill in six months. My mother was bring­ ing us food packages. "And to go from making a pretty reasonable living—not having an abundance of dough, but spending it freely—to being in that situa­ tion was difficult to accept. I had some nights where I would just lie in bed and cry." (Weiss, 1990, p. 61) With the stress unemployment brings to families, tempers fray and customary interac­ tion patterns break down. When a husbandfather's status rested on that of being bread­ winner, other members are likely to blame him for the situation. His power and prestige depended more on his paycheck and less on his performing child care and household tasks within the home. The affectionate support he needs in hard times is often not there. (See Aldous &Tuttle, 1988, for a review of relevant research findings.) Therefore, the state of fami­ ly arrangements prior to job loss, especially the partner bond, has much to do with the

CHILD REARING IN SCHOOL AND WORK

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CONTEXTS

reactions of all family members afterward. Marital conflict can increase if wives obtain jobs for the first time. When fathers did not get along with their children and their mar­ riages were weak before they became un­ employed, Great Depression studies indicate jobless fathers exercised arbitrary discipline. But if marriages were good, wives' support tended to bolster husbands' morale. This seemed to carry over to their parenting prac­ tices. Under these circumstances, fathers were not so harsh with their children despite living through the frustrations of joblessness (Elder, Liker, & Cross, 1984). The process through which economic hard­ ship harms marriages in the current era is documented in the videotapes of marital interactions and self-reports from 76 white, primarily middle-class families living in a rural area (Conger et al„ 1990). The families sup­ plied material on their financial health. The couples told whether they were experiencing economic pressure due to a decrease in their income resources in the past 3 years. There were also data on the husbands' work status, including being fired, laid off, or demoted or changing to a poorer job in the past year. (Only about two of five of the wives were employed.) They also reported the match be­ tween their incomes and their family's needs. From the interactions of the couples, it was possible to trace how economic difficulties are related to couple discontent. Economic pressures, lower income-to-needs ratios, and unstable work histories produced irritations because couples had to cut needs to fit limited resources. Husbands feeling this strain were more hostile and less warm to their wives in their interactions. They were also less happy in their marriages. Wives whose husbands were hostile and cold also showed these same characteristics when the couples were talking. In this fashion, economic hardship is trans­ lated into behaviors that set husbands and wives against each other at the very time both are in need of partner support. These negative interaction spirals—in which a middle-class husband's job-related unhappiness leads him to lash out at his wife, and she replies in kind—also show up among unemployed blue-collar workers. When com­ pared with their 40 employed counterparts, 41 jobless working-class men in a small study reported less communication and consensus

in their family relations and less harmony (Larson, 1984). Because of the pay they earn, such men have to struggle with a sense of financial inadequacy in the best of times. Unemployment makes it even harder to feel comfortable about themselves and get along with their families. One such worker expressed the situation this way: "I'd say the o n l y s u c c e s s in m y life is t h a t I'm still b r e a t h i n g . N o , m y life is n o t a s u c c e s s . I'm just m u d d l i n g a l o n g , t h e average w o r k i n g - c l a s s p e r s o n . I'm n o t a d o c t o r o r a lawyer o r s o m e ­ t h i n g like that. I'm n o t better t h a n m y father w a s . I'm just m a k i n g a living a n d g e t t i n g m y kids i n t o s c h o o l a n d gettin g rid o f t h e m . I d o n ' t see w h e r e I'm g o i n g t o d o m u c h more." (Weiss, 1990, pp.

193-194)

It has been estimated that economic reces­ sions accounted for about half of the increase in the numbers of mother-headed families due to separation or divorce between 1968 and 1988 (Hernandez, 1993). Unemployment because of economic hard times need not result in family breakups. If it leads to a modi­ fication of the traditional division of labor, where husbands start pitching in with domes­ tic tasks, families make a better adjustment. Even in the 1930s, when household roles were more clearly separated on the basis of gender, men felt better about themselves when they kept busy at home. It was a way to justify their existence and give meaning to it. Such shifts in household arrangements, along with pre­ existing love between spouses and between parents and children, can bring a strengthen­ ing of family ties, one of the few positive outcomes from men's losing jobs (Elder et al., 1984). An unemployed manager expressed the sentiments of many when he said, " T h e biggest p l u s in all o f this is that I'm closer to m y children t h a n ever before. I've e x p l a i n e d to t h e m that I'm u n e m p l o y e d , a n d t h e y have r e s p o n d e d w i t h great love. A n d n o w I can

be

w i t h t h e m w h e n t h e y n e e d it, n o t just w h e n it's c o n v e n i e n t for m e . That's t h e silver l i n i n g in all the clouds." ( E h r l i c h m a n , 1 9 9 3 , p. 6 )

3

Fathers and single mothers alike also find being without work provides an opportunity for friends and kin to rally around. They can help out with rent payments, school supplies,

222

PARENT-CHILD RELATIONS OVER TIME

and groceries—at least on a temporary basis —without interfering in family matters. The previously quoted lament of the man who had to depend on his mother for food pack­ ages, however, indicates just how desperate many people have to be to swallow their pride and ask for help, even from close relatives. Because of such welfare programs as Aid to Families With Dependent Children (AFDC), instituted as a consequence of the 1930s Great Depression, hard up families can turn to gov­ ernmental sources for help. This aid is limited and brings the intrusion of outsiders into family matters, because officials must check to see if the family is eligible for help.

these trying times appeared in Chapter 1. When grown, they were more focused on stable work and family roles than other children in the sample who had been reared in more well fixed circumstances. The men started their work lives at earlier ages and were more likely to not switch jobs over time. The women married earlier and placed a high value on homemaking. Having and rearing children took priority over marital companionship. The women were more likely to hold jobs than their peers who had not experienced family adversity while growing up. They more often quit their jobs after having children, however (Elder, 1974; Elder 8c Caspi, 1988). Thus, in this section, we have seen how jobs or their lack affect family relations and member well-being through the financial means they supply for physical maintenance. Families experiencing joblessness and inade­ quate wages dramatically show how marital and parent-child interactions can go awry in times of economic stress. Morale mainte­ nance suffers, especially when marital quality has been poor prior to the hard times. Part­ ners are less supportive, and the unemployed individuals take out their frustrations on spouses and children alike, which sets up a spiral of negative behaviors. In contrast, when marriages have been satisfactory, partners through love and understanding can shield the unemployed from the worst feelings of self-doubt. These fortunate individuals are likely to have taken on more household tasks and to have enjoyed the increased time with their children. Under these circumstances, eco­ nomic problems, when not prolonged, can contribute to strengthening families.

Children are affected along with their par­ ents. Longitudinal data from the National Sur­ veys of Children in 1976 and 1981 give the specifics. The survey showed that children whose parents either had been or were on wel­ fare or had reported inadequate funds were more likely than better-off children to have poor control of their impulses, to engage in antisocial behavior, and to be depressed. The results held when their age, race, and gender along with their parents' marital status were controlled (Takeuchi, Williams, 8c Adair, 1991). The process whereby joblessness and fami­ ly hardship affect parent-child relations, with the attendant negative consequences for children, seems to be similar to what occurs within marriages during periods of financial adversity. Unemployed fathers are more avail­ able to their children. As noted above, this can be one of the few pluses families can derive from the situation. But some fathers under economic strain provide less support to their offspring in the form of nurturant behaviors and their discipline is more likely to be incon­ sistent. Children already conscious of limited resources must also cope with less under­ standing and more capricious fathers. The resultant strained relations show up in chil­ dren's behaviors (Harold-Goldsmith, Radin, 8c Eccles, 1988; Lempers, Clark-Lempers, 8c Simons, 1989). There are long-term consequences for the younger generation living in households where breadwinners have lost their jobs. This was true of children in a small sample of some 165 largely middle-class white families who had lost one third or more of their incomes in the years of the Great Depression. A descrip­ tion of boys' relations with their parents in

Hours of Employment The job world also affects families through the hours it demands of wage earners, hours that take them away from domestic respon­ sibilities. The increasing number of families in which mothers and fathers are both em­ ployed or in which the adults are earners in single-parent families led demographer Harriet B. Presser (1989a, p. 523) to ask the question, "Can we make time for children?" She wondered how parents juggle work and family schedules. Because the service sector of the economy is growing, women, especially,

CHILD REARING IN SCHOOL AND WORK

223

CONTEXTS

are facing evening, night, and weekend work hours. Available child care arrangements, how­ ever, are still geared to day jobs on weekdays. As Presser notes, such care is commonly labeled day care. True, mothers who have children under the age of 14 work fewer hours and fewer days than other women. In contrast, fathers with children this age work longer hours and slighdy more days than other men. But according to these U.S. census data, more than one of six employed mothers and one of five employed fathers worked either noonday, evening, night, or rotating shifts. About one fourth (24%) of mothers and 30% of fathers held jobs that called for work on one or both days of the weekend. These proportions were very similar to the work schedules of nonparents. Consequently, parents did not ap­ pear to be altering their hours of employment to conform to the hours of most child care facilities. Although all employed parents must deal with schedules that limit time with families, parents, when both are employed and work­ ing nonstandard hours, have especially worri­ some child care problems. Unmarried mothers working unorthodox job hours and days are hardest hit in the search for child care. Ac­ cording to the Presser (1989a) study, more than half (53.9%) of those with children under 14, compared with 37% of married women with children in the same age range, had such schedules. Of married women working simi­ lar days and hours, 42% were likely to do so to fit their hours around their husbands' work days, thus filling the need for someone to look out for their children. This strategy is not avail­ able to single mothers. They work the noncustomary hours and days they do primarily because of job requirements. They need those jobs. This was true of 47% of the single mothers, whereas only 30% of married mothers with unconventional schedules were under such pressure (Presser, 1989a, p. 531, Table 3). Single mothers turn to other relatives for help, either those unemployed or those who work different hours and days. Married women also make use of kin for child care but are not so dependent on them because they have their partners' help. Both single and married mothers have to supplement or sub­ stitute other child care persons if relatives are uncooperative or are unable to provide child

care. Even older children maybe pressed into service if no one else is available or affordable. But single mothers are more likely to have undependable and complicated child care set­ ups because of their more prevalent poverty, the absence of an adult partner, and their more nonstandard job schedules. For both em­ ployed two-earner and single-mother families, though, it is usually the parents and children who must adjust to the job hours, even if there is little time for children. Families are rarely affluent enough to be able to fit their workdays into what is best for fulfilling their home responsibilities. There is some change occurring in family child care arrangements as more mothers of preschoolers are employed outside the home. In some cases, the usual couple division of labor is breaking down. As noted in Chapter 11, a 1991 nationally representative survey showed that more than one in five of such children (23%) look to their fathers as the main caregiver while their mothers are on the job. This compares with 15% of children this age in 1965 who had fathers as care providers under these circumstances. Married fathers watched over about the same proportion of children in 1991 as were in day care centers. Of fathers holding full-time jobs, 17% looked after their children, and the figure increased to 30% among fathers on night shifts. Even fathers of young children in single-mother families were more active when the women were employed. Seven percent of them, up from 2% 5 years earlier, were their children's primary caregivers (O'Connell, 1993). Fathers can feel good about themselves for taking over child care duties. As one man put it, "I cannot deny that my wife spends many hours taking care of the kids and getting things done in the house when I am working. I feel that I have to chip in as much as possible. She works part time in the evening, just a few hours, and I have to take care of ou r kids. We cannot afford a baby-sitter. . . . Therefore she picks up my slacks and I will d o hers." (Lam & H a d d a d , 1992,

pp. 7 6 , 7 8 )

The length of the work week makes a differ­ ence in parent-child relations. Part-time work seems to be particularly advantageous for women's morale when compared with that of

224

PARENT-CHILD RELATIONS OVER

homemakers. When they work more than fulltime, however, children can be affected. Long work schedules make mothers more anxious, which feeds into their giving less satisfactory child nurturance. Research suggests the chil­ dren's adjustment appears to suffer (Hoffman, 1989). Aside from noonday shifts, weekend schedules, and long hours, some parents also have the problem of bosses asking them to finish projects that necessitate working over­ time. Because of child care arrangements that require children to be picked up shortly after the workday ends, parents face conflicts be­ tween job and home under such circumstan­ ces. On the one hand, as employees, they want to fulfill job demands to enhance their status as good workers. On the other, as parents, they fear finding no one to provide substitute child supervision on the spur of the moment. Desperation at being expected to meet the incompatible demands of job and family may force some mothers, more often the child care role players, to say as one social worker did: " Ί don't care if I get fired, I have to pick up my child' " (J. Elder, 1989, p. CIO). This domes­ tic duty can force a woman to leave a meeting in progress. Even if she returns later, her ab­ sence may be remembered at employee evaluation time. Contingency plans for some­ one to take over watching the child tempo­ rarily can be hard to make or can fall through when the overtime requests are not routine. Again, the long arm of the job reaches past family boundaries to affect daily living ar­ rangements. 4

Maternal Employment and Child Development Chapter 11 detailed the guilt that a num­ ber of women continue to feel at combining gainful employment with child rearing. Re­ search reviewed there suggested that preschool experiences can benefit the cognitive and so­ cial development of children. This is partic­ ularly true for youngsters from homes in which there are few educational resources, disci­ pline is arbitrary or haphazard, and parents do not enforce their behavioral standards with warmth and understanding. When older chil­ dren whose mothers are employed outside the home are compared with the same-aged

TIME

children whose mothers remain at home, it also appears that children are not clearly dif­ ferentiated by maternal employment. Where differences do occur, a review of research indicates that they show up particularly in attitudes toward gender roles and indepen­ dence training (Hoffman, 1989). As might be expected, children from kindergarten to adult­ hood whose mothers are in the labor market hold less stereotyped views of what roles men and women play. These children also tend to have received independence training from their mothers at an earlier age. There is a need for them to take over household tasks their mothers are too busy to perform. Mothers' job holding impinges on family patterns in a number of other ways. As I discussed earlier, their working long hours has a negative effect, as do their working when they do not want to and when their husbands disapprove of their employment. Blue-collar men are especially likely to see their wives' working as a reflection of their ability to sup­ port their families, the basis for their mas­ culine identity. They also fear the financial power wages give wives, who then may feel freer to challenge their husbands' decisions. Yet they are most likely to have the low incom­ es that make it necessary for their wives to be employed. One man who did not allow his wife to work outside the home, despite her eagerness to do so, explained: "A wife's got to learn to be number two. That's just the way it is, and that's what she better learn. She's not going to work. She's going to stay home and take care of the family like a wife's supposed to do." (Rubin, 1976, p. 183) He is like other blue- and white-collar men for whom being number one at home is central to their self-esteem. To be number one, they must have family members financially de­ pendent on them. More and more working-class women, however, are having to enter the labor market to supplement their husbands' wages for the family to have enough income to get by. When this occurs, they do gain more power, especially if they earn about as much as their husbands or are the primary providers. Household task performance also shifts somewhat when women are employed at lesser wages. This may be true even among groups with a long tradi­

CHILD REARING IN SCHOOL AND WORK

CONTEXTS

tion of women taking sole care of the house and the children. According to a small study of 24 Mexican American couples and 13 white couples in Albuquerque, New Mexico, men with wives who worked at much lower wages than their husbands shared child care respon­ sibilities. Sometimes they also performed domestic tasks, such as cooking, cleaning, and washing. If parents were on different work shifts, fathers pitched in to watch the children. Mothers, however, were still left with most of the domestic chores. The implicit bargain among these couples seemed to be that in return for the wives' wages, the husbands would do some child care. Any other household help they provided was a bonus to their wives (Lamphere, Zavella, Gonzales, & Evans, 1993). Thus, women's earnings have an effect on fam­ ily interaction patterns that overrides cus­ tomary ways. Assuming they want to work and their hus­ bands are not unfavorable to it, job-holding mothers tend to express more personal satis­ faction with their lives than do homemakers. Getting away from child care tasks and the buf­ fer jobs provide to thinking about family prob­ lems seems to be a plus for employed mothers. But this is true only if husbands and others are available to share nurturance tasks. A national probability sample of 680 couples showed that difficulty in making child care arrangements can threaten job-holding wives' satisfaction. As noted in Chapter 8, when wives had few problems in setting up child care arrangements and their husbands shared the task with them, they expressed lower than average depression. If neither of these favorable conditions existed, wives had ex­ tremely high depression levels. Among home­ maker wives, the presence of children created higher than average stress levels. In contrast, it was not the children themselves that affected employed wives' depression. What made the difference was whether their husbands helped and whether child care was easy to obtain. Un­ problematic child care seemed to make no difference among husbands (Ross 8c Mirowsky, 1988) because they generally leave this prob­ lematic task to their wives. Thus, wives' employment can have posi­ tive effects on marital satisfaction when it breaks down a gender-role-based division of labor among middle-class couples (Hoffman, 1989). Such a shift, if agreeable to both par­

225 ties, provides the basis for the lesser gender role stereotyping of children in two-earner families. They live with parents who perform household tasks more often on the basis of time and ability than gender. Employed mothers appear to try to com­ pensate for being away at the job by spending time directly with their children after work and on weekends. As far as child-rearing tech­ niques are concerned, employed mothers generally are less likely to use authoritative techniques, such as reasoning and warmth, perhaps because of time pressures. Mothers who see both families and work roles as im­ portant to them, however, are more likely to choose authoritative practices in their sociali­ zation attempts. They also tend to feel more positive about their children's characteristics (Hoffman, 1989), which may help account for their child-rearing style. Consistent with this interpretation of the interactions of employed women with high maternal role de­ mands are the findings from a longitudinal study of 155 children from upper-middle-class backgrounds followed for over 25 years. Those whose mothers held jobs but had difficulties with child care arrangements and whose hus­ bands were not supportive set more stringent limits on their children. In turn, their chil­ dren were more difficult to rear (Lerner 8c Galambos, 1988). In contrast, another longi­ tudinal study, of 130 middle-class children followed from infancy until they were 7 years of age, suggested how situations favorable to employment lead to positive child outcomes. When these mothers felt confident about their performance of family and occupation roles, children did better in school, had fewer be­ havior problems, and required less parental control (Gottfried, Gottfried, 8c Bathurst, 1988). This consideration of the effects of mater­ nal employment on children indicates that, as with paternal unemployment, the outcomes for children operate through other factors. Partner support had much to do with how well men got through the crisis of joblessness. Similarly, it is not so much women's holding jobs but what family relations are like that determines how they perform their maternal roles. Whether spouses are sympathetic to their being employed and willingly shoulder child care responsibilities affect how well women handle domestic duties. For both married and

226

PARENT-CHILD RELATIONS OVER

single mothers, the ease with which they can manage child care while they are on the job is a central variable in the amount of stress they experience in trying to balance family and job demands. They also have less stress when they use better socialization strategies. The outcome is less difficult children. These outcomes, how­ ever, have more to do with job characteristics, such as work schedules; partner attitudes; and child care arrangements than with maternal employment itself (Hoffman, 1989).

as 5 years (Cherlin, 1992). In contrast, due to the increased longevity of individuals, chil­ dren tend to be adults when a parent dies. Children brought into remarriages are likely to experience another switch in household personnel. Although remarriages where one or both spouses are 25 to 44 years of age are more likely to last than the first marriages of teenagers (Wilson 8c Clarke, 1992), they are less stable than first marriages (Cherlin, 1992). Having once left a partnership, individuals in later unions appear to be less willing to con­ tinue in them when difficulties arise, and the complications of establishing new family boundaries that bring a different adult into a preexisting parent-child system make for marital stress. Due to the lower marriage rate of African Americans, black children are more likely to be born into single-mother families than white children. Those who marry but decide to call it quits remain separated before divorcing longer than do white men and women. Fewer blacks then remarry. One survey of 33 states showed that in 40% of black couples marry­ ing, compared with 49% of white couples, one or both partners had previously been wed (Wilson 8c Clarke, 1992). Thus, black children are somewhat less likely to experience a break in one family career and the beginning of an­ other. They are, however, unlikely to grow up in a two-parent home. According to demo­ graphers Larry L. Bumpass and James A. Sweet (1989a, p. 259, Table 4), black children have only a one in five chance of living with both parents until the age of 16.

Interchanges With New

and Former Household Members

To this point, I have looked at family deal­ ings with schools and jobs across family boun­ daries. It is also important to consider trans­ actions that occur when there have been shifts in family careers. Consequently, this section will deal with family structure changes follow­ ing divorces and remarriages. Divorce leads to one member, usually the father, no longer being a resident within the household. Re­ marriage adds at least one new member to the household group. These departures and addi­ tions, such as marriage, childbirth, and school entrance, produce the qualitative alterations in family life that demarcate new stages. THE NUMBERS INVOLVED IN DIVORCE

Substantial numbers of families are affected by shifts in personnel due to adults deciding to end a particular partnership. In the past when marriages ended, death not divorce was the usual cause. It was only in the mid-1970s that more marriages were dissolved due to divorce than death. Given existing rates in the 1990s, more than two fifths of all marriages will end in separation or divorce. Divorces, unlike spousal deaths, occur relatively early in marriages. The term 7-year itch might well be a device for remembering this phenomenon. Half of all divorces occur within the first 7 years after couples marry. As a consequence, there are likely to be young children still at home. The high divorce rates of the 1980s led to at least two out of five children experiencing their parents' divorce before they were 16. Estimates placed the time these children spend with their mothers alone before she marries again—or they reach the age of 18—

TIME

DIVORCE A N D CHILDREN

We saw in the previous chapter that the breakup of a marriage and the switch to a family where one parent is no longer present can result in turmoil. New interaction pat­ terns have to be established to accomplish family development tasks. Those of physical and morale maintenance and socialization assume particular importance. In most in­ stances, after several years of trying out and rejecting various interaction patterns, singleparent families are able to get along in the initial stage of the new career. For some chil­ dren, however, divorce has negative outcomes. It is associated with their doing less well in school and having more behavior problems.

CHILD REARING IN SCHOOL AND WORK

CONTEXTS

They also may be more poorly adjusted, have difficulty getting along with others, and have lower seif-esteem. These differences between children from divorced families and those in continuing families are generally not large, and some children not only adjust well to the new family situation but even do better than before (Amato & Keith, 1991a). This is particularly the case when parents have been in open conflict with each other before ending the union. A longitudinal study that interviewed the mothers of a random national sample of 2,279 children, when they were 7 to 11 years of age and again when they were 11 to 16, suggests the relationship. It appeared that, as with a similar national longitudinal sample in Great Britain, many children with problems after their parents divorced had these same difficulties before the divorce (Cherlin et al., 1991). The conclusion from such studies is that one parent's leaving because of divorce is not so troublesome for children as are the ongo­ ing fighting and hostile remarks between un­ happy spouses prior to the divorce. When this is the home situation, children feel afraid and angry. An 11-year-old girl made this judg­ ment about such a family life: "It's funny, because even though my parents were together until I was nine, I can't remember very much about that time at all. That's because there was so much bickering and so much hate that it's made me forget all the care they once had for each other." (Krementz, 1984, p. 75) Children may not understand what is going on and, especially if young, blame themselves for the unpleasantness. They may be forced to take sides, which undermines their sense of the family as a cohesive unit. They are also learning through their parents' behaviors that fighting and cutting remarks are ways to deal witii disagreements. These ways, however, will not serve them well in dealing with peers and others (Amato, 1993). As a consequence, such children—before experiencing the divorce it­ self and the different domestic situation that results—have already developed the feelings and behaviors that will continue to be prob­ lematic. Novelist Pat Conroy (1986) graphi­ cally describes how parents' hostility can af­ fect children: "Most of their skirmishes were like games of ringolevio, with the souls of

227 their children serving as the ruined captured flags in their campaigns of attrition" (p. 3). After divorce, establishment of new family routines takes some months. It appears that daughters have an easier time dealing with the new mother-only family. If again there is a switch in family careers and mothers remarry, however, sons do better with stepfathers. To examine something of the dynamics of these contrasting outcomes, I shall draw again on the work of child psychologist E. Mavis Hetherington (1989). She started with a sample of 144 well-educated, middle-class white par­ ents and their 4-year-old children. After 6 years, when the children were then 10 years old, she added 56 families matched on demographic characteristics to the remaining 124 original families. Herfinalsample consisted of 180 fam­ ilies, divided into three groups. They included nondivorced-parent families, nonremarried­ mother-custody families, and remarriedmother-stepfather families. There were 30 sons and 30 daughters within each group. She had voluminous information on the fathers, mothers, and children from individual inter­ views and observations as well as the marital and sibling relations measures they filled out (Hetherington, 1987,1989). This is what she found. Divorced mothers with sons were more differentiated from the other family groups with sons in the social control techniques they used. Their difficul­ ties with sons lay in the multitude of instruc­ tions they gave them, with little follow-up as to their sons' conformity. They tended to nag and complain in interactions with their sons, which often led to angry, escalating coercive cycles. They seemed to be about as warm and affectionate as the other mothers, however. For this reason, their relations with sons tended to be tense and ambivalent rather than hostile and rejecting. Their sons were more likely than sons of other mothers to hover on the edge of being out of control. Negative inter­ changes continued longer between mothers and sons in divorced families than between any other parent-child dyads. The one pos­ sible exception was daughters and stepfathers in the early stages of remarriage. Divorced mothers also monitored the be­ havior of their 10-year-old sons and daughters less than did mothers in continuing marriages. They knew less who the children were with, what they were up to, and when they were

228

PARENT-CHILD RELATIONS OVER

doing it. This maternal supervision style was consistent with the greater independence, responsibility, and power in decision making they more often gave their children, regard­ less of gender, than children in other families received. Divorced mothers let their offspring interrupt more and gave in to their demands more of the time. This early opportunity for children to grow up could lead to mutually sup­ portive, egalitarian relationships. But when the mothers' requests for assistance in tasks or for emotional comfort were beyond the children's capacities or interfered with their normal activities, the youngsters would rebel, express resentment, or behave badly. Divorced mothers and daughters, in con­ trast to the situation with divorced mothers and sons, tended to get along as well as such dyads did in nondivorced families. Both girls and mothers in the former group reported satisfaction with their relations. Daughters seemed to thrive when they had greater re­ sponsibility at this age. This was especially true when it involved the care of a younger sibling. A mother employed full-time also appeared to be a positive influence for daughters, although not for sons. Girls who observed mothers ful­ filling domestic responsibilities while holding down jobs had role models who maintained a constructive balance between family and community involvement. In contrast, sons of divorced mothers spent less time with their parents at home and were more active with peers. Being less closely su­ pervised, they may have felt neglected by busy job-holding mothers. A similar disengagement from the family by daughters of divorced mothers tended to occur only among those who reached puberty early. Older girls who accepted them as friends may have encouraged their involvement in peer activities. In gen­ eral, though, daughters of divorced mothers appeared to benefit from the closer ties they developed with their mothers, the responsi­ bilities mothers assigned them, and the models of economic independence they provided.

to her daughter. As a consequence, there was a good deal of conflict between remarried mothers and their daughters. One such mother told a therapist of how she had turned to her daughter for comfort after her divorce, and the problems that arose after she married again:

STEPPARENTS

These positive relations were placed in jeopardy when mothers remarried. The ex­ pansion of family boundaries that the addi­ tion of a new adult brought lessened the at­ tention and affection the mother could devote

TIME

"Depression and despair came as I realized I was alone except for my child, and I'd cry for no reason. While this was wearing off I turned to my daughter and she became my constant companion, friend, and everything I seemed to live for. Since my remarriage, it has been hard for her to give me up and to share me with someone else whom I love. I'd given my love to her and only her for so long that jealousy is sometimes an issue at our house." (Robinson & Barret, 1986, p. 123) During the first 2 years of the new marital relation, Hetherington (1989) found, estab­ lishing new family roles created problems. Unlike the situation when both parents re­ mained married, stepfathers who had close relationships with their wives and were active in child rearing experienced conflict with step­ children. Daughters especially showed high rates of behavior problems when stepfathers took on parental roles. The new male adults in the household set in motion changes in daughters' satisfactory relations with their mothers. As a result, daughters were critical of and sulky toward their stepfathers and con­ tinued to act this way even when stepfathers tried to be friendly. Conditions improved somewhat after the marriages lasted longer, but daughters were still more antagonistic toward their parents than girls in either singlemother families or those with both biological parents. In contrast, sons' behavior improved after their mothers remarried. Sons and divorced mothers had experienced more prickly rela­ tions, and stepfathers seemed to ease the situ­ ation. Those stepfathers who did not attempt to set new rules all at once could serve as posi­ tive mediators in the interactions of mothers and sons. The sons were no more aggressive or disobedient at school or home than sons in nondivorced families. They appeared to enjoy their stepfathers' company and sought their advice. It is more difficult for children who are ap­ proaching adolescence or in their early teens

CHILD REARING IN SCHOOL AND WORK

CONTEXTS

(9 to 15 years) to see stepfathers as members of their families than it is for older or younger children. They may fear their strivings for independence will be curtailed by new step­ fathers. Displays of affection for their wives, the children's mothers, contribute to young­ sters' failures to accept stepfathers. The in­ creased sexual interest of preadolescents makes girls especially uncomfortable at the indica­ tion that their parents have such concerns. Another potentially sensitive issue is what con­ stitutes appropriate tender behavior between stepfathers and stepdaughters. Older children ready to leave home are less concerned about such matters, especially because the stepfather is relieving them of economic and emotional support for their mothers. Younger children in warm, suppor­ tive families, where the new man around the house is slow to assert authority, tend to ac­ cept him after a period of getting acquainted. Stepfathers themselves can come to enjoy their ready-made offspring. The good feelings step­ fathers can enjoy in rearing someone else's biological children are captured in these com­ ments about his stepchildren made by a man 18 years older than his wife:" 'Growing up with them, I would stay young and stay in contact and I wouldn't wither and wilt and mope'" (Kimball, 1988, p. 182). Stepfathers, regardless of how approach­ able their stepchildren become, tend to as­ sume less responsibility for them and are less involved with child rearing. They remain more distant than do biological fathers in continu­ ing marriages. After all, stepfathers entered the marriage because of their love for the mothers, not usually because of the mothers' children. Many want to restrict the attention they must give to their wives' children. In the Hetherington study, they would avoid taking action when children were acting up by ex­ plaining, " 'That's their mother's problem not mine,' " or complaining," Ί married her, not her kids' "(Hetherington, 1989, p. 7). In the chapters on the parent-child subsys­ tem, one theme that appears throughout is the positive contribution authoritative parent­ ing makes to good socialization outcomes (Baumrind, 1989). This also holds true for families going through the transitions of di­ vorce or remarriage. Warm and responsive mothers who exercised firm control were able to protect their children from the stress accom­

229 panying the shifts to single-mother families or stepfamilies. Their children, whether sons or daughters, had high levels of social compe­ tence and few behavior problems. This form of parenting, distinct from either permissive or punitive, coercive-authoritarian styles, pro­ duced the predictable, supportive interaction structure children could count on, even though their domestic worlds were changing. But stepfathers who tried to exercise con­ trol initially, whether combined with warmth or in an authoritarian fashion, created be­ havior problems in stepchildren. Only after 2 years did an authoritative parenting style pay off for them with boys but not even then with girls. This research suggests that wise step­ fathers who want to gain acceptance by coresi­ dent children do not take on socialization tasks at first. It seems to require a joint period of getting used to each other, during which the stepfather backs the mother's strategies, before he should attempt to set rules. His control strategies should be authoritative not punitive (Hetherington, 1989). This advice is particularly important for stepmothers. There are fewer of them than stepfathers, because men are seldom given custody of the children after a divorce. Only about 15% of all single-parent families are headed by fathers (Meyer 8c Garasky, 1993). Fathers' usually lesser involvement in child care and other domestic tasks makes it easy for judges to designate mothers as the major persons in the lives of their children. Cus­ todial fathers in one national study were more often widowers than were custodial mothers (23.2% vs. 8.7%). Fathers, when they do have custody, are more likely to receive it because there are no maternal alternatives (Seltzer 8c Bianchi, 1988). If they remarry, stepmothers become part of their households. Unfortunate­ ly, stepmothers have been labeled "wicked" in folktales around the world. This reputation has probably preceded them before they have met their future husbands' children for the first time (Dainton, 1993). Moreover, stepmothers, when they do set up housekeeping with their new partners, tend to become the central figure in the rearranged family unit. This is consistent with women's greater assumption of daily domestic tasks. But their taking over major family roles threatens the interaction patterns fathers and children have been working out following the marital

230

PARENT-CHILD RELATIONS OVER TIME

separation and divorce. With their mothers no longer living with them, children have had to turn to fathers for the nurturance they would usually have received from their mothers. Stepmothers threaten these develop­ ing emotional ties. They also represent a re­ placement for someone who to some extent nurtured the children and, therefore, the end of the possibility of her rejoining the family unit (Santrock & Sitterle, 1987). One small-scale study of 18 children in stepmother families suggests that children view their stepmothers as "detached, unsupportive and uninvolved" regardless of how hard step­ mothers try to develop good relations. Con­ sequently, they often give up these attempts and become disengaged from their husbands' children (Santrock 8c Sitterle, 1987, p. 291). If stepmothers can overcome the initial distrust of their stepchildren by being responsive and supportive, however, they are able to help the youngsters weather the emotional disrup­ tions they have experienced in their short lives. The children have lived through their parents divorcing, setting up separate residences, and then having the custodial fathers incorporate new "mothers" into their households.

one parent and especially if he is the father— the parent who is generally not as active in the family—the stepchildren's insecurity increases. A 14-year-old boy was frank about his feelings:

The gender of the new adult resident in a previously single-parent family may make less difference than popular belief would predict. Among the few studies of stepparent fam­ ilies in which stepmothers were included, one done in a midwestern school showed that seventh and eighth graders' perceptions of selfcompetence did not differ by either type of their stepfamily or their gender (Fine, Kurdek, 8c Hennigen, 1992). There are some factors that appear to make the shift in family personnel easier for chil­ dren to bear. These include the number of children in the family, whether the family is blended, family income, and whether the par­ ent and stepparent have a child together. Larger numbers of children, especially when some are hers and some are his, compete for attention. Parents then have less time to devote to each. Limited finances increase parent-child friction, as parents cannot fulfill youngsters' requests. They also lack money to buy them­ selves time alone, in which to enjoy their partners and get a temporary respite from parenting responsibilities. A child of both parents may also add to step­ children's discontent. They are only linked to

"But, I'm sorry that my Dad got remarried, be­ cause I feel left out a lot of times. And one thing I really worry about is that I think they want to have a baby, and I know that if they do, it will be just like a replacement for me." (Krementz, 1984, p. 20) It is not easy rebuilding family boundaries that incorporate a different adult parent figure. Forbearance, tact, and patience are prime virtues for stepparents. Being responsive but leaving rule setting to the resident biological parent appears to be the key to their getting along with suspicious stepchildren. A mutual tolerance may be the relationship most com­ fortable to the two generations. HOMOSEXUAL FAMILIES

Before leaving the topic of families whose membership has changed during children's growing-up period, I will add a brief discus­ sion of gay and lesbian families. There is not much known about them. The strong feelings many hold against homosexuals and the dis­ crimination they consequently experience lead many to keep their status private. One research review I shall be drawing on presents very broad estimates of their numbers. They include from 1 to 5 million lesbian mothers, from 1 to 3 million gay fathers, and from 6 to 14 million children with homosexual parents. After analyzing the available studies, child psychol­ ogist Charlotte J. Patterson (1992) concludes that "results of research to date suggests that children of gay and lesbian parents have nor­ mal relationships with peers and that their relationships with adults of both sexes are also satisfactory" (p. 1035). Studies also showed that the development of gender identity, behaviors, and sexual preference among children in such families, issues of particular popular concern, fell within normal ranges. There was also no evidence in the sparse data available to suggest that chil­ dren in homosexual families are more subject to sexual abuse. There was even some sugges­ tion that divorced fathers of children in the custody of lesbian mothers have more contact

CHILD REARING IN SCHOOL AND WORK

CONTEXTS

with them than do divorced fathers whose children are in the custody of heterosexual mothers. Although the reason for the greater attention of noncustodial fathers in the first instance may be due to their worry about the effect of the mothers' sexual orientation on their children, the consequences, assuming no overt conflict between the parents, would be positive for the children. In short, what we presentiy know about gay and lesbian families on the basis of research runs counter to the common beliefs about them. CHILDREN'S CONTACTS WITH NONCUSTODIAL PARENTS

After the family transitions of separation, divorce, or remarriage and in families in which there was not a father present at the birth of the child, the question arises of whether chil­ dren have contact with the nonresident parent. Keeping in touch can prove difficult because the child and the parent must communicate across the boundaries of both the child's family unit and the parent's. It is harder for them to know what is going on with each other simply because they do not see each other on a daily basis. The effort required to cross family boun­ daries can be heightened if the child's family includes an adult replacement for the absent parent and if the absent parent has initiated another intimate cohabiting relation. Both child and absent parent now experience con­ flicting loyalties to their continued ties from the members of their separate family units. By and large, it does not appear that children whose parents have switched partners and started new intimate careers enjoy the luxury of multiple parents to watch over them. The stepparent relation, as described above, is not always a comfortable one. Children and the new adult resident often have difficulty ex­ panding their definitions of family boundaries to include each other. Researchers have pointed to a number of factors that are related to parent-child con­ tacts when the parent is no longer living in the child's home. One such study, which had the advantages of being based on a nationally representative sample of U.S. households and included custodial fathers as well as custodial mothers, produced a good summary of what is known. Ethnicity is one factor in whether

231 children have noncustodial parents. Black chil­ dren in the sample were more likely to be in single biological parent families (48.3%) than were white (13.8%) or Hispanic chil­ dren (24.8%). An additional 7.8% of African American children, 9.2% of white children, and 5.9% of Hispanic children lived with one biological parent and a stepparent (Seltzer 8c Bianchi, 1988). Only about 3% of all children lived only with their fathers in the early 1990s (Saluter, 1992, p. 21). The extent to which children separated from a parent see her or him varies somewhat ac­ cording to whether the parent is a mother or a father. About one fifth of the children living with a custodial parent saw the other parent at least weekly, regardless of whether the latter was a father or a mother. Of those living with fathers, 19% never saw their mothers, and an additional 30% had contact with them less than once a month. More of those with absent fathers (35%) never had contact with them, and 24% visited them less than once a month (Seltzer 8c Bianchi, 1988). Thus, mothers are more likely to retain some contact with chil­ dren despite not living with them. This finding is consistent with mothers' reputed greater concern about their children. Younger children are more likely to see nonresidential parents. Youngsters may have fewer friends who occupy their time, and they may be easier for absent parents to entertain on their periodic visits. One absent father told a friend of his fears concerning trying to deal with older children: "I'll see them only on weekends. They'll come dragging in, bent over from backpacks stuffed with a weekend's worth of clothes. They won't want to be there. It'll all be out of some misbegot­ ten sense of filial obligation. They'll resent it. I'll be flitting around trying to make it fun, as if you can force fiin." (Robinson 8c Barret, 1986, p. 101) Time and the gradual establishment of sepa­ rate daily routines, however, weaken ties be­ tween absent parents and their offspring. The more years since the separation, the less fre­ quently these parents and their children got together (Seltzer 8c Bianchi, 1988). The presence of a stepparent or another adult of the same sex as the absent parent in the child's home cuts down visits. Parents

232

P A R E N T - C H I L D RELATIONS OVER

who are no longer present in the child's home appear to find it difficult to maintain frequent communication when faced with a replace­ ment in their former family position. Seeing someone else deeply involved in the domestic life the parent formerly shared emphasizes the boundaries separating this parent from his or her children. As a consequence, the parent makes less of an effort to keep in con­ tact. The child then is dealing with only two adults: the biological parent having custody and this parent's new companion. These chil­ dren, therefore, do not enjoy the nurturance of two biological parents and an alternate. Instead, the biological parent no longer living with the child becomes less important in her or his life (Seltzer & Bianchi, 1988).

and wages give fathers the wherewithal to make payments. For some fathers, not paying child support is due to holding low-wage jobs or being unemployed. Such men are less likely to be in contact with their children. More white fathers than fathers of other racial groups neither visit their children nor provide child care payments. Three fifths of these fathers were white, compared with 32% who were black. Hispanic fathers made up the remain­ ing proportion (Veum, 1992). The representative sample also shows the negative influence on paternal contacts brought about by their former partners es­ tablishing new relationships. Women who divorced and did not remarry were more like­ ly to receive child support and have their ex-spouses visit their children than women who had married again. Similarly, fathers who were involved in new domestic arrangements through remarriage were less likely to pay child support and visit their children in other family units. Family responsibilities in their reconstituted domestic relations lead men to cut financial ties to the offspring from previous unions. Remarried fathers also com­ plain of being pulled in different directions by children in separate residences when '"your ex-wife and your current wife each want some­ thing else' " (Nordheimer, 1990, p. C14). If they have not formed new family units and their former spouses have, absent fathers may feel their child support will contribute to the new partnership's well-being more than their children's and stop payments for that reason (Veum, 1992).

Another factor that affects communication between fathers and children across family boundaries is whether the noncustodial fathers are paying child support. A national sample of young mothers and fathers 23 to 31 years of age showed that fathers who paid child support were more likely than nonpayers to visit their children (Veum, 1992). More than four fifths of those who paid support, as con­ trasted with three fifths of nonpayers, kept in contact. Divorced fathers more often provided child support and visited. Apparently, seeing their children enabled fathers to get an idea of how their money was being used or the need for their payments. Even so, many fathers resent the payments, and their resentment embitters their relations with their children. One noncustodial father greeted his two pre­ adolescent sons, who had arrived in torn jeans and dirty sneakers to spend time with him, with this tirade: " Ί give your mother all this support money, and this is how she dresses you' " (Nordheimer, 1990, p. CI). Not too surprisingly, the sons were immediately in conflict with their father. Usually, however, maintaining a continued financial invest­ ment in children supplies fathers a means for bridging family boundaries. But living nearer their children was not related in any clear-cut fashion to fathers' visiting. 5

Just as mothers who receive child support are more often employed, fathers who pay it are more likely to hold jobs and to visit. Child support supplies mothers with the money for child care that permits them to be employed,

TIME

5

The same study showed that fathers who do visit their children despite not paying child support were more likely to never have mar­ ried. A higher proportion of them were high school dropouts and black. Thirty percent of them had less than a high school education, and 45% were black. The comparable per­ centages among men who had contact and paid child support were 18.1% without a high school diploma and 25.2% African American. Thus, unwed fathers, like the mothers they have impregnated, are less likely to have the resour­ ces to provide support for their offspring. Despite the absence of a formal father due to divorce or the mother's being unwed, how­ ever, a substantial number of children con­

CHILD REARING IN SCHOOL AND WORK

233

CONTEXTS

tinue to have access to two parents. Research based on longitudinal and cross-sectional studies of young mothers, 14 to 28 years of age, showed that among nonwhite children, the proportion with a father at home in­ creased substantially from 34% with biolog­ ical fathers present to 73% if one took into account possible father figures. These were mostly biological fathers not living with the children who kept in touch, and in less than 10% of the cases, the presence in the home of a possible father figure. Usually relatives, neigh­ bors, stepparents, or new partners of the mothers performed these roles. Among white children, 72% were living with their biolog­ ical fathers, but the proportion went up to 89% when adults added to the family unit due to remarriage or a new partnership were in­ cluded in the family unit (Mott, 1990). There are advantages to children who are able to maintain ties with parents across fami­ ly boundaries. They are more likely to benefit from the absent parents' continued financial support. Children also have a potential out­ side source of comfort if things become tense at home. Conversations with a nonresident parent can benefit both generations. One such father told of his joy when his daughter, whom he'd feared was being turned against him by his former wife, telephoned just to make conversation: "I still remember the day, about 9 months after the separation, when the phone rang, and it was Kristi calling. I waited to find out where she wanted to be taken or what she wanted me to do for her. There was no request. She was call­ ing just to chat. The memory of that phone call still brings tears to my eyes." (Robinson 8c Barret, 1986, p. 101) To summarize the factors that are associ­ ated with parents keeping in contact with offspring when they are no longer a part of the household, one such factor is recency of the parents' leaving the domestic unit. The longer they have been away, the less likely the noncustodial parent is to visit. Younger children and children living with parents who have not established new partnerships are also more likely to see their absent parents. If fathers are paying child support, they are more apt to visit.

Summary This chapter about the primary school years period in families has focused on the trans­ actions families carry on with persons and agencies in the broader community. Because members play roles in organizations outside the family, their responsibilities and the per­ sons they interact with in these groups affect their behaviors at home. This time in the family career introduces children to formal schooling. Classroom schedules and require­ ments along with meeting teachers and fellow students, who introduce children to new ideas and behaviors, encourage family change. In turn, how well children do in school has much to do with parents' socialization styles and their interest in their youngsters' progress. For adults, job demands reach into the family circle, setting the hours the worker can devote to domestic concerns and the money she or he earns to advance them. With more and more mothers entering the labor market, we saw how the marital division of labor plays a large part in how easily these breadwinning roles fit into women's role clusters. Centrality of the family interdependencies to adults' satisfaction also appeared when husbandfathers lost their jobs. Their ability to cope with this blow to their self-identity and the family's economic well-being has much to do with the marital support they receive and the respect their children have for them apart from their wage earning abilities. Throughout the chapter, there was discus­ sion of single-parent families and their trans­ actions with schools and workplaces. The chapter concluded with a section on the ef­ fects on families of breaks in marital careers due to divorce. Remarriage, the shift of one partner to another marital career, is covered here. Most children live through such breaks in family continuities with little lasting effect. Gender of child affects reactions. Girls experi­ ence fewer problems due to parental divorce, but boys weather remarriages better. There was also a consideration of whether absent parents maintain contact with their children. Thus, the chapter has emphasized family change due to its members' responsibilities outside the family boundaries and to alterna­ tives in membership within the boundaries. These activities and ties to former coresidents

234

PARENT-CHILD RELATIONS OVER TIME

bind families into a web of community rela­ tionships and emphasize their external and internal interdependencies.

2. From Cummings (1993). Reprinted by permis­ sion of Cox News Service. 3. From Ehrlichman (1993). Reprinted with permis­ sion from Parade. Copyright Ο 1993. 4. From Elder (1989). Copyright 0 1 9 8 9 b y T h e N e w York Times Company. Reprinted by permission. 5. From Nordheimer (1990). Copyright © 1990 by The New York Times Company. Reprinted by permission.

Notes 1. From Minton (1993b). Reprinted with permis­ sion from Parade. Copyright Ο 1993.

13

A Time of Transitions Families With Adolescents

The New Age The period in family careers when there are adolescent members is one of a number of transitions. For the youth entering this new age, it is an indication that she or he is leaving childhood dependencies behind. The next several years will be a time of preparation for adult roles. In the process, the adolescent will experience changes that, because of family interdependencies, will affect the other mem­ bers in the household. Morphogenesis occurs as family behavior structures come to differ qualitatively from the previous period, there­ by creating a new stage. These transitions from childhood to ado­ lescence include youths' increasing awareness of developing sexual capacities, interest in the approval of the opposite gender, reflection on the future in terms of education, obtaining a job, and realizing that the parental home is not a permanent residence. Therefore, the adoles­ cent years are ones of youths entering into new roles and exiting from old ones. Yet it takes years to learn the responsibilities associated with the period's developmental tasks, becom­ ing more autonomous and leaving the com­ fortable dependencies of childhood. Conse­

quently, the period with adolescents is a time of uncertainty for all family members until the youths have finally completed their schooling, achieved financial independence, and usually established their own homes. This chapter will cover a number of the multiple transitions. It will begin with parentchild relations and the changes that occur when offspring cease to be children and become youths. These include the alterations in fami­ ly structures due to children reaching their teens and their awareness of peer pressures to pair off with a girlfriend or boyfriend. The continuing interchanges between families and institutions beyond their boundaries appear in the discussion of adolescents' school per­ formance and their future job possibilities. There is also a section on ongoing family in­ fluences on youths' dating patterns and their establishing families of their own. Here, I discuss how parents' own marital careers— demarcated by weddings, births, and childrearing transitions or shifts due to divorces— affect the timing of their children's beginning family careers. The chapter concludes with the part parents play in when adolescents leave home and their ability to take care of them­ selves when they are on their own. 235

236

PARENT-CHILD RELATIONS OVER

Parent-Youth

Relations During Puberty

Adolescence is a term for the onset of a chronological age period separated from the years of childhood by the puberty transition. The coming of sexual maturity is indicated by the development of secondary sexual charac­ teristics, which include changes in facial hair and shape and increases in chest and hip widths along with shifts in body proportions (Steinberg, 1987). Youths vary in the age at which puberty begins and when it is complete. For example, girls' breast development may start at any time between 8 and 13 years of age, be completed as soon as age 12 or as late as age 18, and still be within a normal range (Brooks-Gunn, 1989). These modifications in bodily appearance are signals to youths and parents alike that adulthood is approaching for the younger generation. Even if the bodily signs of growing up are slow in appearing, birthdays that usher in the teen years and graduations from primary school are graphic reminders that youngsters are leaving their days of childhood. One of the results of this transition from child to adolescent is a modification in parentchild interactions. Parents are letting go, and youths are developing what psychologist Lawrence Steinberg (1987) calls emotional distance from their elders. He found in a study of children 10 to 15 years old that youths reported they were less close to their parents and less dependent on them emotionally when they had entered puberty. There was also more conflict between youths and their mothers in this representative sample from a university city. Sons who matured early had more dis­ agreements with them, as did physically ma­ ture daughters regardless of the age of the onset of puberty. These youths, despite being more distant from their parents, did not feel they had received enough autonomy. The contradiction between the adolescents' selfperceptions of maturity and their mothers' continuing close supervision was the source of conflicts. Growing up does not lead to sons and daughters having more arguments with their fathers. Because fathers are less involved in setting rules and monitoring youths' be­ havior, they are less likely to be involved in the

TIME

more common daily disagreements over dis­ cipline issues. Mothers are also closer to their children than fathers, so emotions are less likely to run high in youth-father en­ counters. Overall, however, older adolescents believed they were given more independence with respect to decision making. This is how one such adolescent described what usually happens: "I think my parents have adjusted their stan­ dards to mine. I mean, I've violated a number of their standards and their standards are now different. (Laughter) When I was a sophomore, and early during my junior year, I had a lot of conflicts with my parents. But I have very few problems now, I guess, because we've both com­ promised somewhat." (Glenbard EastEcho, 1984, p. 61) Parents focusing on their offspring's age may resist young adolescents' demands for more autonomy. They are likely to be especially concerned about the behaviors of daughters who imitate older friends' smoking, drinking, and sexual behaviors as ways of showing their maturity. These early adolescent girls are like­ ly to face more parental demands than boys for compliance to family rules. Girls entering puberty do have the advantage over boys of usually having heard about menstruation and other biological changes from their mothers and friends. It is less customary for boys to talk with parents or peers about the pubertal changes they are experiencing, such as ejacula­ tions and wet dreams, and their feelings about them. But boys are given more latitude to assert themselves and to experiment with be­ haviors frowned on for girls (Brooks-Gunn, 1989). This gender difference in parentally approved teen behaviors is consistent with society's greater concern that young women do not engage in behavior that maybe followed by unwanted pregnancies. Teens' relations with the opposite sex and parental worries about them are tied not only to sexual maturation but also to social expec­ tations. The transition to an interest in the opposite sex that usually comes with adoles­ cence is shown by dating behavior. The age when dating begins has declined over the cen­ tury as better nutrition has contributed to a lowering of the age at puberty. A survey of 12­

A TIME OF

TRANSITIONS

to 17-year-olds, in which examining physi­ cians determined the sexual maturation of the nationally representative sample, however, showed that the age when youths begin dating is related more to group norms than to the onset of puberty. Age and sexual development were both related to whether youths reported dating, but among blacks and whites alike, pubertal status showed little relationship to dating when age was taken into account. Tra­ ditional gender norms in the form of greater control over females were also present. Age accounted even more for the time they began dating than it did for males. Thus, sexual maturity and parental concerns, coupled with adolescent girls' social inexperience that could lead to pregnancy, affect their supervision and when they are allowed to go out with boys (Dornbusch et al., 1981). Does whether parents have divorced and remarried make any difference in young ado­ lescents' relations with them? To answer this question, I turn again to the longitudinal study of child psychologist E. Mavis Hetherington (Anderson, Hetherington, 8c Clingempeel, 1989). She and her associates followed 65 nondivorced families, 51 divorced families, and 37 remarried families for a period of slightly more than 2 years. All families had a child aged 9 to 13 when the study began, and divorced and remarried mothers had been divorced on average more than 3.5 years. The results for nondivorced families pret­ ty much replicated the research I discussed earlier. There was a general disengagement between mothers and their children as they were going through puberty. Mothers were less effective monitors of their behavior, and conflict with sons increased, probably due to their less compliant behavior. During this period when sons were less obedient, their parents had somewhat more disagreements and conflicts in their own marital relations. As in the previous research, fathers showed fewer changes in behavior with their offspring. They were less involved with sons, however, as they went through puberty. They also did less monitoring of daughters' behaviors. Par­ ents were letting their children go with less supervision, even though they disagreed with them over their nonconformity to parental rules. Different processes occurred in families in which parents had divorced. In single-mother

237 families, the increased tensions that appeared in the two-parent families were absent. It was almost as if the turmoil that mothers and especially their sons experienced during and after the divorce transition had led to the intergenerational distancing two-parent fam­ ilies later negotiated during their children's transition to adolescence. As one teenager in a single-mother family has said, " 'The three of us kids have basically taken care of our­ selves. My mother has given us responsibility always, just because that's the way she had to do it'" (McGuire, 1987, p. 102). When mothers had been remarried for 1 year, families showed much the same relations between children's sexual maturity and member inter­ actions as in nondivorced families, especially among mothers and less mature sons. It was also in remarriages with this age children that husbands and wives reported less satisfactory marriages. Discussion in the previous chapter showed why daughters gen­ erally have more problems than sons when their mothers remarry. Divorced mothers often turn to daughters for sympathy and under­ standing, so daughters see stepfathers replac­ ing them as their mothers' sources of comfort. Younger boys, already involved in disagree­ ments with single mothers before their remarrying, now had to deal with these con­ flicts in a different family composition setting. Although remarriages generally are better for sons than daughters, lingering problems from the single-mother situation have to be resolved or accommodated in the new family arrangement. More mature sons seem to ex­ perience fewer difficulties. Other research sug­ gests that because of greater social skills, older youths may be better able to withdraw from problematic relations in remarried families. The friendships they have established enable them to establish a life away from their families (Hetherington, Cox, 8c Cox, 1985). Parents' ties outside the family seem to assist them in dealing with adolescents. In one study of 129 intact families, for example, mothers and fathers who were strongly inter­ ested in their paid work, compared with those who were not, were less likely to be worried about midlife problems. These often revolve around children's beginning dating and being involved in mixed-sex peer activities. Instead, these midwestern parents welcomed indica­ tions that their 10- to 15-year-old children

238

PARENT-CHILD RELATIONS OVER

wanted to take greater responsibility for their behaviors. Parents were thereby freed to devote more time to their jobs (Silverberg & Steinberg, 1990). The one exception to this generalization of the positive effect of job commitment and parents' adjustment to their children's enter­ ing adolescence occurred among mothers of daughters. Regardless of the degree to which their lives centered on their paid employment, mothers of more physically advanced girls had more midlife worries. These mothers also have more such worries than other mothers when their daughters date. Again, gender roles appear to play a part in their greater concern. Their higher job investment makes it more difficult for them to have time for the monitor­ ing of their daughters' heterosexual contacts that they feel is necessary. Being less active in their supervision, fathers whose daughters are maturing do not have these same worries.

zation strategies (Steinberg, Lamborn, Darling, Mounts, & Dornbusch, 1994, p. 756). After 1 year, they reported again on these matters. Regardless of these various background charac­ teristics, the conclusions concerning parents' socialization strategies and youths' behaviors appeared to hold. In contrast to the youths reared by authori­ tative parents are the adolescents whose parents are authoritarian. They are not as involved with the youths, giving them less love, but demand that their teenagers obey parental rules. The youths do tend to conform to adult requirements. They are less self-reliant and work oriented, however, and display more self-directed stress. These adjustment diffi­ culties may account for their lesser ability to handle peer relations. Youths from indulgent families, in which parents are supportive but do not set standards, tend to have good social abilities and are self-confident. But they do less well in school, and after 1 year's time, report they engage in more misconduct at school. They are also more likely to use drugs and alcohol. Youths whose parents are neglectful, being neither supportive nor setting stan­ dards, are particularly disadvantaged. They do more poorly than children of other parents. They tend to be less self-reliant in completing difficult tasks, have more difficulty making friends, do less well in school, and more likely to be delinquent A later follow-up showed these differences in adjustment become more pronounced. Parents' treatment of adolescents is affected by the particular situation the youth is in, her or his age, and the parents' education back­ ground as well as their experience with ado­ lescents. Take the serious issue of youths' use of alcohol as an example of a particular situa­ tion likely to worry parents. When a sample of 208 middle-class parents of 14- to 19-year­ olds was asked how they would handle it, the less-educated parents, rather than being less forceful, said they would more often use direct control techniques. More than half of these parents made statements such as, "My daughter should not be drinking at all—I'd ground her" or "keep her away from places and friends who are serving her alcohol." They were particularly likely to use such methods when the adolescent was a firstborn. Due to inexperience, parents are more likely

Parents' Socialization

of Youths for Adulthood

One of the continuing themes through­ out the parent-child career is the efficacy of authoritative socialization strategies in creat­ ing responsible and self-reliant adolescents. This parenting style also eases the disengage­ ment process between elders' letting go and youths' becoming more independent. The process is much the same as with younger children. Parents who maintain firm stan­ dards for youths to meet—but at the same time give explanations for the rules and are generally supportive—tend to have offspring who are easier to get along with. They do better in school, find making friends easier, and have fewer behavior problems, including delinquen­ cy and drug or alcohol use. Over time, they appear to improve their school performance and engage in less misbehavior. These conclusions concerning the sociali­ zation outcomes from various parenting styles are based on research with a large sample of high school students in California and Wis­ consin. The approximately 6,357 youths varied on ethnicity, socioeconomic status, family composition (intact or not), and gender. On questionnaires, they reported their own characteristics as well as their parents' sociali-

TIME

A TIME OF TRANSinONS

to have unrealistic expectations that these off­ spring will behave in mature ways. When their teenagers were older or they were not firstborns, however, parents were more likely to say they would use less direct forms of control. This was also true of more educated parents. They presented reasons for their requests and were less coercive. Typical statements were," 'remind her of the dangers of booze—healthwise, driving and so forth' " or " 'ask him what kind of problem he could have to want to drink so much and see if we could talk about it'" (Youniss, DeSantis, & Henderson, 1992, pp. 204-205). In their chil­ dren's transition to adulthood, parents take into account both their level of maturity and the seriousness of the situation in setting limits and dealing with teenagers who ignore them. Moreover, better-educated parents are more likely to use authoritative techniques. They appear to be more conscious of ado­ lescents' need to strike off on their own and of how to encourage less dangerous inde­ pendence strivings. By the kinds of adolescent behaviors they encourage, parenting styles also indirectly af­ fect the peer groups teenagers join. For both generations, peer associations can be sources of worry during this period of preparation for adult status. Parents fear their children will get in with the wrong crowds and disobey parental rules and engage in destructive be­ haviors. In contrast, youths fear that they will be left out of the popular crowds if they are too concerned about following parents' wishes. Parents and youths alike see the adolescents' disengagement from parental influences as chancy: parents, because they will lose in­ fluence; adolescents, because they may lack friends to supply guidance on getting along in their widening world. In most cases, parents' concerns are needless that they will be unable to influence children as they become caught up in peer activities. Adolescents tend to respect their parents' views on life goals such as edu­ cation and occupation. They also accept their elders' moral values and standards with which they have grown up. Where the two generations part company is over daily issues involving matters of ap­ pearance and activity schedules. Disagreements are more likely to center on types of haircuts and the length of hair, skirt lengths, and the tightness of sweaters. Study hours and times

239 to be home at night also are touchy areas. "Why can't I do it when everyone else gets to?" is a common complaint among maturing youths. Within the broad guidelines they have learned at home, adolescents are trying to find their own way to get along with their peers of the same and opposite gender. This is where friends can provide concrete sugges­ tions and comfort when relations go awry. Teens also look to age-mates for judgments on such critical matters as what is entertain­ ing and who provides it best. When both generations are satisfied as to the balance ado­ lescents have achieved between following peer fads and maintaining parental standards, teen­ agers are able to say, as did one 18-year-old, " 'Rather than having to leave, you can stay, be different and still be loved' "(Josselson, 1987, quoted in Cooper 8t Cooper, 1992, p. 139). Paradoxically, as parents grant more freedom to their increasingly able youths, the youths turn more to their elders for advice. Research with the large sample of high school students in California and Wisconsin, described above, with respect to parenting practices (Lamborn, Mounts, Steinberg, 8c Dornbusch, 1991) helps clarify how parents influence their adolescents' friendships, which will affect their transitions to adulthood. There was information on 3,781 students in the six public high schools concerning their peer group affiliation as rated by knowl­ edgeable students of the same year and school (Brown, Mounts, Lamborn, 8c Steinberg, 1993). Widely recognized crowd types in each high school were the following: populars, brains, jocks, normals, druggies, and outcasts (loners and unattractives). The crowds with which students were identified suggested that parent­ ing practices associated with particular ado­ lescent behaviors influenced the friends students hung out with. Study findings showed that parents who had high achievement standards but were not responsive to their adolescent's indepen­ dence attempts (did not involve them in joint decision making) and did not monitor their behaviors had youths rated in the popular crowd. This group tended to do well in school, a positive behavior, but also used drugs, an undesirable group characteristic. But if stu­ dents reported that their parents not only set high standards but also monitored their be­ haviors, two aspects of authoritative parenting,

240

PARENT-CHILD RELATIONS OVER

the youths according to the student raters were likely to join the brains crowd. They were unlikely to use drugs. Youths categorized as being among the normals had parents who emphasized achievement and involved their adolescents in decision making; however, they were less self-reliant than children of parents who monitored their behaviors. Jocks had par­ ents who emphasized achievement. Although these youths were only moderately successful in their academic work, they did stand out as athletes. Parents of students rated as outcasts were less likely to set high academic standards. These teenagers did not do very well in school and were less self-reliant. The druggies had parents who did not monitor their behavior and did not involve them in decision making. Family composition, although not SES, also played a part in the groups youths joined. Those from intact families were over­ represented among the brains, whose parents enforced high standards. When youths lived in stepfamilies, the hostility they sometimes felt at the family arrangements and their lesser conformity to adult standards may have carried over into the school situation. They got along less well with school personnel and were more often represented in druggie groups than youths from intact families. Step­ children were underrepresented among the brains and jocks, whose academic and sports achievement depends on meeting the stan­ dards of school personnel. Student ethnicity was related to crowd affiliation in stereotypical ways. European Americans were overrepresented in the pop­ ular crowd as well as among the drug users. Asian Americans were overrepresented among the brains, and jocks were more likely to be African American. This study suggests that parenting styles and certain background characteristics affect youths' personal qualities and the peers they are close to. Parents' concern about their academic achievements has a positive influ­ ence on adolescents' grade point averages. Parents' emphasis on doing well in school— plus monitoring—often pays off in their teen­ agers' outstanding performances. In turn, students who do very well academically tend to associate with brains. The populars and normals among their peers got along in school; however, when populars lacked par­ ental supervision, they dabbled in drugs, and

the normals were not the top grade achievers. Thus, parent-youth interactions are also reflected in the way adolescents deal with age-mates. This generalization is illustrated in the following conversations. We see first how par­ ents and their adolescent daughter discuss possible travel plans and then how the daughter deals with a friend on the same issue. The questions that Valerie's parents posed limited her replies, and when her ideas dif­ fered from her father's, he ignored them:

TIME

Valerie: See, I haven't been to Italy and Scan­ dinavia. Mother: We've been a lot to Italy but I don't think you remember it. Valerie: I want to go there again; we studied t h a t . . . or in Greece. Father: How about France? You could use your French. Valerie: I don't have any French, Dad. . . . Yeah, let's go to all the Scandinavian countries that we missed, you know. What places did we miss? Mother: There are a lot of them. ...OK, give me some ideas. Father: Let's fly . . . we'll fly in to Amster­ dam. How's that? (quoted in Cooper & Cooper, 1992, pp. 143-144) Later, when Valerie and a friend are planning a weekend, she uses much the same techni­ ques as her parents and did not accept any of her friend's suggestions: Friend: No, let me see . . . oh, if they have a concert that n i g h t . . . Valerie: Where would they have a concert? No, let's go watch a play. Friend: Yeah, we'll watch a play at a theater. Valerie: No, uh Friend: At the theater we'll go watch a play and go have a gourmet dinner. And also on Saturday, we can go to see the Eiffel Tower. Valerie: No, we'll do that Sunday, (quoted in Cooper & Cooper, 1992, p. 144) These two conversations indicate how parents, through their socialization methods, planned or unplanned, affect their children's dealings with their peers. Such intergenera­

A TIME OF

TRANSITIONS

tional linkages ensure that even as parents and adolescents are disengaging, parents retain an influence. The kinds of friends teenagers make, their school accomplishments, and their achievements as adults all relate back to a greater or lesser extent to what went on in the families where they grew up. In some ways, therefore, we never can leave home. The growing-up years constitute a kind of heritage that we draw on the rest of our lives. Educational Attainment and Family Relations The discussion on how parenting styles are related to youths getting along in school and their friendships leads us to a consideration of how parent-adolescent interactions affect young people's preparation for adulthood. Indicators of growing up include school com­ pletion, getting a job, and starting a family. These transitions generally occur in late ado­ lescence, when individuals are 18 or older, and extend into the late 20s, a comparatively brief period. Their number and importance for the adult years make this a demographi­ cally dense period in the life course (Rindfuss, 1991, p. 496). This bunching of significant events through their timing and content has much to do with how satisfactory the young person's family career will be. Let me begin with adolescents' school achievements, especially in terms of the amount of schooling they complete. There is increasing evidence that it takes more than a high school education to be among the wage earners in the middle range of the U.S. in­ come distribution. To be middle-income and thus middle-class increasingly demands two earners per family. This reason, along with women's greater education and the jobs opening up to them, accounts for their enter­ ing the labor market in larger proportions. Although in the 1950s and 1960s, young people could expect to fulfill one aspect of the American dream by doing better economical­ ly than their parents, this is no longer so true. Since the early part of the 1970s, real wages in terms of constant dollars have been declining. As Figure 13.1 shows, young adults with only a high school diploma or fewer years of edu­ cation, regardless of race, have been particular­

241 ly hard hit. Even with two-earner families, higher unemployment rates and wages that did not keep up with inflation meant that these people were less able to enjoy a middle-income standard of living (Levy 8c Michel, 1991; Levy 8c Murnane, 1992). As a consequence, the influence parents can play in encouraging their children's school attainment is impor­ tant in youths' preparation for adulthood. We saw earlier in the chapter how youths of authoritative parents did better in school. Consistent with this finding are results from a large-scale longitudinal study with a nation­ ally representative sample. Sophomores in high school were followed at 2-year intervals three times after their completion of the first questionnaires (Astone 8cMcLanahan, 1991). As we would predict based on the previous discussion, when their parents were less in­ volved with them, children had poorer grades and fewer expectations that they would graduate from college. Parental involvement was also related to family structure. Compared with youths in families with both parents, teenagers who lived in single-parent or step­ parent families reported their parents did less monitoring of their school work and had lower educational ambitions for them. These parents also exercised less supervision of young people's social activities than was true when both mothers and fathers were the bio­ logical parents. Over the period of years the young people participated in the study, those who experi­ enced a family disruption reported their parents did less supervising and talking with them after the breakup. The adolescents, in turn, were less involved in their schools. Their attendance went down, and they were less concerned about their grades. One youth has described the consequences of having a less involved parent this way: " 'Some people can be their own family. I have myself. I'm my own family. People like me have no choice'" {Glenbard East Echo, 1984, p. 56). There were fewer high school graduates among these youths. As a result of their lack of formal school­ ing, they would be particularly disadvantaged with respect to obtaining work to support themselves and the families they might form. Thus, what goes on in families with respect to parent-youth interactions affects how well

242

30000 40000

30000 40000

1 10000

$22,717

| 1 20000

1 30000

30000

1 40000

40000

a. AH data in constant 1992 dollars. Constant dollars calculated wfth die consumer price index in US . Bureau o f die Census (1993c, p. 482,N a 756). b. 1979figuresfrom US . Bureau o f me Census (1981). In the data, "four years o f college" and "four yea n o f high school" are talr a as ефптак т to "rollege degreef"di a e Census (1993c, p. 482,N a 756). c. 1992figuresfromU^.Burean of the Census (1993a, pp. 116-143, Table 29) .

Figure 13.1. Personal Median Income in 1979 and 1992 for Persons Aged 25 to 34

20000

With college degree

With college

10000

$13,510 Щ $11,102 §

With high school

With high school

79

Щ$$Щ^

$13,659 Щ

$13,265 Ш '92

Total population

$21,487

20000

Black Females

10000

Black Males

Total population

White Females

With college degree

With college degree 20000

With high school

With high school

10000

Total population

Total population

White Males

A TIME OF TRANSmONS

adolescents do in school. Transitions in the marital careers of parents can institute chang­ es in parent-child patterns that have negative consequences for adolescents' academic per­ formance and the kinds of jobs they eventual­ ly get. Parents granting early independence to teenagers, although it may force adolescents to become self-sufficient, rarely encourages them to set high work standards for them­ selves. Moreover, as we saw earlier in the chap­ ter, when parents for whatever reason withdraw from active involvement in their children's affairs, the youths are more likely to engage in deviant behaviors. If parents, despite prob­ lems in their own lives, however, can maintain concerned control over adolescents, these youths are likely to achieve more. Take as an example decision making con­ cerning issues such as youths' clothes, their friends, or the hours they can stay out. As youths get older, parents recognize their maturity by giving them more voice in making such decisions. But even taking age into ac­ count, parents who tend to participate less than the average in their youths' decisions have offspring who work less hard in class and make poorer grades. Regardless of the gender, race, and socioeconomic status of students 14 to 18 years of age attending high school in the San Francisco Bay Area, when parents exer­ cised age-appropriate joint decision making, children did better in school. If too early independent decision making is bad for teen­ agers, what about the situation when parents alone control decisions too long? Parental overcontrol is particularly problematic for females, because their traditional role prescrip­ tions emphasize docility and conformity. Daughters in the sample of 7,836 students whose parents alone decided matters con­ cerning them tended to make poorer grades (Dornbusch, Ritter, Mont-Reynaud, 8c Chen, 1990). The comments of one sixth grader help ex­ plain why parental overcontrol, like their undercontrol, can create problems for both generations. She contrasted her parents dis­ cussing the reasons for their rules and the supervision of her friends' parents: " 'My friends' parents always say, "Do this." "Why?" "JUST DO IT." It seems like the kid would want to do the opposite, just to get back at the

243 parents. My parents seem a lot more reason­ able' " (Kimball, 1988, p. 87). I earlier pointed to the loss of opportu­ nities to obtain well-paying jobs that high school graduates have experienced in recent decades. Persons with fewer years of educa­ tion tend to be even worse off. We have al­ ready seen the influence parents have on how well youths do in school and their expecta­ tions about going on to college. Apart from parent-adolescent interactions, factors such as family income and number of siblings, along with family structure and age of parents, also are related to youths' education attainment beyond high school. The money parents can contribute has much to do with young adults being able to obtain college educations. Many parents, how­ ever, are like this wife who wrote to me: "We were never in a position to send our kids to college and we felt they could work part time and go to junior college and state college if they were after an education.... However, it would have been wonderful to have been able to send them to school and not think about the cost." Even the most highly motivated and cognitively endowed students may postpone or give up entirely thoughts of college if they must depend on scholarships, loans, or work­ ing their way for support during these years. The High School and Beyond research on a nationally representative sample of gradu­ ating seniors with later information from their parents about whether they continued their education in the next year indicates just how important family income is for youths' advanced education. Students whose parents were transferring less money to them had lower expectations about their obtaining ad­ ditional years of education (Goldscheider 8c Goldscheider, 1991). Among the college stu­ dents, black students received less financial aid from parents than did white students, due primarily to the higher incomes of the white students' parents. But their more often com­ ing from two-parent families or having parents who were older also played a part in white students' receiving more money. Regardless of race, students whose parents were younger or who lived only with their mothers did less well in terms of parental help. When parents were younger, respon­ sibilities for other children and lack of time to

244

PARENT-CHILD RELATIONS OVER

accumulate savings would leave parents with smaller amounts of money to give their col­ lege students. Single mothers who must raise a family alone have lower incomes to divide among their children. Another family struc­ ture aspect influenced parental help: Youths from stepparent families could count on less aid. The competing and conflicting responsi­ bilities in family units in which youngsters are the offspring of only one parent help account for this restricted funding. Not too surprisingly, there was a relation between parental aid and youths' educational expecta­ tions (Goldscheider & Goldscheider, 1991). When one looks at the intergenerational transfer of funds in families where adoles­ cents had not gone on to college, the reverse occurs. Young adults who are not in college contribute financially to their families in in­ verse relation to the families' incomes. The lower it is, the more youths pay into the family purse from their earnings. They allocate less of their pay to their families when the families are better-off. These older teenagers also con­ tribute more either when their parents are younger or they live in mother-headed families. This is also the case when there are more siblings. All these families are needier, and the older out-of-school youths respond by giving more of their earnings to them (Goldscheider & Goldscheider, 1991). To summarize this section on how parentadolescent interactions influence education outcomes, it is apparent that authoritative parenting practices have a positive effect. Youths want their freedom—but hedged about with enough parental monitoring that they do not feel the older generation does not care about them. Although single-parent and stepparent families face particular difficulties in making youths feel cared for and wanted, when prob­ lematic interactions are at a minimum and economic resources sufficient, adolescents in these families also obtain more schooling. Not all intact families, it should be remembered, contain authoritative parents who prepare their children well for school achievement.

viduals throughout life is shown in findings from a longitudinal study. It followed samples of children from the San Francisco Bay Area through their growing-up years and into late adulthood. Among these white individ­ uals born in the 1920s, and broadly repre­ sentative of the Berkeley-Oakland, high school-educated population, those who had been able to make beneficial choices through­ out their lives had authoritative parents. Their firm control and high standards, along with plentiful attention and support when these children were growing up, contributed to their becoming self-confident, dependable adoles­ cents (Clausen, 1993). Regardless of the par­ ents' socioeconomic status and the children's IQs, they were better able to use available resources, get along with others, and control their impulses in the interests of doing well in school. Still later, they were more likely to be successful in their chosen occupations and to have more stable marriages (Clausen, 1991). Family structure and monetary support, as we saw earlier, affect youths' years of educa­ tion and are related to their adult occupations. When parents have divorced or fathers have never been present in the childhood house­ holds, the families have fewer assets to sup­ port children who want to obtain more education. This was true of white males and females and black females in the National Survey of Families and Households. Control­ ling for the adults' ages and the educational achievements and occupational prestige of their parents, those who had grown up in single-parent families did less well in terms of job earnings and prestige than adults reared in intact families (Amato & Keith, 1991b). Economic hardship, as shown by the fam­ ilies having been on welfare along with the associated lesser schooling they received, was a factor in accounting for the finding that the children as adults were less well-off economically. As to why parent absence did not have similar disadvantages for black males, the researchers, sociologists Paul R. Amato and Bruce Keith (1991b, p. 201), speculate that black males regardless of family background are especially disadvantaged in the job market. They see decline in the number of well-paying jobs in manufacturing that do not require advanced education, as well as poorly funded schools, bad neighborhoods,

Family Background

and Economic Outcomes

How interactions with children during their growing-up years serve as a heritage for indi-

TIME

A TIME OF

TRANSITIONS

and discriminatory arrest rates as accounting for these results. In contrast, they argue that black females have always had a wider employ­ ment market. They also have traditionally received more education than black males, because their job opportunities were wider. In this sample, for example, black women from single-parent families had as much education as black men from two-parent families. Lack of money did not account for all of the relation between parental absence and adults' lesser economic success. Another mediating factor, in addition to less educa­ tion, that more often characterized the lowerincome adults from single-parent backgrounds was their own marital status. These not so well-off persons from one-parent families were more likely themselves to be divorced or never married. They had not only achieved less in their lifetimes occupational!/ but were also less likely to have enjoyed lasting marital careers. As with their parents, finding a satis­ factory partner seemed to elude them. Having grown up in a one-parent family made it easier to contemplate and then to go through a di­ vorce. As one adult from such a background explained, " 'Divorce is a real possibility. If my marriage got to the point where I was desperately unhappy, of course I would con­ sider getting divorced' " (Walker, 1986, p. 198). Again, it should be emphasized that socialization styles of reasoned control and concerned attention are not restricted to parents in stable marriages. As one adolescent has said," 'The fact that my mother and father are physically my mother and father isn't that important. It's what they are to me as people. That is that much more important. They're my friends, helpers and advisers. That is very important' " (Glenbard East Echo, 1984, p. 56). Authoritative parenting does demand time, effort, and commitment to the welfare of offspring, qualities that may be less com­ mon among single parents because of money worries, unhappiness with former partners, and little help with child-rearing responsi­ bilities. When adolescents have had the benefits of authoritative parenting, whatever the number of their resident parents, however, they are better prepared to work hard later at achieving carefully chosen goals in the arenas of education, occupation, and family.

245 Establishing Intimate Commitments Among the transitions families with ado­ lescents experience is seeing these youths develop emotional ties with persons outside the family circle. As described in the first chap­ ter of the section on the partners career, such ties of a usually heterosexual nature shift most teenagers' attention and commitment to individuals beyond the family boundaries. Completing school, obtaining lasting employ­ ment, and seeking persons beyond relatives to be sources of love and support are marks of youths reaching adult status. It is the pro­ cess of trying out new techniques for getting attention, deciding whether the person at­ tracted is desirable, discovering if there is mutual affection, and then crafting a commit­ ment that is a matter of central concern to youths. Parents can play a part in this period of young people's seeking intimate others. If parents have been authoritative over the years in maintaining a dependable structure of ex­ pectations and demonstrating a responsive concern for adolescents, they can provide ad­ vice, sympathy, and support to unsure teen­ agers. Even if parents have not always been the best examples of how to maintain positive relations with partners and offspring, they can still be understanding enough to allow proudly independent youths to occasionally retreat back to childish behaviors in times of stress. Here, I shall limit the discussion to parents' influence on their teenagers' dating behaviors and sexual activities, because the first chapter in the marital career section described in detail the partner selection process. Adolescents from the early to the late teen years are affected by their families of origin in how they go about establishing close relations with others. Take, for example, something as emotionally upsetting and personally threaten­ ing as unwanted sexual activity. It appears that parental treatment of adolescent girls has much to do with whether they unwillingly experience personal touching or intercourse. More than one fifth of the students (21%) in a sample of 1,149 7th-, 9th-, and llth-grade girls from a southwestern city reported such unwanted behavior in the previous year (Small 8c Kerns, 1993). More than one third of this group (36%) said they had been forced to

246

PARENT-CHILD RELATIONS OVER TIME

have sexual intercourse. Risk factors for such experiences included prior sexual abuse from family members, along with excessive use of alcohol and a wish to please peers. Girls who have had the shock of sexual abuse in their own families may feel they cannot stop sexual aggression or may not know what is usual dating behavior. Parents who actively monitor their daughters' behavior, knowing where they are and who they are with, however, are unlikely to have children who either get into situations in which unwanted sexual behavior might occur or have friends who would try such be­ havior. Also, teens with authoritative parents, who involved them in making decisions af­ fecting themselves, were less likely to have to deal with sexual aggression. These adolescents were accustomed to deciding with parental guidance what to do. This training for inde­ pendence would better enable them to handle potentially dangerous interactions in a con­ structive way (Small & Kerns, 1993). Even older adolescents, 17 to 21 years of age, find that the kinds of family interactions they participated in while growing up affect their romantic attachments in college. If parents are excessively controlling of their children's behaviors and discourage their autonomy, they tend later on to be more anxious in their dating relations. In one study, among 997 students at four different univer­ sities, youths from these families of origin were more likely to sulk, argue with, and nag others in intimate relations (Benson, Larson, Wilson, & Demo, 1993). The conflicts these kinds of interaction reflect and create set up barriers to close ties developing with dating partners. Again, we see how the kinds of young people families nurture influence the youths' negotiation of the various transitions to adulthood.

ly context of female-headed households that leads to this intergenerational continuity in fertility timing. The explanations include eco­ nomic deprivation, social control, and family instability. According to economic deprivation theory, poor parents have fewer resources of time and money to invest in their children. We saw previously that single parents often provide less encouragement, both verbal and financial, to their children to continue their education beyond high school. Under these circumstan­ ces, adolescent daughters may have few future opportunities to obtain higher education or good jobs when adults. Postponing pregnan­ cies in the interest of getting more school­ ing or a better position does not make sense (McLanahan 8c Bumpass, 1988). Having un­ protected sex, resulting in a pregnancy, can be seen by the less well-off adolescent girl as an indicator of adulthood and not necessarily something to be avoided.

Precocious Parenting Family formation patterns get repeated from one generation to the next. Daughters of mothers who gave birth as unwed adoles­ cents are more likely to start their own family careers with a premarital birth (Kahn 8c Anderson, 1992; McLanahan & Bumpass, 1988). There are several theories investigators have used to explain what it is about the fami-

The social control theory explains the repe­ tition of teenaged childbearing from mother to daughter as due to the maternal role model and her lesser supervision. Children in singleparent families observe daily that their mothers are generally running households alone without the presence of a male partner. It is apparent that women can manage family responsibilities on their own. We have also seen previously that single mothers, lacking a partner with whom to share family duties, how­ ever, often supervise their children's activities less than do adults in two-parent families (McLanahan 8c Bumpass, 1988). Accordingly, these socialization practices would be more likely to result in daughters being placed in situations where coitus happens. In addition, if pregnancy occurs, the prospect of single parenthood would hold less fear for these teenagers. Thus, current social control of single mothers and their example over the growing-up years would be related to teenage daughters' childbearing. The family instability theory focuses on the changes children in single-parent families may experience. Events such as a marital dis­ ruption or a remarriage create changes in family interaction patterns. Descriptions of the strains these changes place on children and parents alike have appeared in this and other chapters. Such events, by threatening parent-child interdependencies, lead some

247

A TIME OF TRANSmONS

adolescents not only to spend less time at home but also to turn to outsiders for emo­ tional support (Wu & Martinson, 1993). When mothers are living through shirting partner­ ship relations, they can lack the will and the energy to watch over their daughters. If mothers have given birth at younger ages, they may even expect such outcomes for their daughters. Adolescent girls seeking help from friends may find themselves experiencing not comfort but coitus that leads to pregnancy. In the studies that have been done with representative national samples, given the vari­ ation in data available, it appears that there is support for the socioeconomic and family instability hypotheses. Socioeconomic back­ ground measured in terms of mothers' edu­ cation accounts for some portion of the tendency for adolescent mothers to have daughters who repeat this timing of first births. Also true of young white and black mothers is family instability in their back­ grounds (Kahn & Anderson, 1992). These early births are more likely to be premarital when the adolescent has grown up in a family where there have been several disruptions in the mother's partner career. Where mothers have divorced, remarried, and sometimes divorced again, daughters are more likely to be unwed at the time of their first births (Wu & Martinson, 1993). Being unable to count on continuity in the adult members of their families—along with limited socioeconomic opportunities—seems to turn adolescent daughters to the kind of intimate contacts with male peers that result in pregnancies. This would be especially the case at a time when unwed motherhood is becoming more common. The normative sanctions against unwed parenthood are weakening among many groups in society. In earlier decades, adolescents were forced to marry the father, kept out of sight, or sent away to "bear their shame" among strangers. After marrying the men involved in so-called shotgun weddings or giving their babies up for adoption, the young women attempted to carry on their Hves as before. In contrast, pregnant teenagers today are often supported by others in the decision to not only have their babies but also keep them while continuing their schooling and extracurricular activities. Even some adults who found the previous treatment of preg­ nant teenagers deplorable are surprised by

the current situation. One father, whose 5­ months-pregnant daughter was elected high school homecoming queen, noted the dif­ ference in the treatment of such adolescents from when he was in school:" 'Girls got preg­ nant and they disappeared. Now, my pregnant daughter goes on a popular television inter­ view program' " (Williams, 1993, p. CI). In such a social climate, mothers who have been through an unwed teenage pregnancy them­ selves and are dealing with family instability may see close supervision of their daughters as ineffectual. For adolescents following in their mothers' footsteps and giving birth, other family transitions are also likely to occur. The Na­ tional Survey of Family Growth showed that daughters whose growing-up period in­ cluded years in a single-mother house, due to divorce or lack of marriage, were more likely to either have a premarital birth or marry young and divorce as teenagers. All these tran­ sitions were linked with family background among white women. They also held for black women, with the exception of the associa­ tion between early marriage and later becom­ ing a single-mother family due to divorce (McLanahan & Bumpass, 1988). The amount of education the adolescent girls had was the one factor that was most related to their not having babies. The more years of education they had completed, the less likely they were to become mothers. Again, we see how parents' resources, ex­ amples and encouragement, and monitoring of youths' school progress and activities can affect adolescents' educational attainment and thereby their occupational future. These at­ tainments, in turn, influence when youths begin their own family careers. Growing up in unstable families, with little money to en­ courage offspring to better themselves, makes parental roles a more realistic alternative for these young women. So they begin their fam­ ilies early, which too often forecloses their own higher education and even their chil­ dren's opportunities for adult well-being. 1

Leaving Home The transition that for many adolescents symbolizes their taking on adult status is es­ tablishing their own residences. Moving away

248 from their parents can be an adventure for the young persons, but for many parents their departure leaves a void that is difficult to fill. This is especially true for women who have been the most active in child care roles. One woman wrote to me about her 24-year-old son who left home. She had helped him move to a different community "to find direction for his life." She commented that "there are good vocational schools there which I hope he will decide to attend. We can't make those decisions for him anymore." But she noted that "it was extremely hard for me to leave him." Not all young people have the same des­ tination in leaving home. Traditionally, youths, especially women, left home to marry and establish their own families. With older ages at marriage, however, an increasing number of late adolescents are moving into their own households as single persons. Still others are changing their home addresses to reflect in­ stitutional commitments—going off to col­ lege or joining the armed services. This dis­ cussion will center on the different pathways adolescents or older youths follow to establish independent residences either as singles or as partners in intimate relations. As noted in Chapter 9, national surveys based on different aged cohorts show that youths in general are currently leaving home at later ages than in the recent past (Buck 8c Scott, 1993). Harder economic times and older ages at marriage probably account for these historical differences. Family background also plays a part in the timing of youths' leaving home. More affluent parents appear to dis­ courage their adolescent children from leaving home to marry, although not to estab­ lish their own independent residences (Avery, Goldscheider, 8c Speare, 1992). Such parents can provide the means that enable their off­ spring to obtain more years of schooling while remaining unmarried. College students are also less likely to establish independent homes. But by the time youths are 25 to 29 years of age, parents with more income seem to be using these resources to encourage their adult children to set up their own homes as singles. In this way, both generations can obtain the advantages of residential privacy. Thus, the middle-class mother quoted above and her husband were willing to take family resources to subsidize the mid-20s son's moving out on his own.

PARENT-CHILD RELATIONS OVER

TIME

Family structure plays a part in youths' decisions to leave home. Those living in singlemother families or stepfamilies are more likely to change their place of residence before other youths (Avery et al., 1992; White 8c Booth, 1985a). They leave home not to marry but to establish some sort of independence from their parental family. Lack of economic resources in single-mother homes and emo­ tional complications in stepfamilies appear to be the push factors in leaving home early. Seeing marital failure in the previous genera­ tion, however, makes these youths wary of marrying. This is especially true of blacks. As a group, African Americans are less likely to marry and more likely when married to di­ vorce. Accordingly, they have a lower prob­ ability of leaving home to marry than other racial groups, although this difference does not hold for establishing independent living quarters (Buck 8c Scott, 1993). The timing of youths' leaving home is also determined by their own family careers. Wom­ en are more likely to set up their residences at younger ages than men, especially if marrying is the pathway to independent living (Buck 8c Scott, 1993). Parenthood outside of marriage for teenage mothers is associated with their leaving home but not to marry. Seemingly, they do not view the fathers of their children as possible husbands, or perhaps neither partner wants to risk the higher odds of un­ happiness and breakup found in teenage marriages. Pregnant women in their 20s are more likely than other women to leave home to marry. By that age, the fathers may also consider themselves old enough and financially secure enough to marry. Employed young adults are more apt to set up their own homes, either after marrying or as single persons. In­ dividuals with higher incomes are also more likely to leave home to marry at all ages and, when in their later 20s—25 to 29 years of age —to establish their own separate households (Avery et al., 1992). Again, we see how family and financial circumstances affect transitions within the family career. HOUSEHOLD MANAGEMENT

But how prepared are these adolescents for the cleaning and cooking duties that accom­ pany setting up an independent household? Not only does performing these chores as

A TIME OF TRANSmONS

children constitute developmental tasks in keeping house, it also teaches children to take on adult duties. One father explained," 'Rules are made to show the way to responsibility and mature living. We started "training" our kids early with simple rules' " (Minton, 1993a, p. 16). Having tasks such as picking up clothes, making their beds, caring for a pet, or cleaning the bathroom are examples of such rules. An additional value of such chores is that they enable children, when they become adults, to not only care for themselves but also share housekeeping with their partners. A recurrent theme throughout this book has been men's failure to do housework. One reason often given for this situation is their failure to perform such tasks while growing up. Unaccustomed and unprepared for such tasks, they resist do them as adults. With more mothers employed outside the home, one might expect that mothers would be insist­ ing that little boys do more around the house. Data on household time allocation, among families where adolescent children as part of a longitudinal study kept diaries of their time use, do not however indicate that such a change is occurring (Benin & Edwards, 1990). The 12- to 17-year-old teenagers listed the time they devoted in a week to chores such as cooking and laundry, usually done by women, and to household repairs and car maintenance, duties men more often perform. Control variables in the study included the gender of the adolescent, the presence of sib­ lings 10 to 17 years old, their gender, and the amount of help from the fathers. The children came from three types of two-parent families. In one type, both parents held full-time jobs. In another type, mothers worked 20 hours or less a week; in the last type, only fathers held jobs. The findings showed that, indeed, youths in dual-earner families, in which mothers have little time for domestic duties, do more around the house. But it was daughters not sons who shouldered more of the household burdens when both parents were full-time workers. These daughters spent more than 10 hours a week on chores, the sons less than 3 hours. Mothers in great need of household help seemingly did not want to entrust chores to sons. Stereotyped expectations of children's abilities appeared to be operative (Benin & Edwards, 1990). 2

249 Mothers who were employed part-time ex­ pected the least in the way of chores their sons or daughters were to do—just 2.5 hours a week on average. These mothers were willing to be supermoms and play both housekeeper and breadwinner roles. In families in which wives did not hold jobs, daughters, like those whose mothers worked part-time, spent only about one half hour a week more in doing housework than their brothers. Sons spent 7-plus hours a week in chores, but daughters were busy more than 8 hours. These families traditional in parent role allocation, how­ ever, were also traditional in their adoles­ cents' task allocation. Daughters performed customary female duties; sons performed customary male chores. Thus, neither gender was learning the whole range of household maintenance requirements (Benin & Edwards, 1990). Other representative surveys of young adults, such as the National Longitudinal Sur­ veys of Labor Market Experience, result in similar findings. Boys as children and youths do considerably less around the house than do their sisters. Moreover, the chores they are responsible for are those usually assigned to males. Having mothers who hold jobs outside the home does not make much difference in task assignment. Only family structure makes a difference. When the household is headed by a single mother, children are performing more duties and the gender division of labor breaks down. Stepfamilies are little different from two-parent families in the require­ ments they set for offspring (Goldscheider 8c Waite, 1991). Despite the mother-centered character of household management in two-parent fam­ ilies, fathers can set an example in what they do around the house. The more active they are, the more their offspring do. They also appear to make rules for their children's duties that reflect their own participation. Children in these households seem to fill in for or supplement the activities of their fathers (Goldscheider 8c Waite, 1991). But in general, despite women's joining men in the labor market, there is little evidence that they are preparing their children to set a more egali­ tarian division of labor. This is all the more strange, because we have seen the discord created when women work outside the home and still remain in charge of domestic duties.

250

PARENT-CHILD RELATIONS OVER TIME

Moreover, there is some suggestion from the National Longitudinal Surveys that youths are increasingly not being trained by their parents to perform any household duties. Only in single-mother families are children being specifically assigned domestic tasks. In other families, children are not having to fulfill these responsibilities and are not learning to care for themselves as adults, whether they are living alone or with a partner. Not only are they unprepared to form a household with a less traditional division of labor, but in many cases, they also lack the training to maintain any simple household on their own (Arnold, 1994; Goldscheider & Waite, 1991). Summary This chapter brings to a close my con­ sideration of the parent-child career. A dis­ cussion of intergenerational relations after children leave their parents' homes as adults appears in the marital career section. When youths are in their teens, the morphogenesis in family relations that occurs is due to the number of transitions youngsters undergo, which begin when children reach puberty. The biological changes then take on social meaning that leads to an often painful period of readjustment in parent-child interaction patterns. As with younger children, we have seen how authoritative parents, who set rules and monitor youths' conformity to them while being supportive and taking account of their pushes for independence, have more com­ petent offspring. Whether in their school work or the friends they make, these young people do better. They can try out new behaviors, protected by the guidance their parents have provided and by the knowledge that

their parents are there to comfort them if the demands of maturity prove too much. The kind of partner career parents have maintained also has a powerful effect on teen­ agers in the monitoring and warmth the older generation is prepared to give. Moreover, the resources of family stability and finances parents can give their children contribute to their educational attainment, the resultant jobs they obtain, and the timing and success of their own family careers. Thus, the families they grow up in affect the success youths have in not only educational and employment settings outside their families but also the domestic arrangements they establish when they leave their parents' homes. The family with adolescents is going through much indeterminacy because young­ sters are preparing to take on adult respon­ sibilities and parents are having to give their teenagers more independence. Establishing emotional distance is not easy for either side, because parents fear peer influences and youths fear parental interference. The unstable interaction patterns the two generations work out and then modify, as demands of school and close friends interfere, make this a period of continuing change. But with under­ standing on parents' side and patience on the part of adolescents, the period can prepare youths for productive futures in their own families and on the job.

Notes 1. From Williams (1993). Copyright © 1993 by The New York Times Company. Reprinted by permission. 2. From Minton (1993a). Reprinted with permission from Parade. Copyright © 1993.

PART

IV

§§§

Sibling Relations

Over Time

14

Sibling Relations

From Givens to Choice

Kin Ties That Last Of the three family subsystems, the sibling is the most enduring. Compared with marital partners and parents and children, the kin tie linking siblings lasts the longest. Because of a common residence, it is a given that siblings are in close touch during their early years. Within two-parent and single-parent house­ holds, adults are increasingly holding jobs outside the home. Accordingly, siblings have even greater possibilities than in the past for being in close and prolonged contact. The estimates are that brothers and sisters spend more time with each other when growing up than they do with their parents (Leder, 1993). This shared space and time in childhood provide a basis for keeping in touch in adult­ hood and old age. But after children leave their parental homes to set up their own house­ holds, they are in a position to choose whether to remain in touch. Most do, and as a result, siblings can be present throughout an individual's life. Until fairly recently, in looking at family relations over time, researchers had done little with siblings. Their efforts had been

largely devoted to the marital and parentchild careers. The complications differences in gender, spacing, number, and birth order add to creating generalizations about sibling interaction patterns probably had a good deal to do with the lack of studies. Recently, how­ ever, there has been more interest in the ways siblings influence each other and how child­ hood relations limit the kind of linkages they maintain as adults. This exploration of the sibling career starts with a consideration of developmental tasks these same-generation family members gen­ erally take on. From there, the discussion follows the markers on the family clock. It begins with the childbearing period in fam­ ilies when sibling relations begin, goes on to the time of adolescence, and concludes with how siblings interrelate as adults across the boundaries of their own families. I shall show the interdependencies that develop in the family time when they are growing up together. The chapter's focus then shifts to whether brothers and sisters keep in touch after they have achieved adult status and left home and if this makes a difference in each other's well-being.

253

254

SIBLING RELATIONS OVER

Sibling Developmental Tasks Sociologist Ann Goetting (1986), on the basis of a review of available research, argues that siblings are expected to accomplish certain developmental tasks in getting along, de­ pending on where they are in age. As children in their parental families, they are supposed to develop bonds of loyalty that will link them across their lifetimes despite the competing loyalties they owe to parents and the mem­ bers of the families they themselves establish. The strength of early sibling ties depends on the companionship siblings can provide each other. The accomplishment of these early de­ velopmental tasks of loyalty and companion­ ship eases the fulfillment of a later task for older siblings. At one time or another, they are usually given child care responsibilities for a younger brother or sister. This delegated task is made considerably easier if the sibs are already good buddies. Even the sticky issue of enforcing rules in the name of parents does not create so much resentment when older and younger siblings generally get along well. If good feelings exist, it is not so difficult for siblings to provide help to one another. The sibling bond of loyalty that enables chil­ dren to form a united front against parental demands ("that's too early to expect us to get back") or their plans to punish just one child ("he did it along with me") are examples of how useful it is to accomplish this develop­ mental task of mutual aid. Mutual support also adds weight to children's requests to parents. Goetting (1986) notes the effectiveness of a child's saying, "we could both use the new computer for our homework" (p. 706). When siblings leave home as adults, their contacts are no longer enforced by proximity and become voluntary. Intimate commitments to others through marriage and parenthood, job responsibilities, and geographic distance are factors that weaken the loyalties sibs have developed while living together. They may maintain some closeness, depending on how well they performed the companionship, mutual aid, and emotional support tasks as children. Two requirements of early and mid­ dle adulthood bring them together again: care of aging parents and settling parental domestic affairs in a reasonably amicable fashion after their deaths. Linkages with earlier task accom­

TIME

plishments set limits on how well brothers and sisters do on these tasks. The memories shared by siblings reaching old age, when many of their contemporaries are gone, can restore the closeness of early years. Even though physical problems may limit the number of face-to-face contacts elderly siblings make, telephone calls and letters pro­ vide mutual emotional support When spouses and children are unable to help, the elderly may turn to siblings. Thus, at the end of life as at its beginning, siblings can be linked through fulfilling the tasks of emotional sup­ port and services. Growing Up Together and Apart A NEW ARRIVAL

Having given a brief survey of the develop­ mental tasks that siblings may fulfill, I can now discuss how brothers and sisters relate to each other over time. This section on the childrearing stage in the family career focuses on why some youngsters get along, but others have disagreements that separate them through­ out their days. Although a majority of siblings enjoy each other over their lifetimes, this pleasant situation does not hold for all. About one third of brothers and sisters have difficul­ ties as children, and their conflicts continue into adulthood (Leder, 1993). Something of the flavor of such a childhood situation is caught in this overheard conversation between two 8-year-olds waiting for a city bus in New York City. The first girl, seemingly concerned about something the second had said before, asked her friend what the matter was. The second girl explained that her hamsters were fighting. The first then asked, " 'What about?' " The second replied," 'About everything.' " The first girl, after a little thought, seemed to under­ stand. " 'Maybe,' " she said," 'they're sisters' " (Alexander, 1985, p. C2). 1

An examination of the relations among children living together but sometimes re­ maining apart in affection and understanding needs to begin with a consideration of first­ borns and their parents alone. The inter­ dependencies that are established in the parent-child subsystem before there are other children influence how well siblings get along.

SIBLING RELATIONS FROM GIVENS TO CHOICE

Oldest children in any family have the unique experience of being only children for varying lengths of time. They have been the centers of their parents' attentions and concerns. As I discussed in Chapter 7, firstborns face the so-called dethronement phenomenon after parents have other children. The new ar­ rivals usurp the central position their elder sibs formerly held; parents have less time to devote to them. No longer can the older children expect their parents to give first priority to meeting their demands for care and comfort. Another smaller and more help­ less being has assumed the eldest's favored family position. As a result, the older child may regress to more infantile behaviors to regain attention. Parents, through their patience and acceptance of firstborns resuming out­ grown dependent behaviors, can reassure them that they continue to be important in their parents' eyes. Children may show increased maturity through interest in the newcomer and attempts to help parents with care of the infant. Parents can encourage these develop­ ments by praise and special attention when older children are showing signs of growing up. This treatment counters the resentment older children feel for the child who has seemingly replaced them in their parents' affection. Parents can thereby encourage their older children's acceptance of the new family member. As a small-scale longitudinal study of older children and their younger siblings suggests, when children's resentment of the recent ar­ rival is not handled well by parents, it may threaten future sibling relations. The older children of 30 middle- and working-class families had been followed through home ob­ servations from infancy until they were 6 years old. All had younger sibs born on an average when they were a little less than 3 years old (Volling & Belsky, 1992). The study that covered these years indicates how both previous relations with parents— when the older child was an only child—and contemporary parent-child interactions af­ fected how well siblings got along. Age spac­ ing, sibling age, or gender of the sibling dyads did not make a difference in the results. There were limited linkages, however, between past parental interactions with firstborns and cur­ rent sibling relations. Sibs were more likely to be in conflict if, at 1 year of age, the older

255 children, as only children, had shown some insecurity with their mothers. Conflict was also more common when mothers had been restrictive and overcontrolling with their 3­ year-old firstborns at the time the siblings arrived. In contrast, siblings, instead of teas­ ing and hitting each other, were more likely to comfort and share with each other when fathers in the past had helped and been more affectionate with firstborns when playing with them. If fathers had been uninvolved or overcontrolling with their 3-year-olds, the latter, when 6-year-olds, more often had conflictual sibling relations. Consequendy, older children whose ties to their parents were secure and close when there were no younger children to compete with for attention got along better with their siblings on their arrival. Contemporary influences associated with prosocial sibling behaviors also showed how important positive parental relations were. Sibs were more cooperative when fathers ex­ pressed more affection for the older child. Differential parental treatment of a negative nature toward the older child, however, was associated with sibling conflict. This occurred if mothers were more controlling of their 6-year-olds than their younger children, even when the firstborns as infants had secure maternal relations. Current conditions, when firstborns felt ill-used and discriminated against, appeared to override the earlier posi­ tive ties. But sibling conflict was also high when infant firstborns and mothers had lacked close ties regardless of which child mothers controlled more at present. This study sug­ gests that a foundation of trust created in the first year of the older child's life and fairly even-handed parental supervision after sibs arrived encourage children to be friends. Other research (Stocker, Dunn, & Plomin, 1989) also indicates that mothers' differential treatment of children is related to their treat­ ment of each other. This time the younger children in 96 family sibling dyads were 3 to 6 and their brothers or sisters 5 to 10 years of age. When observed in their homes perform­ ing games involving the children's joint or competitive efforts, they more often disagreed, teased, or hit each other when mothers favored the younger children. Conflict oc­ curred when mothers were more responsive and affectionate to the younger children and exerted more control over the older children.

256 Because the study was not longitudinal, the mothers' differential treatment of their children could have been due to preexisting sibling conflicts. Gender of children did not make a dif­ ference in how sibs interacted. When the laterborn children were older and better able to carry out instructions without getting upset, however, there was less conflict and more cooperation. If the older children were shy and so perhaps less assertive and the younger children got over their upsets quickly, the children had fewer disputes. The study shows how affectionate ties to parents, in this case mothers, and their fair treatment of offspring are associated with children's cooperating rather than fighting. How well siblings get along also seems to be related to the age of the children and how easygoing they are. PARENTS AS MEDIATORS OF CHILDREN'S DISPUTES

One last aspect of parent-child inter­ dependencies that feeds into sibling relations is the adults' reaction to their children's quar­ rels. Even the most harmonious siblings dis­ agree occasionally, as families usually discover on automobile trips. One friend told me of such an occasion. She and her husband were sitting in the front, and their three primary school-aged children were sitting in the back­ seat. Although the children usually were fairly good companions, the day had been long and tempers were getting short. An argument had arisen over who got to play with a favorite hand game. It got louder and louder. Finally, the father, in a loud voice, stated, "Put that thing away, I don't want to hear any more about it." There was blessed silence for several minutes. Then whispering started, followed by soft complaints and then a shriek, "You threw it out the window!" accompanied by scuffling. This time, the father pulled the car over to the side of the road, stopped it, and the two parents, now shouting, said, "What's going on? You were suppose to put that game away." The meek reply was, "We did. We're just pretending now." I did not hear how the parents handled this argument, but elders' customary reactions to these conflicts can weaken sibling ties. Con­ trary to popular belief, parents' discipline of

SIBLING RELATIONS OVER

TIME

the more powerful sib seems to be associated with increased not lessened sibling infighting. It would seemingly make sense for elders to support the weaker parties in sibling aggres­ sion. If they intervened in disagreements, it would be customary to do it in favor of the younger sib over an older child or of a daughter over a son. Parents believe the younger child or the daughter is less physically strong and more likely to be intimidated by older children or brothers. Gender role norms also call for brothers to protect and not fight with their sisters. To cut down on verbal or physical aggression, therefore, it would appear that the parents should punish the more powerful child. This reasoning does not hold, however, according to the reports of suburban school children in the fourth to seventh grades and their parents (Felson & Russo, 1988). Accord­ ing to what both generations said in the 292 families, the frequency of name-calling and hitting between siblings is likely to be greater when parents intervene on behalf of the per­ ceived weaker child. If they ignore the con­ flicts, it seems there are fewer of them. Why should this be? Sociologists Richard B. Felson and Natalie Russo (1988) argue that when the parents support the weaker child, he or she feels safer to engage in verbal or physical ag­ gression, believing the powerful parent will intervene if things go against this weaker ag­ gressor. Older sibs maybe prepared to accept a certain amount of differential behavior from parents aiding the more dependent younger sib; however, when parents' treatment slips from fairness to favoritism, older children often seek revenge. The research also showed that girls are just as verbally and physically aggressive as boys and that sibs who are less than 4 years apart get in more scraps than do those separated by more years. When closer in age, children are likely to be competing more directly for the attention of their parents as well as for the same possessions. They may also believe it is less dangerous to take on a sib who is nearer their own size, and being about the same age, they may be thrown together more often and have more opportunities to get into fights. Thus, parents who are wanting less sibling fighting must be especially careful not to en­ courage it unwittingly by intervening to sup­ port the apparently weaker child. Parents who

257

SIBLING RELATIONS FROM GIVENS TO CHOICE

do, not only risk increasing such disputes but distance themselves from the child they single out to discipline. One 17-year-old youth, al­ though younger, described the frustration he felt at his mother's intervention in his quar­ rels with his older brother: "She'd always punish us and put us in corners or separate rooms. Even if we'd apologize to the other, she'd keep us there. She always said we were abnormal kids because we fought so much. She never tried to stay out of it and let us work things out for ourselves." (Leder, 1991, p. 57) Just as interdependencies in the parentchild subsystem going back to when there was a single child and continuing into the present affect sibling relations, so do marital subsystem interdependencies. Earlier chap­ ters indicated how satisfactory marriages and satisfactory parent-child situations seemed to go together. A similar association appears be­ tween harmonious couples and cooperative sibs. A general family atmosphere of getting along, a tone set by the longer existing adult partnership, seems to set constructive limits to the amount of negative behavior family members display to one another. For example, the way brothers and sisters played together was related to their mothers' marital adjust­ ment in a small sample of white middle-class families. Both parents and two children, 20 brother and 22 sister dyads, were included in the research (Brody, Stoneman, &Burke, 1987). The older children, 7 to 9 years of age, were in the early grades of primary school, and their younger sibs were 4.5 to 6.5 years old. These second-borns showed more affection­ ate touching and helpful behaviors when mothers reported fewer marital quarrels. Similarly, their older brothers or sisters dis­ played more prosocial play behaviors if mothers described their marriages as being of high quality. Adults in harmonious partnerships have less trouble agreeing on child-rearing strategies and more patience to encourage positive child behaviors. In turn, parenting when there is less fighting among the children is easier, reflecting back to improve the quality of the marital relation. In contrast, when mothers reported less affectionate, more conflict-rid­ den marriages, both siblings did more teas­

ing, name-calling, and hitting. Marital un­ happiness can be reflected in inconsistent parenting and less attention paid to children. As a result, children also are less happy and take it out on each other. Parenting becomes harder, making partner relations even more difficult. In this fashion, marital, parent-child, and sibling subsystems are mutually inter­ dependent. What goes on in one set of rela­ tionships is affected by the other two, and each helps establish the sort of family climate in which the three must operate. Siblings and Divorce The interdependence of family subsystems is especially apparent in families where the parents are separated or divorced. How sib­ lings get along appears to have less to do with the divorce than with the kind of relations parents maintain after the dissolution of the marriage. There are a few studies that look at sibling interactions in divorced and intact families. The results indicate how important the partner relation remains for sibling ties after divorce as well as in two-parent families. One such research had a sample of 96 sibling pairs, half from each type of family (MacKinnon, 1988). The children in divorced families were living with their mothers. All the sample members were primary school aged and came from families matched on mothers' education level and number of children. The older si­ blings ranged from 6.5 to 10 years and the younger siblings were from 4.5 years to 8 years old. The age separation within each dyad was no less than 2 years and no more than 4 years. To gain information on sibling relations, each dyad was observed while playing an absorb­ ing board game. The mothers reported on the father-child, mother-child, and (former) hus­ band-wife relations. The extent of siblings' positive behaviors (praise, hugging) as contrasted with their nega­ tive behaviors (quarreling, hitting) was not differentiated on whether their parents were married or divorced. Instead, the quality of the marital or ex-spousal and the parent-child subsystems was associated with how pleasantly the sibling dyads interacted while playing the game. Consistent with the research I dis­ cussed in Chapter 11, there appeared to be a

258 spillover to sibling relations from how well husbands, wives, and ex-spouses, along with parents and children, fared. The re­ searcher, child development scholar Carole E. MacKinnon (1988), concluded, "Regardless of family form, the quality of other relation­ ships in the family are important predictors of sibling interactions" (p. 474). Children were more happy together when their parents also were. Harmony in partner or ex-partner mat­ ters removes one source of stress influencing the patience with which mothers can deal with children. The children, in turn, are less con­ tentious when they are not at odds with their mothers. Again, though, it appears that fathers' interactions with children are peripheral to the latters' ties with their siblings. Particularly when fathers are not members of the house­ holds, they are less in touch with children and have less effect on their interactions with other family members. The quality of partner and ex-partner relations as well as parentchild feelings, and not whether the parents were divorced, however, was associated with how comfortably the youngsters got along. The findings of the research do not mini­ mize the impact of divorce on children. In­ stead, they emphasize how important the kind of ties youngsters have with their elders are in handling their parents' separation. But sib­ lings, too, through their care and support of each other, can ease children's transition from a two-parent to a one-parent family. The sibling subsystem generally continues un­ changed despite the disruption of the marital bond and the departure of one parent from the family home. The parents with child cus­ tody in the period following divorce often turn to their children for the comfort and assurance they once might have received from their former partners. Children may have to not only nurture unhappy parents but also try to keep from getting involved in ongoing parental arguments that the divorce has not stopped. One girl reflected on this situation, " 'It's not going to get any better. You know it's really ridiculous when an 11-year-old can think more clearly than two grownups'" (Combrinck-Graham, 1988, p. 198). Brothers and sisters can help to take some of these pressures off each other. Through fulfilling the developmental tasks of supply­ ing support and help to their sibs, the children can better understand what is going on and

SIBLING RELATIONS OVER

TIME

escape some of the anxiety from having their sentiments divided between two hostile parents. By watching over each other, siblings maintain nurturance continuity although the relationships of their parents are in a state of upheaval. Sibs can remind each other of school schedules, help with dressing and home­ work, and explain why mother or daddy is acting so disagreeably (Combrinck-Graham, 1988). Children of divorce have to grow up more quickly, because they cope with anxious parents and changed family patterns. Having sibs to provide affection or to care for can ease children through the rough transition while new family interaction structures and inter­ dependencies are being negotiated. Learning From Siblings To this point, I have discussed how the state of couple relations and parents' treat­ ment of children are associated with how well siblings get along. In addition, through the ties they establish, siblings learn from each other, and the ease with which they interact has implications for how well they do in school. A discussion of the structural effects of family size appeared in Chapter 3. It included an illustration of the disproportionate number of dyadic relations added to a family with each new member. Over the years, a con­ siderable amount of research has been done to determine how the number of brothers and sisters is related to children's IQs and educa­ tional attainment. The results suggest that there is a negative relation; that is, the more siblings the individual has, the lower the IQ and the less the educational attainment. Sib size seems to be especially important in chil­ dren's getting through grade school and high school. Going beyond these education levels appears to be more related to family affluence (Blake, 1986; Heer, 1985). There are two theories as to why there should be this negative association between number of children in a family and their aca­ demic performance. They are the confluence and resource dilution explanations. As I noted in Chapter 3, the confluence theory is specifi­ cally concerned with the development of in­ telligence, which is the basis for how well children do in school. According to the theory, the child's own intellectual development is

SIBLING RELATIONS FROM GIVENS TO CHOICE

related to the intellectual climate in the home. When there are a number of other youngsters whose mental capacities are not mature, this climate is less challenging than one in which adults in the family are not in such a minority. Spacing of children also makes a difference. According to the theory, intellectual atmos­ phere appears to be particularly problematic when there are a number of closely spaced children. Wider spacing enables older siblings to serve as teachers and exemplars of advanced intellectual skills (Zajonc & Markus, 1975). Resource dilution theory is another explana­ tion for the negative relation between number of siblings and individual educational and intellectual achievement. According to this theory, the more children there are in a family, the fewer the available family resources to encourage each one's intellectual development. Parents have less time to read to their chil­ dren, to take them to zoos and other places that encourage questions, and to supply them with answers. There are also fewer resources to make available books, videotapes, special lessons, and other cultural opportunities that add to the child's intellectual capital (Powell & Steelman, 1990). In the previous chapter, we saw how lack of money for college keeps some youths from obtaining the advanced education that would better prepare them for obtaining good jobs. Number of sibs again limits the amount of money a family can allocate to each child's schooling. Examination of the two theories, using the National Longitudinal Survey of High School Seniors of the class of 1972, specified the theories in terms of how close siblings were in age to the individuals in the survey (Powell & Steelman, 1990). The division was between those sample members having sibs less than 3 years older and the rest. The research showed that sib density, that is the number of siblings closer in age, had a consistendy more negative effect on the subjects' academic performance than siblings more distant in age. The resource dilution theory appeared to be a better explanation than the confluence model for the findings. The latter points to the family intellectual climate as affecting chil­ dren's abilities, but unlike the resource dila­ tion theory, it does not account for how the transmission occurs. When siblings were closer in age, the seniors surveyed reported their parents did less reading to them, a parental

259 practice that serves as a resource to encourage intellectual development. Verbal ability was more closely related to sibling structure than was mathematical ability. This finding would fit with the resource dilution theory's em­ phasis on talking with parents as an impor­ tant resource for children's verbal ability. If there are a number of children close in age, parents have less time to give to visiting with one alone. The gender composition of siblings also affected the students' grade point averages. Having brothers had more of a negative effect on their grades than having sisters. Although this result is not consistent with either theory, sociologists Brian Powell and Lala Carr Steelman (1990) point to the gender tradition —at least among whites of assigning more resources to boys than to girls. Having more brothers than sisters, therefore, would mean fewer available resources for the individual and thus lower academic achievement, a result consistent with the resource dilution expla­ nation. The investigators also note that stu­ dents get better grades when they follow school rules. To meet traditional gender role prescriptions, girls are more likely to be reared to conform than boys, and the study showed that they also tended to receive better grades than boys. Having more sisters than brothers, therefore, may encourage youths to follow their examples. Although a number of siblings, especially if they are close in age, does seem to have a negative influence on school performance, siblings can supply help as well as emotional support in children's learning. Their fulfillment of these sibling developmental tasks would account for the finding that, among 484 white and black children entering first grade in a large metropolitan city, those who had one or two siblings received better conduct ratings (Thompson, Entwisle, Alexander, & Sundius, 1992). The children may have been briefed by older sibs as to what to expect in the class­ room and how they should behave. The first graders with sibs would also have had more experience than only children in sharing the attention of adults. Sibs who get along well can also serve as effective surrogate teachers in furthering the cognitive development of their younger brothers and sisters. When this is the situation, older sibs do a better job of showing youngsters how to do

260

SIBLING RELATIONS OVER

something than those who aren't kin. Sibs give more help in the way of detailed explana­ tions and instructions and more emotional support in the form of positive feedback when the youngster is following their instruc­ tions. This more effective sib teaching was demonstrated in a study of 64 triads com­ posed of a kindergartner or first grader, her or his same-gender second- or third-grade sib, and the sib's same-gender friend (Azmitia & Hesser, 1993). The older sibs and their friends had pre­ viously been instructed on how to perform building tasks, which they were to later teach the younger child. The sib and the friend were randomly selected to serve as instructor. In the teaching situation, the younger children were more insistent that their sisters or brothers explain how to do the tasks and asked more questions of them than they did of the friends. The youngsters also pushed their sibs more to let them do the construction. Their older siblings also felt freer to give instruc­ tions and criticize the younger children's ac­ complishments. In turn, the latter, though more often interrupting, contradicting, and doing things their way, could pressure their sibs to give better instructions. As a conse­ quence, the children, after the teaching ses­ sion, performed better on their own with the tasks when their sibs and not the sibs' friends had taught them. The effectiveness of the tutoring their elders can give in informal settings is illus­ trated by the complaint of this adolescent whose older brother had gone off to college: "But the main thing is that he isn't around twenty-four hours a day. I can't go into his room and ask him to help me with my home­ work. He can't show me through a math problem or help me with Latin." (Leder, 1991, p. 65) Siblings in Adolescence As children reach their teens and their in­ terests and friendships take them beyond family boundaries, their interactions with sib­ lings become less intense. Being less caught up in family matters, youths tend to distance themselves from brothers and sisters as well as parents. Their closeness to them and their contacts with them decrease as adolescents

TIME

seek more independence from their families. The specifics of just how these relationships are modified, from the early years of primary school to the last year of high school, showed up in the results from questionnaire research in a suburban public school system (Buhrmester & Furman, 1990). There were 106 girls and boys from the 3rd grade, 112 6th graders, 85 9th graders, and 60 12th graders who responded in the cross-sectional study. The number of siblings they had varied on average from around one to two in the first three age groups to two to three in the oldest age group. The effect of the gender of the respondents and the gender and age of the one sib whose relationship the respondents described were looked at in the research. The first finding was that differences in power decreased with age. There was more equality in the relationships, whether in dominance or nurturance, as later­ borns grew older. Third graders showed the most dominance over their younger siblings, particularly when siblings were separated by less than 4 years. Older sibs, however, more often nurtured the third graders, especially when the latter were at least 4 years younger. The development of more symmetrical rela­ tions was largely completed by the time the younger sibs were in the sixth grade. Then they were old enough to be more indepen­ dent and to need fewer directions and less comfort from their elders. They did fewer things with sibs as adolescents. Although sib­ lings became less close, ties of affection and admiration were less affected. Whether the individual is the older or the younger sibling makes a difference in how children and adolescents perceive their rela­ tions over the years. The later-boms reported less conflict and more affection for their older sibs than the latter did with respect to quarrels and love for their younger sibs. Younger chil­ dren, especially girls with older sisters, tended to admire their elders and want to be with them more; but older sibs were more likely to see their kid sisters or brothers as quarrel­ some annoyances. Wider age spacing seemed to encourage more harmonious relations, as did being in same gender dyads (Buhrmester & Furman, 1990). Greater age differences mean less direct competition for parental attention, because the older children are able to be on their own

SIBLING RELATIONS FROM GIVENS TO CHOICE

more. As one of my students told me, "Be­ cause my brother and sister and I were so close together—we were born in 3 years—our mom didn't have time for us individually. My litde brother came 3 years later, and he got a lot of attention." Older sibs are also likely to be less interested in the youngsters' possessions. In turn, younger sibs are less able to engage in their older sibs' activities. These differences make for fewer disagreements. Being of the same gender provides more opportunities for the younger to follow the older child's lead and to use the older child as a behavior ex­ emplar. The latter process would contribute to the youngster's feelings of admiration for the older sib. This makes for good sibling relations. As an example, litde sisters learning the interpersonal skills often associated with their gender roles would be especially likely to display their pride in their older sisters or brothers, to the benefit of sibling ties. One of the developmental tasks befitting the greater maturity of older sibs is caring for younger children when parents are unavail­ able. This baby-sitting is consistent with the help and companionship sibs may enjoy to­ gether. It can lead, however, to conflict when the caretaker is bossy and the youngster a pest. Even under these less than favorable circumstances, sibling learning occurs when the baby-sitting chore does not occur too often. The art of getting along with other nonadults can be acquired by siblings in such interac­ tions. To get through the situation, both par­ ties have to exercise some personnel skills: the older sib to keep the younger sib in general conformity with parental rules and the younger sib to gain some freedom from the older sib's giving orders. The elder's learning to give a litde in rule setting and the younger's learning how to bargain for rule modifications teaches interpersonal skills to both. They may even acquire nonviolent negotiating abilities that will stand them in good stead with peers in childhood and beyond. In the process, each sib may come to respect the other more. Such an outcome would be consistent with the needs adolescents see their siblings as meeting. For example, compared with parents, teachers, and friends, a sample of 11- to 19­ year-olds saw sibs along with friends as sour­ ces of companionship and helpfulness. At the same time, these 1,110 mostly white, middleclass students from rural midwestern towns

261 were likely to report themselves as being more often in disagreement and having to resolve conflicts with their sibs than with others. Thus, although sibs can give comfort to adolescents, they provide enough controversy to enable them to better establish their seif-identities and learn to get along with others (Lempers & Clark-Lempers, 1992). The developmental task of an older child's care for younger sisters or brothers, although usually a plus, can become onerous if it be­ comes too frequent. It then impinges on the time the baby-sitter needs for other activities. Contrary to what the confluence theory dis­ cussed above would suggest, youths who have frequent responsibility for child care of younger sibs get poorer grades in school. For a sample of 4,918 black and white children in southern city schools, having to watch out for youngsters more than five times a week seemed to interfere with the older sibs' study­ ing. The teaching benefits that, according to the theory they supposedly would acquire from supervising and teaching younger chil­ dren what was permissible, were not evident among the 6th-, 8th-, 10th-, and 12th-grade students (Smith, 1984). Although caring for younger siblings too often appears to have negative consequences for older brothers' and sisters' school grades, they may serve as behavior models for the children they are baby-sitting. The age at which adolescents initiate sexual activity provides an example of such an effect. Two thousand sibling pairs in the National Longitudinal Sur­ vey of Labor Market Experience were asked about the age at which they first had sexual intercourse. The sample members were 18 to 25 years of age; 1,359 of the dyads were white, and 683 were African American. The older sibling questioned was the next oldest and closest in age to the younger sib in the study (Haurin & Mott, 1990). In the sample as a whole, the median age white males reported for first intercourse was 17, and white fe­ males gave age 18. Among black males and females, the comparable figures were 15 and 17, respectively. The age at sexual initiation among white youths and black females was affected by several family variables. For white youths of both genders, the example of siblings' age at first coitus influenced when they initiated sexual behavior. Gender of sibling made no difference

262

SIBLING RELATIONS OVER

in the association. Brothers were no more likely to influence boys than were sisters, nor did sisters have more effect on girls than on brothers. White youths and black females also initiated intercourse at older ages when they grew up with both parents and had mothers with some college education. Weekly church attendance was also related to older ages at white youths' and black females' first coitus experience. These factors suggest that not only parental time to supervise their adolescent offspring in the interest of conventional moral standards but also greater knowledge in how to transmit them are related to youths' post­ poning coitus. Only extrafamilial influences, such as peer networks, however, seemed to af­ fect when black males became sexually active. Similar results were obtained in surveys of 1,938 junior high students in two southern cities (Rodgers & Rowe, 1990). Their sexual behaviors, ranging from kissing and hugging to intercourse, were related to the experiences of both older siblings and best friends. This was also true of mildly deviant behaviors, such as smoking, drinking, and cheating on tests, with same-sex siblings and especially sisters showing the closest relation. When older sibs engaged in various sexual or other behaviors, youths were likely to have followed suit. As with the previous study, the patterns, though present, were weaker among black students, with the association weakest for black males. Peer influences seemed to have supplanted those of parents and sibs, perhaps because these students were more likely to grow up in single-parent homes. As we have seen earlier, there may be fewer resources of money and goodwill in such families to keep members together. In general, however, what goes on in families, the behaviors parents and siblings encourage and the examples they set for youngsters, constrain the activities of a majority of youths. Siblings in Adulthood After spending so much time together in the growing-up years due to living in the same home, when siblings reach adult status, they usually go their separate ways. Establishing their own residences apart from other family members is for many one indication of being an adult. The kinds of relations that survive

TIME

despite this physical separation are affected by what went on in the past. These limited linkages derive from how well siblings fulfilled their earlier developmental tasks of help and emo­ tional support. Youthful feelings of rivalry and jealousy, fanned by perceptions of paren­ tal favoritism, continue to poison relation­ ships even into old age. Research with small samples, noted earlier, suggests that one third of adult siblings maintain only distant rela­ tions (Leder, 1993), and the number increases to 45% who continue to feel rivalry with sibs in adulthood (Ross 8c Milgrim, 1982). These individuals do not feel close or share similar interests with their brothers and sisters. They are likely to use words such as hurtful, com­ petitive, or humiliating in describing their sibling relations in childhood. They never learned to interact peacefully then, and they may lack the will to do so as adults. According to conventional gender norms, boys are sup­ posed to be competitive and aggressive. Con­ sequently, rivalry is greatest among brothers, and they are least in touch. Sisters maintain the greatest closeness. Gender norms of con­ cern for others keep them trying to remain linked to each other and to other family mem­ bers throughout their lives (Cicirelli, 1991). Events in adulthood, such as establishing economic independence and starting a family career through marriage and having children, can push siblings apart despite a history of affectionate ties. When individuals set up their own family boundaries and interdependent interaction patterns within them, it makes for greater sib distance. Marriage partners, with their first call on the emotional allegiance of each other, serve to supplant siblings as pri­ mary peers within the family system. These spouses whom siblings have added to the family circles can seem "different" from other members or be seen as trying to keep sibs apart. One sister expressed the sorrow she felt at her brother's marriage when she said, " 'The focus went from me being the critical person in his life to his wife being the most important' " (Leder, 1993, p. 92). There is evidence from the longitudinal study of children born in Berkeley, California, between January 1, 1928, and June 30,1929, that sibling relations are least close in the eventcrowded young adult years. The research that I have referred to in the previous chapter (Clausen, 1993) was based on interviews with

SIBLING RELATIONS FROM GIVENS TO CHOICE

the sample members as they aged. Despite the small sample, the findings are important be­ cause they suggest how people's views of their close relations vary over time. When the 50 largely white, Protestant sample members were 30 years old, they described their emotional closeness to their siblings, their satisfaction with the relationships, and the frequency of their meetings as being at their lowest point in their lives. Twelve and 20 years later, the respondents reported both their sibling ties and connections with parents had improved. Their feelings about spouses, children, and close friends did not change much over the later years. Psychologist Laura L. Carstensen (1992), who reported these data, argues that as people reach their 30s and families and jobs become less changeable, there is a growing selectivity in intimates. According to her socio­ emotional selectivity theory, early adulthood is devoted to trying out a number of options in close relations. As individuals grow older, they become more socially selective in the persons with whom they want to surround themselves for support and stability. This "pro­ tective convoy" provides individuals with a continuing sense of their own identity (Kahn & Antonucci, 1980). Siblings share memories of childhood, and among the majority of adults, brothers and sisters serve as morale boosters. They are likely to be among the intimates whose ties midlife adults cultivate and cherish. Just how often siblings see each other ap­ pears in the sample interviewed for the 1987­ 1988 National Survey of Families and House­ holds. Among the 10,418 persons having full siblings, the average number of visits they paid each other was from one to three a month. This is a fairly substantial number, given the occupational and family responsibilities most adults face. Factors associated with more con­ tacts are geographical distance and age. As we would expect, living closer makes for more interaction, but the relation of age to visiting is nonlinear. When people are in their 20s and 30s, as suggested in the above small longi­ tudinal study, they visit less with sibs. At older ages, however, people tend to keep in contact with them, although they are less intimate than in the childhood years before competing loyalties to jobs and families took priority. Gender and race play a lesser part in siblings' getting together. Consistent with the greater

263 emphasis on caretaking among women, sisters keep in touch more with siblings than do brothers. Also, the African Americans in the sample reported more such visits than did others. This may be due to the comfort and support sibs and other relatives can provide for persons still likely to experience discrimina­ tion in the broader community (White 8c Riedmann, 1992a). Because family careers often involve shifts in personnel due to divorce and subsequent remarriages, a sizable number of persons have stepsiblings or half-siblings as well as full sib­ lings. In this nationally representative sample, 942 respondents had siblings of both types. The difficulties in renegotiating family boun­ daries to incorporate new family members show up in their sibling relations. They saw their half-siblings and stepsiblings only several times a year, compared with monthly or more often for their full sibs. The difficul­ ties associated with a stepmother appeared, as respondents saw half- or stepsibs where there was a stepfather more often than where there was a stepmother. Growing up in a stepfamily, however, appeared to weaken sibling ties in general. These persons' contacts even with full sibs were somewhat fewer, as contrasted with siblings who grew up in intact families. The lesser cohesion in stepfamilies is also suggested by the finding that youths in such families left home at earlier ages. Persons who said they left home later, presumably because family conditions were fairly positive, visited more often with both full sibs and stepsibs (White 8c Riedmann, 1992a). Sociologists Lynn K. White and Agnes Riedmann (1992b) continued their inquiry into sibling relations, using the same national sample but this time asking what meaning ties with full siblings had for adults. The respon­ dents had said that on average they saw and talked to their siblings at least once a month. Some two thirds also mentioned at least one of their siblings as being among their closest friends. Did fulfillment of the childhood developmental tasks of providing emotional support and help continue into adulthood along with the personal contacts? Despite their involvement with the families and friends they had become close to as adults, 29% of the respondents said a sibling was the one person they would call on for help in an emergency. Understandably, those who maintained con­

264 tact with their siblings and named one as being among their best friends were more likely to expect a sibling to provide emergency aid. In actuality, siblings provide little concrete aid to each other. They most often reported giving advice. Slightly more than one fourth (26%) said they gave it, though just 18% reported receiving advice from siblings. The next most common form of help was care. Only about one tenth (11%) of the sample said they gave it, and 6% answered that they received it. Just 4% had given money to sibs, and an even smaller 2% admitted to receiving it. As with contact and closeness, actual sup­ port was related to gender of siblings. Women's focus on caretaking made a difference. Both women and men who had sisters reported receiving more help. The competition from the needs of chil­ dren and parents cuts down the support from siblings that respondents say they receive. Only when this inner circle of progenitors and des­ cendants is missing are persons likely to turn to sibs for help. Although African Americans visit with their sibs more than do other racial groups, they are not more likely to report reeling close to them, exchanging aid, or ex­ pecting needed assistance from them. In fact, those with higher educations and incomes receive the most aid from siblings. Other data from the National Survey of Black Americans also indicate that the better off are more likely to receive general family support (Taylor, 1990). Thus, despite keeping in touch more with relatives, these contacts for African Americans do not seem to include material assistance for those in financial difficulties. SIBLINGS A N D OLDER PARENTS

Care for aging parents is one developmen­ tal task that can bring even distant adult sib­ lings together. They may be less willing to help each other, but as offspring of the same parents, they have to come to some agreement about the welfare of unwell parents. As I wrote in the chapter on elderly couples, daughters, consistent with the traditional gender roles, are more often the caretakers of the physical needs of their elders. But sons, too, are drawn into parental care when they live closer, their sisters need relief, or they have no sisters. One sister described the situation of her terminal-

SIBLING RELATIONS OVER TIME

ly ill mother when her brother asked her to come from out of town to assist. Consistent with gender expectations, she pitched in to help: " 'She looked awful. And there was my brother doing the best he could. From then on, Ted and I were a team, and my mother knew if "(Leder, 1991, p. 90). One group of 50 sibling groups, ranging in size from two to seven, took on the task of filial responsibility for their aged parents, 73 to 97 years of age. At the same time, they tried to preserve the elderly's sense of indepen­ dence (Matthews 8c Rosner, 1988). Acting on this principle of the least possible involve­ ment in their parents' lives, the siblings formed various arrangements for care. The size of the sibling groups and their gender composition affected the type of care they gave. When only two sisters constituted the aged parents' children, they provided regular shared assis­ tance or one would serve as a backup to help the other. When the sibling group was larger, other management styles appeared. In those families, some sibs, usually brothers, provided only sporadic or circumscribed help or dis­ sociated themselves completely from respon­ sibility. In contrast to the routine ("I've always done Mother's grocery shopping") or backup styles ("I do what my sisters tell me") com­ mon among sisters, siblings who limited their aid to the circumscribed style might give a weekly telephone call. Those who helped only sporadically provided service on an un­ scheduled basis, such as a brother who dropped over occasionally to take his mother out. The dissociated siblings did not assist at all. A sister explained such behavior, " 'My brother has no interest at all and does not care about my mother to any extent' " (Matthews 8c Rosner, 1988, pp. 188-189). Past family histories besides gender and size of sibling groups set limited linkages on how much adult children do for their aged parents. Perceived parental favoritism in the growing-up years makes the special child the person other siblings expect to take the major responsibility. These favored offspring are also the ones who are supposed to get their parents to do things their elders may resist. Other feelings, such as sibling or parent-child conflicts, keep some sibs dissociated from caring for parents. The reputations children have developed over the years also affect their involvement. One woman told how her sister

265

SIBLING RELATIONS FROM GIVENS TO CHOICE

came to make the decisions regarding their mother: " 'When we talked about Mother's having to go to a nursing home, I collapsed. My sister is a rock'" (Matthews & Rosner, 1988, p. 191). Besides past events and feelings, current situations influence parental care. Just as job responsibilities and family careers involving individuals separate them from siblings, they also affect how much time adults have to give to parents. Being employed reduces the amount they can do and when they can do it. One daughter reported how her job-holding sister " 'markets on Saturday and does Mother's [marketing] then, too' " (Matthews & Rosner, 1988, p. 192). Spouses, through judgments they make, also play a part in filial respon­ sibility. In this study, the 90 husbands and 21 wives of the siblings interviewed varied in how much they supported their spouses' aid that enabled an aged parent to remain inde­ pendent. When partners were in sympathy and also helped, it was easier for the adult child to manage home and parental demands. Some partners even filled in when the de­ mands were overwhelming. One sibling re­ ported about her husband, " 'If I can't make it to take her [the mother] to the doctor, he will do that' " (Matthews & Rosner, 1988, p. 193). Other spouses maintained an attitude of indifference and noninvolvement. Their ex­ pectations, however, could force sibs to restrict their activities. When spouses were openly antagonistic to their parent-in-laws, sibs could not provide routine care or serve as backups to assist ailing parents. One husband's plans to retire and travel led to his wife's preparing to place her frail mother in a nursing home. She had been living with the couple. As long as it did not affect his working life, the daughter's husband had not complained about the care his wife needed to give her mother. But with his retirement, his priority in the wife's loyalties became apparent. She could no longer manage the competing demands of spouse and parent. How well siblings are able to fulfill the task of cooperating to care for aging parents is therefore related to several factors. Gender and number of siblings makes a difference in how much filial responsibility siblings accept. Sisters are the usual caretakers and among small numbers of sibs, they may have to over­

look past disagreements with each other or their parents. Even among brothers where there are no sisters and relations are strained, concern about elderly parents can lead to their sharing the resulting responsibilities. As one such sibling explained, " 'We three brothers have littie in common, but [we] all work to­ gether much more closely as adults as regards our mother' " (Matthews, Delaney, 8c Adamek, 1989, p. 68). But where there are more sib­ lings, especially sisters, past family conflicts and reputations developed over the years af­ fect individuals' participation in caregiving. For example, half-sibs or stepsibs are likely to have experienced strains in past family inter­ actions that would weaken present attempts at cooperation. Conflicting loyalties to their own families and jobs also influence the ex­ tent sibs help out. How easy it is in terms of geographical proximity, spousal cooperation, and job flexibility affects how much sibs assist each other in providing services to frail parents. Siblings in Old Age Just as parents become elderly, so do siblings. Their relations, based as they are on shared memories of childhood, can be reminders of either happy times or rivalries that have never been resolved. Siblings who have maintained contact over the years continue to fulfill the developmental tasks important in their grow­ ing-up years. These include emotional sup­ port and even services, if they are needed and the sibling is near and healthy enough to as­ sist. One 82-year-old woman spoke about her ties to her sister in such terms: "We c a n c o u n t o n each other. M y sister h a d a heart attack last N o v e m b e r a n d , o f course, I w a s there. I've b e e n h o s p i t a l i z e d t w i c e s i n c e t h e n , m y sister w a s right there. H e r c h i l d r e n are far away. . . . I'm really the o n l y o n e s h e h a s right now." (Leder, 1 9 9 1 , p. 113)

Because adults have taken on competing responsibilities from jobs and the members of the families they have established, the pre­ vious discussion has indicated the optional nature of sibling ties. As in earlier years, living close together makes it possible for brothers and sisters to keep in touch if they so choose.

266 But one small longitudinal study over a 2-year period suggested that continuities with the past continued. For the 54 elderly individuals in the Midwest sample, there were few chang­ es in their feelings of closeness and the extent of their contact with siblings. What had changed among these over 65-year-olds was the increased time they mentioned thinking about their brothers and sisters and the times they had spent together in the past. These reminiscences were accompanied by senti­ ments of greater acceptance and approval. One respondent wrote, " 'Just knowing she's there means more than anything . . . much more than being with any other people'" (Gold, 1989, p. 29). Brothers and sisters ap­ peared able to overcome old jealousies and dislikes, but this was less likely where brothers were involved. The emphasis on status com­ petitiveness among males appeared to carry over from the past and lower mutual accep­ tance in the present (Gold, 1989; Tannen, 1990). The factors that influence the choice among residentially close sibs to maintain contacts include mutual aid, as described by the older woman quoted above. Housekeeping, trans­ portation, shopping, and advice were ex­ amples of service activities that bring elderly siblings together. For the 158 elderly whites interviewed in a representative sample in a rural North Carolina county, the similarity of their values to those of their siblings was also important in how often they saw each other. Common beliefs and attitudes make conver­ sation easy and agreeable and provide the basis for sympathetic understanding. Among the 125 African Americans in the sample, how­ ever, it was being older and having more edu­ cation that seemed to influence the elderly associating with siblings who lived nearby. These very characteristics may have made them feel an obligation to keep in touch (Suggs, 1989). Feelings of attachment to siblings, apart from services, appear to relate to the elderly's well-being. Even if only through occasional telephone calls or visits, both remembering good times together and the shared goals, beliefs, and interests they had acquired in their parental families provided emotional sup­ port when siblings were absent. It may also be that remaining siblings, even when seldom

SIBLING RELATIONS OVER TIME

seen or heard from, can fill in for spouses or friends who have died. How much individuals think about or contact siblings remains a matter of choice. These voluntary ties can have a special appeal for the elderly, who see a forced dependence on others due to poor health as a part of their futures. Sisters, especially, can be important in these fairly inactive sentimental ties, as the above discus­ sion indicated. Available research from a small midwestern community with a sample of persons averag­ ing 72 years of age suggests how such attach­ ments to sisters ward off feelings of depres­ sion. Ties to brothers had little effect on the 83 individuals. But regardless of gender, they reported feeling more depressed when they also told of being in conflict with a sister or feeling indifferent toward her. Being cut off from caring sisters, even if the ties exist pri­ marily in memory, is hard on the elderly, male and female alike. When sibling attachments have been close, their loss due to death can have multiple meanings for the survivors. Along with the deaths of spouses and other intimates, a sibling's passing is an indicator that they too are of an age to expect it. The death of a sibling following the usually earlier deaths of parents also removes one more of the few remaining persons who have lived through the same family events the elderly experienced while they were growing up. There are fewer persons available to validate the living's sense of who they are. An 83-year-old woman expressed the blow such a death is to the survivor's sense of identity: " 'My first memory was when I was three with my brother. . . . When he left me [died], there was a part of my childhood that went. There were things I couldn't verify. . . . Suddenly I was alone with my memories' " (Moss 8c Moss, 1989, p. 102). As siblings and similar-aged peers die, the individual may cling more to remaining loved ones. Although not all may respond like the 66-year-old-woman who said, " 'There are so few left, we like each other more'" (Moss 8c Moss, 1989, p. 105), still the sur­ vivors continue to recall their memories of their siblings. As when they were starting life, relations to brothers and sisters can provide emotional support even when they have been mostly apart over the ensuing years.

267

SIBLING RELATIONS FROM GIVENS TO CHOICE

Summary The sibling subsystem within families is an interesting mix of closeness and separation. When they are growing up, sisters and brothers spend a fair amount of time in each other's company due to residential proximity. This opportunity to become well acquainted is espe­ cially true if they are close together in age. Then they often share common concerns and may stand together against what they perceive as parents' unwarranted interference. But these same commonalities can make for competi­ tiveness so that the child care, mutual help, and emotional support sibs face as develop­ mental tasks become hard to achieve. Parents, through their handling of sibling rivalries, have much to do with whether sib­ lings will have close relations in childhood and adolescence. Their special attentions to the older sibling and praise for her or his attempts at self-control can discourage jealous outbursts. Also, by not favoring the younger child and not exerting disproportionate con­ trol over the older one when disputes do arise, parents encourage more harmonious sibling relations. Good feelings between parents, whether together or apart, get translated into better parenting practices that in turn make for less prickly sib interactions. The welfare of individual family members reflects the quality of the interdependencies in the three subsys­ tems—partner, parent-child, and sibling. These early years of siblings being together are the basis for the memories that join or

separate siblings over the event-crowded years of young adulthood. Despite the competing loyalties of individual occupations and fam­ ilies, siblings can still feel close even though they may seldom be in touch. Siblings, unlike parents and children, can choose how close they remain. Parents and their need for care, however, may enforce closer ties among the middle-aged. Women are likely to be the kin keepers due to their gender training in inter­ personal connections and care. They watch over parents and work to preserve sibling cohesion. After parents have died, shared memories join siblings even when apart. Depending on the content of what they are remembering from childhood days, siblings try to either remain in touch or preserve their separate­ ness. The sibling subsystem begins with an intimacy enforced by proximity but becomes voluntary as siblings take on their separate adult responsibilities. The element of choice in whether siblings remain close or distant makes these ties particularly chancy in the set of family interdependencies that supposedly endure over time. This same element, how­ ever, makes these ties particularly rewarding when adults cherish them. Note 1. FromAlexander(1985).Copyright© 1985byThe New York Times Company. Reprinted by permission.

15

A Summing-Up

Final Thoughts The material I include throughout this chapter will emphasize the distinctive charac­ ter of family development, the rationale for Family Careers and for its organization. Some years ago, when I was first thinking of writing such a book, I mentioned it to a friend. "Not another book on the family," he groaned. I believed then, and I continue to believe, that I was writing about the family from a different perspective, a perspective that makes this more than just "another book" on the family. Others have used similar conceptual filters (Duvall & Miller, 1985; White, 1991). I have tried to integrate their work and applicable research with my own thinking. This chapter will pro­ vide an opportunity for me to summarize what I consider important in my interpreta­ tion of the family development framework. The previous chapter concluded my appli­ cation of the framework to substantive con­ tent in the three sections devoted to the marital, parent-child, and sibling careers. This final chapter contains a discussion of how the various family subsystems intermesh with the educational and occupational world over time. I also want to examine some of the re­ curring themes that have appeared through­ 268

out the book. In doing so, I shall cover aspects of families that underlie these themes. Getting It Together After coverage of the family development concepts in the first chapters, the organiza­ tion of this book has been based on analyses of the three family subsystems. Partner, parentchild, and sibling relationships are inter­ dependent, and the family interactions they create occur within the broader social con­ text, most notably the worlds of the job and school. Figure 15.1 is an attempt to display how these various life components fit to­ gether. I have used the time metric of the age of the persons filling family, educational, and occupational positions with the various at­ tached roles. Through this means, it is also possible to see the startings, stoppings, and startings over that constitute family careers. Modifications in the timing of events has led to the prolongation of some family periods and the shortening of others. Young, unmar­ ried people are slower to leave their parental homes than in the past. Many are going on for more education while living at home to save money. High school graduates are living at

A

SUMMING-UP

home because low-paying jobs make it hard for them to establish their financial and resi­ dential independence. Cohabiting relation­ ships and parenthood are increasingly preced­ ing the formal ceremony of marriage. What individuals have observed while growing up carries over into their own family careers. Divorce has joined marriage and parenthood as intergenerational family career events in a number of families. Remarriage and another partnership dissolution often follow it. Be­ cause these divisions in family histories are becoming so common, I have added them to the marital schedule portrayed in Figure 15.1. More fortunate youths have postponed beginning partnerships and parenthood until after finishing college, leaving home, and get­ ting settled in a job. The crowded years of accomplishing these tasks and learning to feel comfortable on their own are behind them. By their mid-20s, they have separated them­ selves from the home folks of parents and sibs and are ready to join an intimate other in beginning their own family careers. Ties within the parental subsystem and among siblings become less intense at this period. The new couple is having to create its identity as a unit. When the partners are working out the internal routines for task accomplishment, their connections with out­ siders are weakened. The tensions resulting from negotiating interdependencies and set­ ting boundaries are heightened by hazards in the job market. Finding a job and keeping it when the newlywed lacks seniority is not easy. Yet this is the time when couples are trying to assemble the standard consumer package of durable goods necessary for furnishing a resi­ dence. Many have the goal of buying their own homes, and they want to start putting aside enough money for a down payment. These couple organizational tasks and employment uncertainties make the first years of marriage hectic ones. For those who can meet the chal­ lenges, the years can be among the best of their lives. Those who cannot, go their separate ways after a short period and contribute to the high divorce rates of this initial family stage. The family life of the parents of the depart­ ing children is less complicated. Those in pro­ fessional and managerial positions are facing heavy demands as they reach the peak of their occupational careers. At the same time, they and other workers are filling family positions

269 in which parental roles are largely missing. For many couples, the remaining partner roles in the continuing marital subsystem are inter­ connected in mutually satisfactory patterns developed over the hectic child-rearing years. Among other couples, the departure of chil­ dren reveals an absence of joint concerns. If they are to weather their lack of commonalities, the spouses will have to renegotiate their living patterns. This midlife period among couples is often characterized by an expan­ sion of wives' community involvement. Freed from the cares of child rearing, women are able to look beyond their family boundaries to jobs and voluntary activities for fulfill­ ment. In contrast, men, after having gotten about as far as they are likely to go on the job, are beginning to turn inward to seek selfworth in the bosom of their families. Figure 15.1 shows that the majority of young couples who decide to become parents do so after the first 2 years of marriage. By then, those who have quickly decided they made a mistake in their choice of mates have left the ranks of the marrieds. The new parents in the continuing unions find that the coming of children throws existing interaction structures into disarray. A conventional division of labor, in which women are largely responsible for domestic duties and child care, often follows. Because the majority of mothers remain in the labor force, this double duty rarely sits well with them. Their marital satisfaction gen­ erally falls in the childbearing stage unless husbands willingly take on child care respon­ sibilities. When relationships were satisfac­ tory between the partners before the child's birth, negotiating arrangements to fit the new arrival into the household goes relatively smoothly. Infants become attached to their caretakers, preparing the way for parents' suc­ cessful socialization strategies. Even when chil­ dren are young, these are more effective when parents are warm and responsive to their off­ spring. In turn, raising a cooperative pre­ schooler has a positive effect on marital quality. The sibling subsystem begins with the second-born's arrival. This longest of family careers occupies the most time during the growing-up years. It can get off to a bad start if parents show favoritism toward the younger child in sib arguments. Appeals to the ad­ vantages of maturity, however, can encourage firstborns to take on the developmental tasks

270

FAMILY

Aoa of Individual

Marital Career*

Parental Career

Sibling Career

Educational Career

2

Begins competition for parental attention

5

Oldest child provides role model

Beerte

12

Sbllng socialization may conflict with parental socialization In peer relations snd sexual behavior

Entrance lo secondary education

16

Legal requirement for schooling ends

18

Entrance Into college Sibling relatione become voluntary

22 25

Marriage

28

Conjugal rates more segregated Power structure more husband centered Lessening of marital satisfaction

CAREERS

Work Career

Begins

Graduation Irom coltege

Birth ol first child Increasing time demands lor socialization task

Sibling relatione compete with marital and Derental responsibilities High job lime demands

Divorce 36 Birth ol last child

Peaking of Income for lower white-collar semiskilled, and unskilled workers

Increasing financial demands Remarriage

40

Greatest leellng of Inadequacy In parental rolos

Lowest point In marital satisfaction Peaking of Income for professional managers and skilled workers

46

SS

Marriage of first child

57

Children establish boundaries around their family units Addition of grandparent roles

58

Return to couple relation Increase in martial satisfaction

65

Increase in need for companionship

67

Death of one spouse

Sibling contacts Increase as parents grow old

Marriage of last child Retirement

Parents tum to children lor counsel and help

Sibling as comfort sources In memory or In person

Evenu are rouohly limed according to women's careers. For men, the events occur approximately two to three years later. Events are approximate prelect Ions lor cohorts marrying In the 1900a. -

Figure 15.1. The Timing and Intersection of Careers From an Individual Life Course Perspective of loyalty and assistance. When sibs are close enough to establish a we-them perspective on parents, they are creating ties that will last a lifetime. For children who see their parents divorce, having sympathetic brothers and

sisters can make the break somewhat more bearable. Children of divorce more often display behavior problems with the custody parent and in school than do offspring of intact marriages. Longitudinal studies, how-

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271

SUMMING-UP

ever, indicate that these difficulties often existed prior to the partners' separation. Spouses' conflicts embitter parent-child rela­ tions. When these relations are poor, regard­ less of the composition of the family, it is harder for brothers and sisters to get along well enough to help each other. The three family subsystems are so intertwined that past histories limit present interaction possibilities. Adult children who become parents add grandparent roles to their parents' family posi­ tions. Involvement with the new generation, without the attendant parental responsi­ bilities, can be a bonus for midlife couples. If the marriages of the new parents disintegrate or never take place, grandparents actively step in. They are more likely to provide a home and child care for young unwed mothers so they can finish their education or obtain employment. Having to reopen their homes to supposedly adult children and resume watching out for youngsters, however, can be unwelcome intrusions in the new lives older individuals are working out. Women are the ones whose plans are more likely to be dis­ rupted. Instead of having the time to take on more demanding jobs or other assignments outside the home without having to think of children, they may find themselves perform­ ing the two shifts of employment and child care again. The middle-aged also face altered relations with their aging parents. Now, the older gen­ eration may be looking to their children for counsel and physical care, reversing the pat­ terns of dependency established when the children were infants. As a consequence, sib­ ling ties again become important. As Figure 15.1 indicates, the old people's adult children have to rally around to make important ar­ rangements for frail parents or to take care of their effects after their deaths. Again, though, it is daughters who are more likely to be the ones responsible for elder care as well as handling the woes of unhappy offspring. For­ tunately, the needs of both children and par­ ents for aid from the middle generation rarely occur at the same time. Once the interdependencies of sibling rela­ tions are renewed because the parents reach old age, brothers and sisters are available for mutual support and assistance in the later years of life as in the beginning. When job commitments for older people wind down,

kin ties become more important. Partners, children, and brothers and sisters—in that order—give meaning to life. Women are ad­ vantaged in this respect, because over the years they have actively tended the ties linking family members. Men are more dependent on wives for satisfactory endings to their family careers. Being less involved in the rearing of children or in keeping in contact with sibs and parents, they look to wives for emotional and physical care. Divorced men who do not remarry and lose touch with their children are especially likely to be without kin networks in old age. Those who have discontinued or never started their own families may look to siblin gs after the death of parents to provide special attention in their last years. Among those per­ sons whose family careers, even with breaks and personnel changes, exhibit some stability and harmony, however, the routines joining the marital, parent-child, and sibling sub­ systems are a source of comfort through the last stage. Recurrent Themes The considerable discussion, briefly sug­ gested in Figure 15.1, of how the family sub­ systems and occupational roles intermesh suggests some continuing themes in the book. One of these was how past interactions con­ strain current interdependencies. These limited linkages are illustrated most dramati­ cally in the events following the stopping of a couple career when children are present or when parenthood is initiated without a part­ ner. In the first situation, former partners and their offspring usually experience a transition in which they struggle to establish new family boundaries and structures to accomplish family developmental tasks. Past parent con­ flicts may have created child misbehaviors that continue to the present. Physical main­ tenance is problematic for both these families who have lost an adult member and those in which there has always been only one. Remar­ riage or marriage, depending on the prior family composition, can assist in making them more financially secure. In either case, pre­ vious family patterns limit the sort of inter­ dependencies that will be established with stepparents and stepsibs and half-sibs.

272 Some youths living in reconstituted fam­ ilies leave home early to escape unsatisfactory relations or interactions that do not gel. When on their own, they are likely to be less closely tied to step-relations than to custodial parents and full sibs. They and children grow­ ing up in single-parent families are likely to experience family careers similar to those of their parents, whether they include divorce or unwed parenthood. Offspring who spend childhoods in families characterized by parent­ ing without partners are more prone to leave home early, to marry and then divorce. Daughters born out of wedlock are them­ selves more likely to become unwed parents. Young women who start their families through parenthood too often experience the deadend consequences of foreshortened educa­ tions, poorly paying jobs, and welfare. As their own biographies show, an intergenerational heritage of premature parenthood may be a part of their own children's inheritance. The timing of family events is also an ele­ ment creating linkages that limit future out­ comes. We have already seen how early parenthood closes off options and leads to an intergenerational continuance of poverty and welfare dependency. Marrying as teenagers also tends to have a harmful effect on spousal satisfaction. It is one of the few factors occur­ ring at the outset of this career that seems to shape relationships after the ceremony. It ap­ pears that role overload may account for the linkage. It can be overwhelming to take on partner responsibilities along with finding a job with pay sufficient to support an inde­ pendent household and withdrawing from friends and relatives, all in the interest of establishing the identity of the new family unit. Despite the sweetness associated with the first days of marrying, adolescents often find they are not worth having to negotiate marital interaction patterns, and so they divorce. If there are no children from the short-lived union that force at least one mem­ ber of the former couple to perform parental roles, the former partners can assume the duties associated with adulthood at a more leisurely pace. A second theme that reappears through­ out the material on the parent-child subsys­ tem is the benefit accruing to both parties from authoritative parenting. These are adults who are able to maintain loving relations with

FAMILY

CAREERS

children while setting behavioral standards, monitoring them, and being responsive to a child's quest for autonomy. This is a tall order. Even the most patient of parents will have lapses when she or he shouts commands with­ out reasons. Generally though, children of parents who more often use caring strategies will be better able to accomplish the tasks they take on and get along with others. These youngsters have fewer conflicts with thenparents and sibs and, outside the family, are better able to meet school requirements. The more harmonious intergenerational and sib­ ling relations also make it easier for parents to manage their own couple affairs. Single parents, too, who use an authoritative sociali­ zation style have more energy to devote to peer relations and jobs and to nurturing their youngsters. Authoritative parenting carries over positively to the next generation. They do better as parents themselves and are better able to accomplish the tasks of responsible adulthood. Children of neglectful parents who are neither affectionate nor involved with them are particularly likely to lose out in developing responsible work habits and avoid­ ing delinquency. That the primary responsibility for domes­ tic tasks falls on women is another theme that reappears throughout the family develop­ ment analyses. They are the kin keepers, the child care experts, the housekeepers, and the tenders of marriage ties—all this plus holding down jobs outside their families. Women do not always plan to take on all these respon­ sibilities, but financial needs and educational qualifications have led many to attempt to ful­ fill them. Adding paid employment to house­ hold duties has led many wives to question the traditional assignment of domestic re­ sponsibilities to them. It is still not usual for their partners to respond positively to pres­ sures for reform in the family division of labor. Men who perform domestic tasks are not necessarily happy about having to help out. Husbands who find it only fair to be involved in domestic matters enjoy doing for their children. They are less likely to be un­ happy in their marriages, and their wives are less likely to experience a fall in their marital satisfaction during the child-rearing years. Also, these husbands more often have the approval of friends and relatives for their shar­ ing household chores since marrying. Again,

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273

SUMMING-UP

we see how the past is prologue to the present and the limiting linkages that exist from one stage to another. Most men, however, continue to hold them­ selves aloof from the day-to-day running of households. This is a related theme that con­ nects a number of discussions in the book. As far as time and energy are concerned, they focus on the world of paid employment. Both blue-collar workers and white-collar profes­ sionals see their lives as organized around the job and its demands. That is where they find friends, along with bosses and other associ­ ates, who give the message that it is unmanly to put families first. It is also clear that in the occupational world of professionals and managers, raises and promotions come from work attachment not family concerns. Some wives also encourage their husbands to remain apart from household management. Whether from a traditional view of women's place, a sense of the power that comes from being all-important in the domestic sphere, or both, these wives treat their husbands as star boarders and not as active participants in domestic matters. When men either have difficulty finding jobs that will support a family or lose the employment they have, they receive a heavy blow to their self-esteem. Their status in the family falls if their power depended on their earnings. In such cases, women who have a pay­ check gain more of a say-so in family decision making, further depressing their husbands. Divorce rates are higher among the un­ employed. Men who are tied into their families by bonds of affection fare better, however. Some who take advantage of their enforced idleness to perform homemaking and child care duties find spells of unemploy­ ment rewarding if they are not too lengthy. Through their involvement, they become closer to their families. Mutual affection provides a cushion of support for husbandfathers' morale and decreases their stress. Under these circumstances, men are less likely to lash out at wives and children to vent their frustrations. African American men are more apt to experience unemployment, and this circumstance has been used to explain the lower rates of marriage and higher rates of illegitimacy in the black population. Among better-off men, though, marriage rates still are lower than among comparable men in

other racial groups. There is a tendency for black unwed fathers to maintain contact with their children even if they do not provide child support. But the mainstay among black families is the mother. The lack of husband-fathers' active par­ ticipation in household routines makes it hard for them, as they grow older, to reach out to adult children for comfort. Because gender role conventions have pressed men to achieve on the job, in athletics, or in sexual conquests, it is difficult for them to establish close friend­ ships. Wives are the ones they confide in and to whom they reveal their vulnerabilities. It is through their wives that they participate in the lives of grown-up children. If men have cut their family careers through divorce or have never married, as discussed above, they are likely to be isolated in their postretirement years. Unlikely to have worked at preserving ties with sibs, with parents no longer living and visits from any adult children infrequent, they are without family careers. The overinvolvement of women in families tends to result from the underinvolvement of men. The gender imbalance over the years works to the disadvantage of both. Women are too tied to domestic chores in the childbearing and child-rearing stages. Because of their lack of family involvement in these early years, men end up isolated from family members when they are older and without partners. Again, we see how linkages with past events set limits on present-day occurrences. Families in the Present Era Nowadays, it is not unusual to read news­ paper headlines that report" 'Normal' Family Fading: Study," as on the front page of the South Bend Tribune for August 10, 1994. Another sociologist, Ida Harper Simpson, has spoken to me of the "thinning family" (per­ sonal communication, July 29, 1994), and in Chapter 6,1 discussed sociologists Andrew J. Cherlin and Frank F. Furstenberg, Jr.'s (1994) characterization of marriage today as being deinstitutionalized. These descriptions point to the changes families as we know them have undergone since the mid-20th century. Families can no longer be summed up in the description, mom, dad, and the kids, the posi­ tions in a nuclear family. In contrast to my

274

FAMILY

first attempt at delineating family careers in 1978, this version includes discussions of co­ habiting couples, single-parent families due to divorce or unwed parenthood, stepfamilies, and some material on homosexual families. In addition, there is the customary analysis of nuclear families. Families may be "here to stay" as sociologist Mary Jo Bane assured her readers back in 1976. If they were and are, however, we need to recognize their diversity. Nowadays, families come in a variety of forms. To allow for this, in Chapter 11 defined one of the characteristics of a family as being a group of persons joined by mutual consent, blood, or marriage. Including the term mutual consent enabled me to add cohabiting indi­ viduals to what are considered families and to suggest the fragile nature of current intimate relations. It appears in the high turnover rates among cohabiting couples and couples who have exchanged marriage vows. In the latter case, so many first marriages of persons in their 20s dissolve, they have been labeled "starter marriages" (Schupack, 1994, p. CI). Bane (1976), however, continues to be cor­ rect. Despite some overall decline in remar­ riage rates and noticeably lower marriage rates among African Americans, families in one form or another still constitute a sig­ nificant portion of the social landscape. Joining fragility as a characteristic of today's families is the centrality of the mother-child bond. As I discussed above, the position of partner-father is the most tenuous one in the family. Men are more likely to be either peri­ pheral to families or not there at all. Whether due to work demands, a fear of being con­ sidered effeminate, or their mate's desire to retain control, many men separate them­ selves from the domestic duties of running a household or taking care of children. When unions break down, it is usually men who leave home, removing themselves from resi­ dential time with their children. Because one of the major functions of families is sociali­ zation of the young recruits whom couples provide to keep society going, the lack of fathers' involvement in child rearing is a snag in the smooth operating of families. The decline in the number of couples based on a housewife and breadwinner division of labor has led to an overload of responsibil­ ities for job-holding mothers. Children suffer from the nonparticipation of fathers in their

CAREERS

rearing when harried mothers lack the time or energy to engage in authoritative parent­ ing. The disadvantages children experience from a father who lives with them but is dis­ tant from them are compounded when fathers either leave home or have never been present. Mothers are generally the parent in residence. Under these conditions, the lack of adequate financial support from absent fathers jeop­ ardizes the physical maintenance of children. They must look to mothers for food, shelter, and clothing in addition to the rules that enable them to get along in school and com­ munity. This duty of women to fulfill all the parenting roles means that every day is mother's day—and not one of them is a holiday. If mother cannot fulfill the maternal and paternal responsibilities, the family structure breaks down and outsiders must intervene. Therefore, setting aside considera­ tion of those families where both parents are active, the irreducible components of a family are a mother and her dependent children.

1

In Conclusion Family development can assist in under­ standing the diversity of families currently existing. Through its emphasis on the expec­ table events individuals will meet in their family careers over time, familiarity with the approach can enable you to strengthen your own family careers. If you have some idea of what the future holds, you can do a better job of meeting its challenges and choices. It is unfortunate that those who most need such information are the least likely to have it. As analyses throughout the book have indicated, it is the less well-off and the least educated who are most likely to have entered parent­ hood prematurely and without partner sup­ port. They are seldom able to escape lives of poverty and casual partner relations. In turn, their offspring too often repeat the elders' family careers. Family development students should be better able to escape such pitfalls. Knowledge of family development will also enable the scholar and researcher to have a better perspective on what to look for in their study of family lives. Even those ostensibly committed to other conceptual rationales find it difficult to ignore the effects on family inter­ dependencies of how they are started, the

A

275

SUMMING-UP

comings and goings of children, partners' leaving, and breaks in members' school and occupational roles. The significance of the timing and sequencing of these turning points helps to make sense of what goes on in families. This holds true despite the range of forms families take today. With its emphasis on the interplay of the careers of family mem­ bers throughout the family history, family development gives a dynamic picture of fami­ ly behavior that is lacking in other perspectives. Because of the framework's focus on change, it incorporates extrafamilial sources and intrafamilial instigators of modifications. At the same time, consideration of family structures and family tasks indicates the con­ tinuities that supply the background for the family's interaction changes. Families shelter and prepare their members to participate in other groups. They are the bodies that through­ out history have held societies together. Thus, they represent the traditional element in

human lives. Yet as this book showed, families also constitute sources of change not only through their expected transitions but also because of unanticipated modifications in their members' experiences. An awareness of the novel as well as the continuing aspects of families is what makes studying families a lively endeavor. I have tried in this book to convey something of the fascination of this small world that occupies so much of our time and attention. After all, families, despite the changes they incorporate, contribute to our fundamental stability while enabling us to deal with the ongoing changes with which we must cope. Note 1. From Schupack (1994). Copyright © 1994 by The New York Times Company. Reprinted by permission.

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Index

Abuse, 18

Adolescents:

and conflict theory, 19

and couple relations, 166-169,177

and employment, 242(figure), 244-245

and leaving home, 247-250

and puberty, 236-238

and social class, 167,168

as siblings, 260-262

as single parents, 145-148, 246-247

developmental tasks for, 94,95-97,238-241

education of, 217-218,241-244

relationships of, 115-117,129-130

sexual relations of, 115-117,129-130,217-218,

236-237,245-247,261-262

socialization of, 238-241

See also Parent-child relations; Siblings

Adoption, 134

Affection:

and ethnicity, 86

and gender roles, 86-89

and parent-child relations, 14,85-92

and roles, 14,85-92

and social class, 86,91-92

in couple relations, 88-89

See also Communication; Power

African Americans:

and child care, 203,204,205

and postparenthood, 177

and premarital sex, 119

and remarriage, 41

and roles, 32-33,41

as adult children, 169

as siblings, 261-262,263,264,266

as single parents, 3 9 , 4 1 , 5 4 , 1 4 5 - 1 4 6 , 2 0 8 , 2 2 6

elderly, 186,188-189,191,192

employment of, 82,122-123,172,242(figure), 244­

245

gender roles of, 74,75

life expectancy of, 179

marital quality of, 151-152,153(table), 155

Allgeier, Α., 186

Amato, P., 244

Atchley.R., 183

Babbitt (Lewis), 55

Bane, M., 274

Baumrind, D., 199-200

Belsky, J., 137,140,210

Bernstein, B„ 89

Birth order, 73,143-144,197-208,210-211,254-256

Blake, J., 71

Booth, Α., 129

Bott, E., 53-54

Boundary maintenance, 4 7 , 5 1 - 5 7 , 6 9 , 9 8 , 1 2 6 , 1 5 8 ,

212. See also Social systems

Buckley, W., 57

Bumpass, L„ 226

Burgess, E., 2 1 , 1 5 1 , 1 5 4

Calderone,M.,218

Carstensen, L., 263

295

296 Cherlin, Α., 2 2 , 1 1 3 , 2 7 4 Child care: and African Americans, 203,204,205 and day care, 205-206,222-224 and men, 40,138-139,141-143,163-165,200-208, 210-211,222-224,273-275 and women, 8-9,18,138-139,141-143,163-165, 200-206,210-211,222-224,273-275 Childless couples, 36-37,38-39,47-48,134,209-210, 211 Children: abuse of, 18 gender roles of, 63-64,66-67,73-75,199-200,249­ 250,256,259,260,265 See also Adolescents; Child care; Divorce; Parent-child relations; Parenthood; Postparenthood; Siblings; Stepfamilies Cohabitation, 35,117-119,126,127-128. See also Sexual relations Communication, 14,61,84-85,88-92,155-156,169. See also Affection; Power Conflict theory, 15,18-19 Confluence theory, 72-73,258-259,265 Conroy, P., 5 1 , 2 2 7 Coombs, R., 64 Couple relations: affection in, 88-89 and adolescents, 166-169,177 and adoption, 134 and ethnicity, 114 and limited linkages, 127-130,173,182,183,185 and marriage, 119-124,127-132 and religion, 114 and social class, 114,116-117,126 childless, 36-37,38-39,47-48,134,209-210,211 cohabitation in, 35,117-119,126,127-128 communication in, 14,61,84-85,88-92,155-156, 169 developmental tasks for, 124-127 formation of, 113-119 gender roles in, 117,120-121,125-126,156 in cultural context, 130-131 morale maintenance for, 127 of adolescents, 115-117,129-130 physical maintenance for, 126 power in, 17-18,81-82,88-92 premarital sex in, 35,117-119,125,126,127-130 versus singlehood, 124 See also Adolescents; Elderly couples; Parent-child relations; Parenthood; Postparenthood Couples, childless, 36-37,38-39,47-48,134,209-210, 211 Cowan, C , 139-140 Cowan, P., 139-140

Day care. See Child care Death, 40,180(table), 181-182,192-193

FAMILY CAREERS Developmental tasks: and stress, 104-105 family, 97-99 for adolescents, 94,95-97,238-241 for couple relations, 124-127 for elderly couples, 181 -182 for parent-child relations, 198-200,208,210-211 for parenthood, 138-140 for siblings, 254 for stepfamilies, 99 individual, 93-97,105-109,124-126 peer influence on, 95-97,239-241 reproduction, 62,65-67,98 research on, 105-108 social control, 62,64-65,67(table), 6 8 , 6 9 , 7 8 - 8 1 , 98-99,100,107-108 uses of, 102-105 See also Family development theory; Limited linkages; Morale maintenance; Physical maintenance; Roles; Socialization; Social systems; Stages Dickens, C , 131 Discipline: authoritarian, 200,215,229,238-239,273 authoritative, 199-200,215,229,238-244 neglectful, 238 permissive, 200,238 Divorce: and noncustodial parents, 231-233 and parent-child relations, 208-209,211, 226-228,237 and parenthood, 136-137,144 and postparenthood, 174-177,178 and roles, 31,32,36-37 and siblings, 257-258 See also Single-parent families; Stepfamilies Domestic violence, 18 Dürkheim, E., 125 Duvall, E., 7,35-36,37

Education: of adolescents, 217-218,241-244 primary, 212-219 sex, 217-218 Elderly couples: African American, 186,188-189,191,192 and retirement, 183-184 and spousal death, 40,180(table), 181-182, 192-193 as grandparents, 190-192 demographics of, 179-181 developmental tasks for, 181-182 health of, 189-190 intergenerational relations of, 186-192 marital quality of, 184-185 physical maintenance of, 182 sexual relations of, 185-186

297

INDEX See also Couple relations; Parent-child relations;

Parenthood; Postparenthood; Siblings

Eliot, G., 184

Employment;

French, J., 81

Furstenberg, F., 113,274

and adolescents, 242(figure), 244-245

and African Americans, 82,122-123,172,

242(figure), 244-245

and morale maintenance, 219-222

of women, 8-9,18,39-40,81-82,120-124,135-136,

159-165,172,181,205-206,219-226

See also Child care

Erikson, E., 106

Ethnicity:

and adult children, 169

and affection, 86

and child care, 203,204,205

and couple relations, 114

and elderly couples, 186,188-189,191,192

and employment, 82,122-123,172,242(figure),

244-245

and gender roles, 74,75

and life expectancy, 179

and marital quality, 151-152,153(table), 155

and postparenthood, 177

and premarital sex, 119

and remarriage, 41

and roles, 3 2 - 3 3 , 4 1 , 7 4 , 7 5

and siblings, 261-262,263,264,266

and single parents, 3 9 , 4 1 , 5 4 , 1 4 5 - 1 4 6 , 2 0 8 , 2 2 6

Exchange theory, 15-18,152,154

Gender roles:

and affection, 85-92

and communication, 1 4 , 6 1 , 8 4 - 8 5 , 8 8 - 9 2 ,

155-156,169

and postparenthood, 168,171

and power, 17-18, 81-84, 88-92

and siblings, 259,260,265

and social class, 91-92

Family development theory:

affection in, 14, 85-92

and conflict theory, 15,18-19

and exchange theory, 15-18,152,154

and life course analysis, 10,19-20

assessment of, 7-10

assumptions in, 11-12

case study of, 4-7

change sequences in, 7-8

change sources in, 8-9

communication in, 14,61,84-85,88-92,

155-156, 169

defined, 3,11

norms in, 12-15,33,75-81

overview of, 268-272

positions in, 12-15,47,49-50,70,75-77

power in, 14,17-18,81-84,88-92

research for, 21-24

uses of, 4

See also Developmental tasks; Roles; Social class;

Social systems; Stages

Family size, 70-73,258-260, 265

Farber, B., 14,130

Felson, R., 256

Foote, N., 161,162

Forster, E., 141

in couple relations, 117,120-121,125-126,156

of African Americans, 74, 75

of children, 63-64,66-67,73-75,199-200, 249-250,

256, 259, 260, 265

See also Child care; Roles

Glick, P., 37,150

Goetting, Α., 254

Goode.W., 114

Gove, W., 121

Grandparents. See Elderly couples

Great Santini, The (Conroy), 51

Havighurst, R„ 94,105

Hess, R.,215

Hetherington, E., 209,227,228, 237

Hill, M., 54

Hill, R . , 7 , 3 4 , 3 5 - 3 6 , 3 7 , 4 2 , 1 3 3

Hispanics:

and premarital sex, 119

and roles, 32-33

as single parents, 4 1 , 1 4 5 , 2 0 8

See also Ethnicity

Hochschild, Α., 163

Hohn, C , 37

Homans, G., 26

Homosexuality, 7 , 6 3 - 6 4 , 8 6 , 1 1 3 , 1 2 1

and parent-child relations, 63-64,86,230-231

Houseknecht, S., 38

Howes, C , 213

Isabella, R„ 137

Johnson, C , 51

Johnson, D„ 129

Jourard, S., 86

Keith, B., 244

Klein, D., 171,186, 191

Lamb, M.,202

Landsverk, J., 64

298 Langman, L., 26 LaRossa, M., 201 LaRossa, R., 201 Lawrence, D., 157 Lee, G., 184 Lesbians. See Homosexuality Lewis, S„ 55 Life course analysis, 10,19-20 Limited linkages: and siblings, 254 in couple relations, 127-130,173,182,183,185 in parent-child relations, 93,99-102,108-109,213, 272-273 See also Developmental tasks Linton, R., 73

MacKinnon, C , 258 Magrabi, F., 99 Marshall, W., 99 Marx, K„ 18,25 McDevitt, X, 215 Mead, M„ 54-55 Mederer, H., 34 Merton, R., 15 Middle class, 26-27 and adolescents, 167,168 and affection, 91-92 and couple relations, 126 and family size, 72 and parent-child relations, 213,215-217 and postparenthood, 169,171-172 and power, 82,91-92 and roles, 7 5 , 7 7 See also Social class; Working class Milstein, J., 9 Modell, J., 115 Montgomery, L„ 17-18 Morale maintenance: and employment, 219-222 and parenthood, 62,65,67(table), 68,69,98-99, 100,102,107-108,138-140,154,159,219-222 in couple relations, 127 See also Developmental tasks; Physical maintenance; Reproduction; Social control; Socialization

Norms, 12-15, 33, 75-81. See also Positions; Roles Norton, Α., 36

Oppenheimer, V., 122

Parent-child relations: affection in, 14,85-92 and firstborn, 197-206,210-211 and limited linkages, 93,99-102,108-109,213, 272­ 273

FAMILY CAREERS and primary education, 212-219 and second child, 73,143-144,206-208,254-256 and sex education, 217-218 and single mothers, 39,40-41,54,144-147,208-211 authoritarian, 200,215,229,238-239,273 authoritative, 199-200,215,229,238-244 communication in, 14,61,84-85,88-92,155-156, 169 developmental tasks for, 198-200,208,210-211 discipline in, 199-200,215,229,238-244,273 homosexuality in, 63-64,86,230-231 neglectful, 238 permissive, 200,238 power in, 14,17-18,82-83,89-92 versus childless couples, 36-37,38-39,47-48,134, 209-210,211 See also Adolescents; Child care; Divorce; Elderly couples; Employment; Parenthood; Postparent­ hood; Siblings; Social class; Socialization Parenthood: and adult children, 169-171 and children's value, 134-135 and communication, 14,61,84-85,88-92,155-156, 169 and fathers, 40,138-139,141-143,147-148,163­ 165,200-208,210-211,222-224,273-275 and marital quality, 151-156 and morale maintenance, 62,65,67(table), 6 8 , 6 9 , 98-99,100,102,107-108,138-140,154,159,219­ 222 and physical maintenance, 6 2 - 6 3 , 6 7 - 6 8 , 6 9 , 9 8 , 1 0 0 ­ 102,107-108, 138-140,155,159,219-222 and single mothers, 39,40-41,54,144-147,208-211 demographics of, 149-150 satisfaction in, 150-151 sexual relations in, 139,155-156 traditional, 154-155,159-160 transition to, 133-134,135-141,148 versus childless couples, 36-37,38-39,47-48,134, 209-210,211 See also Adolescents; Couple relations; Divorce; Elderly couples; Employment; Parent-child rela­ tions; Postparenthood; Siblings; Social class; Socialization Patterson, C , 230 Physical maintenance: and couple relations, 126 and elderly couples, 182 and parenthood, 6 2 - 6 3 , 6 7 - 6 8 , 6 9 , 9 8 , 1 0 0 - 1 0 2 , 1 0 7­ 108,138-140,155,159,219-222 See also Developmental tasks; Morale maintenance; Reproduction; Social control; Socialization Positions, 12-15,47,49-50,70,75-77. See also Norms; Roles Postparenthood: and African Americans, 177 and gender roles, 168,171 and intergenerational relations, 175-177 and social class, 169,171-172

299

INDEX divorce in, 174-177,178

myths of, 171-174,177-178

sexual relations in, 172-174,178

See also Adolescents; Couple relations; Elderly rela­

tions; Parent-child relations; Parenthood; Siblings

Powell, B., 259

Power:

and roles, 17-18,81-84,88-92

and siblings, 83-84

and social class, 82,91-92,224-225

and women, 17-18,81 -84,88-92

in couple relations, 17-18,81-82,88-92

in parent-child relations, 14,17-18,82-83,89-92

See also Affection; Communication

Presser, Η., 222-223

Puberty. See Adolescents

Rapoport,R.,31

Raven, B.,81

Religion, 114

Remarriage. See Divorce; Stepfamilies

Reproduction, 62,65-67,98. See also Developmental

tasks; Morale maintenance; Physical main­

tenance; Sexual relations; Social control;

Socialization

Resource dilution theory, 72-73,259,265

Retirement. See Elderly couples

Riedmann, Α., 263

Rodgers, R., 14, 36

Roles:

achieved,73-74

and affection, 14,85-92

and age, 73-75

and birth order, 73,143-144,197-208,210-211,254­

256

and communication, 14,61,84-85,88-92,155-156,

169

and confluence theory, 72-73,258-259,265

and ethnicity, 3 2 - 3 3 , 4 2 , 7 4 , 7 5

and family size, 70-73,258-260,265

and family structure, 12-15,47,49-50,70, 75-77

and interdependence 46-47, 48-51, 53-54,68-69

and norms, 12-15, 33,75-81

and positions, 12-15,47,49-50,70, 75-77

and power, 17-18,81-84,88-92

and resource dilution theory, 72-73,259,265

and social control, 78-81

ascribed, 73-75

conformity to, 78-81

making of, 77-78

reciprocity of, 78-79

See also Child care; Developmental tasks; Divorce;

Family development theory, Gender roles; Social

class; Social systems; Stages

Rossi, Α., 134

Rubin, L., 168

Russo, N., 256

Sexual relations:

and homosexuality, 7 , 6 3 - 6 4 , 8 6 , 1 1 3 , 1 2 1 , 2 3 0 - 2 3 1

and parenthood, 139,155-156

and postparenthood, 172-174,178

and reproduction, 6 2 , 6 5 - 6 7 , 9 8

and sex education, 217-218

of adolescents, 115-117,129-130,217-218,236-237,

245-247,261-262

of couples, 35,117-119,125,126,127-130,

185-186

of elderly couples, 185-186

premarital, 35, 117-119,125, 126, 127-130,144-148

S h e h a n , C , 184

Siblings:

African American, 261-262,263, 264,266

and birth order, 73,143-144,206-208,254-256

and confluence theory, 72-73,258-259,265

and family size, 70-73, 258-260, 265

and gender roles, 259,260,265

and limited linkages, 254

and older parents, 264-265

and power, 83-84

and resource dilution theory, 72-73,259,265

as adolescents, 260-262

as adults, 262-265

beginning relations of, 254-257

developmental tasks for, 254

elderly, 165-167

learning from, 258-260

parental mediation for, 256-257

See also Divorce; Stepfamilies

Single-parent families:

adolescent-headed, 145-148,246-247

and African Americans, 3 9 , 4 1 , 5 4 , 1 4 5 - 1 4 6 , 2 0 8 , 2 2 6

and Hispanics, 4 1 , 1 4 5 , 2 0 8

female-headed, 39,40-41,54,144-147,208-211

male-headed, 147-148

stages of, 39-41

See also Divorce

Social class:

and adolescents, 167,168

and affection, 86,91-92

and couple relations, 114,116-117,126

and family development theory, 25-28

and gender roles, 91-92

and parent-child relations, 199,213,215-217,224­

225

and parenthood, 167,168,169,171-172

and power, 82,91-92, 224-225

and remarriage, 41

and roles, 3 3 , 7 2 , 7 5 , 7 7 , 9 1 - 9 2

lower, 27-28,91-92,116-117,126,213,215-217

upper, 26,91-92

See also Middle class; Working class

Social control, 62,64-65,67(table), 6 8 , 6 9 , 9 8 - 9 9 , 1 0 0 ,

107-108

and roles, 78-81

300 See also Developmental tasks; Morale maintenance;

Physical maintenance; Reproduction; Socialization

Socialization:

and discipline, 199-200,215,229,238-244,273

and education, 212-219,241-244

as family task, 62,63-64,67(table), 6 8 , 6 9 , 9 8 ,

107-108

influences on, 198-200, 210-211

of adolescents, 238-241

See also Developmental tasks; Morale maintenance;

Physical maintenance; Reproduction; Social con­

trol

Social systems:

boundary maintenance in, 4 7 , 5 1 - 5 7 , 6 9 , 9 8 , 1 2 6 ,

158,212

change adaptability in, 4 7 , 5 7 - 6 2 , 6 9

communication in, 14,61,84-85,88-92,155-156,

169

feedback processes in, 57-62

frame of reference in, 51-52

interdependency in, 46-47,48-51,53-54,68-69

kinship terminology in, 52-53

positions in, 12-15,47,49-50,70,75-77

reproduction in, 6 2 , 6 5 - 6 7 , 9 8

ritual in, 53

social control in, 62,64-65,67(table), 68,69,78-81,

98-99,100,107-108

task performance in, 4 7 , 6 2 - 6 8 , 6 9

See also Developmental tasks; Family development

theory; Morale maintenance; Physical main­

tenance; Roles; Socialization; Stages

Socioeconomic status. See Middle class; Social class;

Working class

Sroufe, L., 106

Stages:

and divorce, 3 1 , 3 2 , 3 6 - 3 7

and ethnicity, 32-33,41

and family life cycle, 29-30

and roles, 30-33

as behavior predictors, 42-44

as development divisions, 33-34

historical perspective of, 43-44

in social systems, 67-68

of childless couples, 36-37,38-39,47-48,134,209­

210,211

of single-parent families, 39-41

of stepfamilies, 29-30,36, 37,41-42

of traditional families, 34-36

out-of-sequence, 36,39

FAMILY

CAREERS

recycled, 29-30,36,37

truncated, 36-37,38-39

See also Developmental tasks; Family development

theory; Roles; Social systems

Steelman, L., 259

Steinberg, L., 2360

Stepfamilies:

and parent-child relations, 228-230,237

and parenthood, 157-159

and siblings, 263

developmental tasks for, 99

stages of, 2 9 - 3 0 , 3 6 , 3 7 , 4 1 - 4 2

See also Divorce

Sweet,)., 226

Troll, L., 95

Turner, R., 77

Volling, B„ 142

Wallin,P., 151,154

Watson, J„ 132

Weber, M„ 25

Weisel, T., 95

White, J., 37

White, L., 263

Whyte, M . , 1 1 4 , 1 1 5 , 1 1 7 , 1 2 8 , 1 3 1

Widowers, 40,180(table), 181-182,192-193

Wilde, O., 130

Women:

and domestic violence, 18

and power, 17-18,81-84,88-92

as grandmothers, 190-192

as single parents, 39,40-41,54,144-147,208-211

as widows, 180(table), 181-182,192-193

childless, 36-37,38-39,47-48,134,209-210,211

life expectancy of, 179-181

See also Child care; Employment; Gender roles

Working class, 27

and adolescents, 167,168

and family size, 72

and postparenthood, 169,171-172

and power, 82,91-92,224-225

and roles, 75,77

See also Middle class; Social class

About the Author

Joan Aldous, Ph.D., is the William R. Kenan, Jr., Professor of Sociology at the University of Notre Dame. Prior to joining the faculty at Notre Dame, she was Professor of Child and Family Development and Sociology at the University of Georgia and Professor of Soci­ ology at the University of Minnesota, where she received her doctorate. She has been president of the National Council on Family Relations and an elected member of the coun­ cil of the American Sociological Association. She has received the Ernest W. Burgess Award

for her contributions to theory and research in the family area. Her research interests have centered on parent-child relations and family policy. She has edited and coedited publica­ tions on a number of topics, including twoearner families, the impact on families of workplace policies, family development, and religion and families. Her research articles have appeared in journals such as the Journal of Marriage and the Family, the Journal of Family Issues, and Social Forces.

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