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Gender Roles in transition
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The new woman (aspirations: 85% = career women w/
children)
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"superwomen"
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role strain
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women: conflict between professional
& family lives
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The Second Shift (Arlie
Hochschild)
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still doing more work at home,
despite full time PLF participation
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culture lag continues
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Males also changing from
what some have called the "breadwinner trap"
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traditionally, an economic
role (duties and obligations)
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overly dependent upon
occupation for identity |
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Two general theoretical "takes"
on why gender roles are as they are
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Conflict Theory
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Marx: Mode of Production
determines relations of production & the "superstructure" (family, religion,
ideology, the state)
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The superstructure is
responsible for reproducing the status quo |
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Division of sexual labor
represents the emotional exploitation of both men and women:
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in effect, 1/2 selves
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Men: emotional detachment is
necessary
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emotions interfere with work,
which interferes with production and with profit |
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if men paid attention to their
emotions, they'd agitate for better treatment on the job |
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women: primary job in re: economy = what they call "reproduction of the working class"
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aspirations of achievement would interfere with the
necessity of bringing up the next generation of workers
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These same theorists argue that we even see relationships in commodified terms
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Love and the marketplace
(or better, love as a marketplace)
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formal rationality extending into our affective lives
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We make a self-assessment
based upon what we perceive to be our (culturally determined) strong and weak
points and trade upon those points to get the best deal we can on the market
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we objectify our selves &
others
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Functionalists, on
the other hand:
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gender roles are a division of labor designed to make the most of economic opportunity:
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men have been the paid workers
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women have "reproduced" the working class
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everyone has benefited from
that arrangement
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under those conditions, the
middle class has grown
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as economic realities have
changed, the sexes have made the "necessary" adaptations to continue their
materially comfortable lifestyles
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THE FAMILY (Kinship) IN MODERN SOCIETY
(one of the four core social institutions)
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Three Main Functions
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Regulates sexual
relations (establishes rules for):
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who may sleep and have sex with
whom
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exchange of sexual partners between (v. w/in) families
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what the anthropologist
Bronislaw Malinowski called the principle of reciprocity
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uniting two previously
un-united families
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creating a network of social ties which binds the social structure together
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Child-rearing
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clarification of social identity ("Are you any relation to ...?")
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establishes (what
used to be called) "legitimacy": a much less ugly term for the same idea is
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lineality:
the path along which a person's blood and property lines are traced
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Household Composition
(who lives with whom? how does the family fit into the larger economy?)
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Forms of Families (as
discussed, the form of the family has changed greatly in the modern world)
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Affected by both social
structural realities (urban & industrial)
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And by changing cultural values
and norms
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Cultural Factors affecting
family composition
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Norms regarding number of mates
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Monogamy = one mate per person
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polygamy = more than one wife
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polyandry = more than one husband
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Norms regarding pool of
eligible mates
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exogamy = rules requiring marriage outside a certain group
(incest taboo)
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endogamy= rules requiring marriage inside a certain group
(race, religion, social class)
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homogamy (not such a hard and
fast rule, per se, but): the probability & tendency to marry people like
ourselves
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so, although we marry for
love, who we fall in love with is powerfully affected by cultural norms
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| American Family
(Changes = industrialization, the changing status of women: but, the family has become or is becoming more modern all the time: urban, and bureaucratized and pluralistic in form)
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| Changes in
relationship between household and larger economy (many of these we've
already discussed in the stratification segment of the course)
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ca. 60-65% of wives are both housewives & waged labor
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ca. 60-70% of moms w/ school-aged kids have outside jobs
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combination of both necessity & opportunity: smaller families, more time, service industries
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happier marriages if wife wants to work
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Changes in Child-Rearing
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New status of the child
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fewer kids; increasing
childlessness (extra mouths to feed; very expensive (through high school = ca. $100,000))
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smaller families; working
parents
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more attention from adults; greater share of family $
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Child care: (cost/quality; also
socialization)
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time in school = start
earlier, stay longer
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ca. 60-65% of all pre-school age kids in school
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tv: pre-schoolers = 33 hours per week; 6th graders = 31 hours
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Many issues families face
reflect (again): Private troubles and Public Issues (Mills)
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in many instances, there is a
poor fit between the family and other institutions
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1. Schools still act as if it's the 1950's. 2. Day care (expense) 3. employers: still unhelpful on family policies (w/ some noted exceptions); 4. State: FMLA (but 95% of the labor force is not eligible)
| Changes in Household Composition
| Divorce: dramatic increases
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divorce rate =
# of divorces per 100 married persons (the accompanying table shows the
changing rate over time)
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1920 |
13.4 |
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1930 |
17 |
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1940 |
16.9 |
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1950 |
23.1 |
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1960 |
25.8 |
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1970 |
32.8 |
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1980 |
49.7 |
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1992 |
51.4 |
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why the increase in
divorce?
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emotional satisfaction
>economic security
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reduction in necessity and
benefits of marriage
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increased female opportunities
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reduction of stigma -- no-fault divorce; generally easier to divorce
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Marriage: an assessment
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remarriage rate has kept
up with divorce rate
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rejection of
partners, not institution
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married still happier
than single
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Alternative Household
Forms
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Living together increased over
six-fold since 1970
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often short-term
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higher divorce rate than those
who did not live together first
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Staying single: 1999 = ca.
25-30% of Amer. households = one person
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Later marriages
| 1999, ca. 68% of all women aged 20-24 = "never married": in 1970 this was 36%
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Single Parenthood
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ca: 1:4 w/ kids under 18
= single parent households
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1999: approx. 19% white h/holds; 32% Hispanic; 53% African American
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ca. 50% of kids will spend part of their childhood with one parent
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still, ca. 90-95% of Americans will marry at least once
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The development of an
unprecedented societal institution, in terms of household characteristics
(esp. in terms of locality and
lineality)
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patterns of locality: i.e., with which side of the family do the children tend to live?
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patrilocal -- nuclear, settle near the father's side
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matrilocal, near the mother's side
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patterns of lineality
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patrilineal -- trace blood and property lines along the father's side of the family
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matrilineal -- same, except traced along the mother's lineage
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lineality and locality have tended to accompany one another
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but American society, especially since the early 1970s has become a
matrilocal & patrilineal society
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i.e., wealth tends to follow the father, children tend to follow the mother
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(about 90% of single-parent
households are headed by the mother)
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State Stepping in: Bureaucratization of the American family?
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due to patrilinear, matrilocal nature of Amer. society, the family has had to find some means of equalizing income
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since 1970s -- courts examining distribution of income; increasing the amounts of child support awarded -- currently, efforts are underway to garnish wages, or in some way guarantee payments are made
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if kinship is unable to be organized in ways which keep household afloat bureaucratic agencies intervene
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Rationalizing the economy of the family (i.e., making it more formally rational)
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contractual child support
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child support enforcement procedures (courts; Social Security Administration)
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direct transfer payments (welfare payments)
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dependent survivor
payments (death)
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AFDC (non-death)
NOW TANF
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esp. in terms of household composition, the family has come to depend upon the state for its very survival
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| Changes,
Functionally:
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increasingly the family could not control the sexual behaviors of its members (eg, monogamy)
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increasingly,
child-raising takes place outside the family under auspices of bureaucratic
agencies
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household composition -- esp. economically, is organized nearly half the time by outside agencies
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All are such new developments
it's impossible to say whether these are "good" or "bad" things.
 Back
to Main Course Page
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