A Study on the Changes of American Family Structure.doc

A Study on the Changes of American Family StructureAbstractThis paper is an analysis on the American family structure that has undergone enormous changes since the Second World War. Nuclear family, the traditional family, which was prevalent in 1950s, no longer predominated in the United States. Instead, the numbers of new patterns such as single parent family, unmarried cohabit family, childless family and blended family of American family structure increased continuously. At the same time, divorce rate increased to a great extent, birth rate decreased noticeably and also cohabitation rate has been climbing up. This paper hold that these changes are closely related to the ongoing social and economic development and people concept and values, and the American family is toward diversification of family forms, in which none of them predominates in the future, rather than a single standard form.This paper aims to provide a general description of the changes in American family pattern since the Second World War, especially with an emphasis on the changes in nuclear family and the causes of the changes.Key words: American nuclear family; family patterns; causes of the changes内容摘要本文分析了二战以来美国家庭模式经历的巨大变化，五十年代传统的核心家庭模式不在占主导地位，而单亲家庭、未婚同居家庭、丁克家庭及混合家庭的数却在不断上升。同时，离婚率大幅度上升，人口出生率明显下降，未婚同居率也一直在攀升。本文认为这些变化与社会经济的不断发展及人们不断不变化的价值观念等密切相关，也认为美国家庭模式倾向于走向多样化而并非一种模式占主导的趋势。本文旨在描述二战以来美国家庭模式变化的总体情况，重点描述核心家庭的变化情况并分析其变化的原因。关键词：美国核心家庭; 家庭模式；家庭变化成因ContentAbstract(English).iAbstract(Chinese).ii 1. Introduction.12. Definition of family.13. Changes of American family structure23.1 A changing nuclear family.2 3.1.1 Marriage and divorce2. 3.1.2 The changes in marital and non-marital fertility3 3.1.3 Cohabitation.3 3.2 Patterns of American family structure.4 3.2.1 Married couples with children5 3.2.2 Married couples without children.5 3.2.3 Single-parent family.5 3.2.4 Blended family.64. Causes of family structure changes.7 4.1 Economic development in American society7 4.2 Feminist movement and familychanges8 4.3 Increasing labor force participation by women.9 4.4 Peoples changing concept and values105. Conclusion.12Works cited.131. Introduction In recent years, applied researchers have become increasingly interested in the changes of American family patterns. However, few studies are satisfactory to interpret these causes of the changes. The present paper is a comprehensive analysis on the causes of American family structure.In the latter half of the twentieth century, a diverse range of family patters has replaced the nuclear family, which was once predominant in the 1950s.However, it began to decline since the Second World War and dramatic changes occurred to American family life thereafter. Divorce is much more common. There are also a number of increasing people who are to marry and often living with a partner before marriage. Thus a growing number of children are bore to mothers who are not married. And more and more women are beginning to bear full responsibility for their family. This has led to some people even predict that nuclear family is in the process of disappearing.Indeed, under these social, economic and cultural circumstances, changes on American family have been under way since the Second World War. The main trend of American family will become more various rather than a single standard form in the future as the objective causes. The purpose of this paper is to provide a general description of the changes in American family since the Second World War and emphasizing especially the changes in nuclear family and analyze the causes of the changes.2. Definition of family “A family is defined as consisting of two or more persons, related by blood, marriage, or adoption, living in the same household.” (AS 619) But to understand families and the specific relations they represent, we must recognize that the term “family” is socially constructed; that is the meaning of family changes in response to a wide variety of social and cultural conditions. To reflect this understanding, we often refer to families in the plural. Multiple meanings of family are reflected in the historical and cross-cultural record. For example, in ancient Greece, “family” referred to the household economy, including the land, house, and servants. In medieval Europe, peasants who lived on feudal estates were considered part of the lords “family” and he was called their “father” even though they were not related to him by blood. In some cultures, non-kid adults are treated as family members and act as co-parents toward children. Similarly, in contemporary Native American families, the terms used to describe family relationships are more meaningful than narrow English usage would imply: a “grandmother” may actually be a childs aunt or grandaunt, and “cousin” may have various meaning not necessarily based on birth and marriage. However, sometimes we also make generalizations about families by referring to “the family” as a social institutionmany expectations and activities embedded in a larger number of social, economic, legal, political and cultural practices. In this paper, it places the term “family”, as a social institution in the latter half of the 20th century in the United States.3. Changes of American family “A careful look at what did and did not happen to America families in the postwar period would behelpful for us to avoid any misleading notions about the trends and to examine its underlying causes.”(Viqi 20)3.1 A changing nuclear family A nuclear family, in which father acted as breadwinner and mother as homemaker, consists of a conjugal couple and their children. In the 1950s, it was very prevalent. But now it has evolved. The paper shows the changes on the marriage, divorce and birthrate in American family since the 1950s.3.1.1 Marriage and divorce One of the key changes in American family is that marriage rates have fallen significantly since 1950 despite a small ascent from 1960 to 1970. It went up moderately in 1980 and then went down in the following years. As the marriage rate went down, the divorce rose, with its peak in the late 1970s. The rising trend in the divorces has been going on for a long time since the 1950s, and we see a slow drop-off in the 1980s and 1990s. During the 1980s and early 1990s, five of ten marriages ended in divorce. In the coming decade, we can expect continual high levels of divorce, perhaps dipping down a bit so that four of ten marriages will dissolve. Another significant change in family union formation process has been the postponement in marriage since the Baby Boom. Above shows the median age at marriage among American women and men over the past century. As the above shows, for women, age at marriage hovered around 21-22 years between 1890 and 1950, declined significantly during the Baby Boom, and began rising thereafter, reaching slightly over 25 years old in 2000. Patterns for men are somewhat different, with a general decline in age at marriage between 1890 and the Baby Boom. Like women, however, age at marriage for men began rising after the Baby Boom, and in the year 2000, was higher than at any time in the past century.3.1.2 The shift in marital and non-marital fertility Between 1960 and 1990, marital fertility ratesbirths to married women between the ages of 15 and 44declined sharply, while non-marital fertility ratesbirths to unmarried women of similar agesincreased gradually. Together, these married and non-married trends represented a reduction in overall fertility while increasing the proportion of children born outside of marriage. Beginning in the mid-1970s, marital fertility rates stopped declining, non-marital fertility rates begin to rise, and the age at first marriage continued to rise. After 1975, the rise in the illegitimacy ratio was due to increase in non-marital fertility as well as to increase in the number of women at risk of having a non-marital birth. Changes in marital and non-marital fertility altered family life in two major ways: they reduced the prevalence of parenthood overall and they increased the proportion of families headed by single mothers. 3.1.3 Cohabitation At the same time marriage is being postponed, unmarried cohabitation has increased. Chart 3 shows the number of opposite-sex cohabiting couple households. In 1960, the number was estimated at less than half a million; at the 2000 Census, there were nearly 5 million such households. Cohabitation, that is living with someone in a sexual union without a formal marriage has become increasingly common. Three million households in 1991 had cohabiting couples, nearly 60 percent of who were under age 35. “Cohabitation has increased six folds since 1970when only 500,000 households had cohabiting couples. Only opposite-sex couples are counted in these figures, so these data underestimate the extent of cohabitation in the United States today ( Ahlburg 27). About one-third of all cohabiting, opposite-sex couples in 1991 had children under age 15 present in their homes, but far more cohabiting couples are parents. Where once non-marital birth was a relatively minor phenomenon, it has now reached considerable proportions. “By one estimate, almost half of cohabiting couples have children either living with them or living elsewhere with a custodial parent.” Cohabitation is often seen as prelude to marriage. Only 5 percent of women ages 15 to 44 were cohabiting with a male partner in 1988, and one-third had done so at some time in the past. One-quarter of white women, one-quarter of Hispanic women, and nearly one-third of black women had lived with their first husband before marriage. Among single persons who plan to cohabit in the future, more than 80 percent said that cohabiting allows couples to make sure they are compatible before getting married. “At least one of the partners expects the arrangements to result in marriage in 90 percent of cohabitations. Respondents may be overly optimistic, however; 55 percent of first cohabiting unions of white women and 42 percent of those of black women resulted in marriage” (Bumpass 487) It is important to note that the rise in cohabitation has helped to offset much of the fall in marriage rates. If we expand our notion of “marriage” to include legal marriage and cohabitation, there has been little decline in the institution of marriage in the United States.3.2 Variants of family structure The new family system we are now seeing differs from the older one in several ways. With the increase in premarital sex, cohabitation, and non- marital birth, a good deal of what used to be reserved for legal marriage is now taking place outside of it. These illegalized sexual and parental activities are not chaotic but exhibit a pattern that has social significance. Cohabitation could actually be perceived as conventional marriage. Cohabitation then should be seen as new variants of family structure rather than phenomena that have nothing to do with a family system. At the same time, we should bear in mind that the conventional nuclear family is still here. Many households still have a father, mother and minor children living together, although this makes up only about one fourth of all householdsa significant drop from 1970. As the above shows, the family structure in the United States is becoming more complicated because there are different kinds of families and household types existing at the same time. For example, since 1970 the rate of households composed of married couples with children has decreased, whereas rate of households composed of single persons and single parents has increased.3.2.1 Married couples with children Twoparent families declined substantially in the period 1960 to 1998, from 91 percent to 73 percent. Not all of the 73 percent of family households with children in 1998 had two biological parents in the household. Using data that allow identification of biological relationships, we can estimates that 12 percent of children who live in two-parent families are actually not living with both biological parents and thin that only 88 percent of the two-parent family households with children include both biological parents, and 64 percent of family households with children are “intact” two-parent families. The trend suggests the decrease of the two-parent family. 3.2.2 Married couples without children As it shows, married couples without children has become the most common type of household, with the stable proportion of all households from 1970 to 2000. And that forty-two percent of all families in 1991 consisted of married couples without children. Among married couples without children in 1991, about 15 percent of the women were under age 35, suggesting a possible delay in childbearing. Indeed, over half of all married women younger than 35 who were childless in 1990 reported that they expect to have a child at some point in the future. 3.2.3 Single-parent families The one-parent family is usually described as an incomplete nuclear family, and there is a general assumption that it is socially undesirable. However, with the rising divorce rate, this family type has also become increasingly common in the white middle class. Chart 4 shows that single parent household keeps increasing through 1970 to 2000, although there is stagnation in the 1990s. Women were five times more likely than men to be raising a family alone in 1991, and African-Americans were almost three times more likely than whites to be single parents. Single-parent families represented with children, one in three Hispanic families with children, and one in six white families with children. Changing patterns of marriage, divorce, remarriage, and the rise in births to unmarried women have contributed to the growth of single-parent families. Demographer Larry Bumpass writes: “About half of todays young children will spend some time in a single-parent family, most as a consequence of divorce Furthermore, this is not just simply a transitional phase between a first and second marriage. The majority will reside in a mother-only family for the remainder of their childhood”. (Randall 485)3.2.4 Blended family The family form created in a remarriage that involves one or more children from the previous marriage of either spouse is called a reconstituted family or a blended family. Each has lost a spouse through divorce or death. One or both of them have children from their previous marriage. They form a new stepfamily that includes children from one or both of their first households. Because of constant flow in and out between divorce and marriage in the modern U.S. society, there is going to be a fair number of people in single parent families or families of remarriage. In the United States, remarriage has been the traditional answer to many of the problems faced by single parents. “Remarriage improves the financial situation of a divorced mother and provides another adult to share the household tasks and responsibilities. In addition, remarrying is a way to end the loneliness and isolation many divorced persons experience.”（Cherlin 80） One interesting result of all this divorce and remarriage is that the kinship structure is becoming more complicated. In the tradition of the nuclear family, each child has one father and one mother and lives in a single household until he or she is old enough to leave home and establish another household. With a high rate of divorce and remarriage, though, many children have two sets of parents and two households or sometimes even more. Instead of merely having one set of brothers and sisters, they have two or more sets, living in different places. It is said that there is a whole new problem of etiquette at receptions today; for when children of divorced people get married, a quite complicated set of families may have to be invited to the reception. In this sense we may actually have more family types than before. “One of three Americans is now a stepparent, a stepchild, a stepsibling, or some other member of a stepfamily in 1991 ”（Cherlin 360）.Without sufficient guidelines, each remarried couple must work out for themselves definitions for the obligations of each role. They must learn how to reconcile competing claims for time and resources from their own children, the children they are raising who have an absent natural parent, and the children being raised by an ex-spouse. The complexity of these problems that each couple must work out through trial and error means that many things will fail. Family unity will not be achieved, tensions will mount, feelings will be hurt, and relationships will be strained. The consequence is that remarried divorced couples, especially with children from precious marriages, have an increased probability of redivorce when compared to first marriages.4. Causes of family changes Many scholars have engaged themselves in the causes of the changes in American family structure by discussing the particular sources of changes and consequences for society and individual well-being. Some consensus think that cultural and economic changes, such as the effects of industrialization, rising “individualism”, womens changing roles in the labor mar