Dating, Mating, and Communicating Unit 3

Power in Relationships

• Power: Ability to exercise one's will.
• Personal Power/Autonomy: Power exercised over oneself.
• Social Power: Ability to exercise one's will over others.
• Relationship Power: Objective and subjective measures of fairness.
• Reward Power: Ability to give gifts and favors.
• Coercive Power: Ability to punish (psychological, emotional, physical abuse).
• Expert Power: Perception of superior judgment, knowledge, or ability.
• Informational Power: Persuasive content of communication.
• Referent Power: Based on emotional identification with partner.
• Legitimate Power: Claim to authority or right to compliance.
• Resource Hypothesis: Partner with more resources (earnings, education) has more power.
• Power-Granting: Socially structured by gender, unevenly distributed in heterosexual relationships.
• Couple power resources: Reflect each partner's relative resources, gender expectations, and socialization.
• Decision making: Who gets to make decisions
• Division of labor: Who provides income or household labor
• Allocation of money: Who controls spending?
• Ability to influence: Who feels comfortable in raising complaints?
• Egalitarian Unions: Share all four power-granting resources.
• Gender-Modified Egalitarian Unions: Equality diminished by traditional gender roles.
• Neotraditional Unions: Traditional division of labor and male leadership, but more egalitarian.
• Power Asymmetry: Often characterizes dissatisfied couples.
• Supportive Partners: Avoid power politics.
• Changing Power Patterns: Open negotiation is the best approach.
• Physical Violence: Using physical violence to gain or demonstrate power in a family relationship has occurred throughout history.

Intimate Partner Violence (IPV)

• IPV Definition: Physical or emotional abuse of a partner (includes spouses, ex-spouses, current or former boyfriends/girlfriends, same-sex partners).
• Statistics: Higher in cohabitating couples than married couples. Intergenerational transmission rate is 30%. Higher against women than men.
• Contributing Factors: Stress, financial overload, changing lifestyles, children's behaviors, depression, mental illness, and substance abuse.
• Situational Couple Violence: Symmetrical violence, fewer instances, not likely to escalate.
• Coercive Controlling Violence: Oriented to controlling the partner through fear and intimidation; more likely to escalate and lead to serious injury or homicide than situational couple violence more likely in marriage than cohabitation.
• Signs of Coercive Control: Dominance, humiliation, isolation, threats, intimidation.
• Intimate Terrorists: Attempt to compensate for feelings of powerlessness or inadequacy; attempt to maintain control over partners trying to become independent of the relationship.
• Victim Reasons for Staying: Fear, cultural norms, economic dependence, lower self-esteem, exchange theory, love, belief woman has to keep the relationship
• Battered Woman Syndrome: A wife cannot see a way out of her situation.
• Male IPV Victims are often made fun of or considered unmanly; ones who report IPV are some- times arrested as suspected perpetrators; feel ashamed, lack resources, fear that reporting abuse wil l mean losing access to children, wanting to protect children, being in denial
• Abuse Among Same-Gender, Bisexual, and Transgender Couples: Rates comparable to heterosexual IPV.

Child Maltreatment

• Definition: Abuse and neglect (physical, mental injury, sexual abuse, or negligent treatment).
• Reporting: More frequent among poor and nonwhite families.
• Child Abuse: Overt acts of aggression.
• Child Neglect: Acts of omission, failing to provide adequate care.
• Emotional Neglect: Being overly harsh/critical or uninterested.
• Sexual Abuse: Child forced, tricked, or coerced into sexual behavior by an older person.
• Incest: Sexual relations with a close relative.
• Risk Factors for Child Abuse:
  • Believing children need physical punishment
  • Unrealistic expectations
  • Parental stress
  • Young, inexperienced parents
  • Marital discord/divorce
  • Substance abuse
  • Cohabitation with potentially harmful partner
  • Having a stepfather
• Sibling Violence: Most pervasive, rarely happens around parents.
• Child-to-Parent Violence: 9-14% of parents abused by adolescent children.
• Response: Shelters, foster care, family preservation.
• Criminal Justice Response to DV: Arrests, mandatory arrest policies, counseling, education programs and other methods involving empathy and increasing parent's self-esteem and knowledge about children; couple's therapy programs; stem from premise that its possible for couples to stay together without violence after an abusive past
• Macro-Structural Approach notes the social, cultural, and economic context of family violence, then provides programs and services to help reduce or other address it

Family Stress and Crisis

• Stress: Tension resulting from the need to respond to change.
• Individual Stress: Physically and emotionally experienced.
• Family Stress: Tension when demands test family capabilities.
• Family Crisis: Usual patterns ineffective, new ones needed.
• Three Phases of Family Crisis: The event, period of disorganization, recovery phase.
• Crisis: Change, turning point, instability.
• Resilience: Ability to recover from challenging situations.
• Theoretical Perspectives:
  • Structural functionalist perspective- family crisis threatens to disrupt the family's ability to perform critical functions
  • Family development perspective- transitions-- expected or predictable changes-- family stressors that can precipitate a family crisis
  • Family ecology perspective- causes of family stress originate outside the family-- neighborhood, work- place, national/international environments
  • Family system framework -family as a system with each part influencing al l the others
  • Interactionist perspective- how families define situations as stressful or not and may struggle to create shared family meanings
• Stressors: Demands causing stress.
• Easier to Cope With Stressors When: Expected, brief, seen as not so serious, gradual improve over time.
• Types of Stressors:
  • Addition of family member
  • Loss of family member
  • Ambiguous loss (physically absent vs. emotionally absent)
  • Sudden, unexpected change
  • Ongoing family conflict
  • Caring for dependent/ill family member
  • Demoralizing events
  • Everyday hassles
  • Anxieties about children
  • Stress overload
• Vulnerable Families: Have difficulties before additional stressors.
• Resilient Families: Capable of doing well in adversity.
• Disorganization: Routines become confused.
• Nadir: Lowest point of disorganization.
• Families function at about the same level as before, at a reduced level, or at a more effective level after reorganization
• ABC-X Model: A (stressor) + B (coping ability) + C (appraisal) = X (crisis).
• Double ABC-X Model: Aa (family pileup) includes stressor, strains, and hardships.
• Appraising the Situation: Influenced by nature of stressor, hardship, experiences, and childhood legacies.
• Vertical Stressors: Bring past issues to bear.
• Horizontal Stressors: Developmental and unfolding issues.
• Reframing: Redefining events positively.
• Resources and Coping Behaviors: Prevent disharmony.
• Crisis-Meeting Capabilities: Personal, family, and community resources.

Divorce

• Roughly half of all first marriages in the U.S. will end in divorce
• Refined Divorce Rate: Divorces per 1,000 married women (more valid).
• Crude Divorce Rate: Divorces per 1,000 people (includes unmarried).
• Divorce Divide: Disparity in rates based on education level.
• Starter Marriage: Ends within first few years, usually without children.
• Median length of first marriage that ends in divorce is 5 years
• Silver Divorce: Divorce in later years has increased.
• Redivorce: End of a second or more marriage.
• Demographic Factors for Divorce: Includes education, income, marital history, age, heterogamous marriage, cohabitation, premarital sex/pregnancy/childbearing, having no or older children, parents divorced, race/ethnicity, military service, pre-wedding jitters.
• Economic Factors for Divorce: independence effect- women's earnings provide economic power, increased independence, and self-confidence for a woman to divorce especially unhappy married women
• Weakening Social, Legal, and Moral Constraints 77% of Americans see divorce as moral ly acceptable compared to only 62% in 2009
• High Expectations for Marriage: Shift from companionate to individualistic marriage.
• Interpersonal Dynamics: Relationship dissatisfaction (money, communication, infidelity, abuse).
• Why is the divorce rate dropping?: Fewer people are marrying at young ages married couples are more likely to be col lege educated and able to work out issues
• Egalitarian marriages and stabilization of gender role expectations has reduced conflict over childcare and housework is increased determination by the children of a divorcing generation to make their marriages work
• Decisions About Divorce: Barriers to divorce and rewards of current marriage; benefits of separation vs. unhappiness while married. One year after separation people are less happy, but one year after divorce people are happier than had been while married
• 1 year after seperation people are less happy
• 1 year after divorce people were happier than had been while married
• Uncertainty: One of the scariest things about divorce
• Legal Divorce: Dissolution of marriage by the state.
• Divorce Mediation: Resolving issues with a mediator.
• Divorce Fallout: Ruptures of relationships and social network changes.
• Divorce provides oportunity for new ties
• Grandparent Visitation Rights: Right to request visitation.

Economic and Social Consequences of Divorce

• Economic fallout (of divorce) can be severe as a couple become 2 distinct economic units; wives experience great and more enduring losses than husbands
• Consequence for children (of divorce): Children living in a single-father household are half as likely to live in poverty as children in single-mother families.
• Economic Losses for Women: Decrease in income (27-51%).
• Economic Losses for Men: Incomes also decline after divorce; even if a man's income drops after divorce, so do his expenses
• Child Support: Money paid by noncustodial parent.
• Social/Emotional Consequences: Health problems, anxiety, depression, substance use, mortality.
• Stress-Related Growth: Divorce provides escape, moderating factors determine positive effects.
• Child of Divorce Perspective: number of transitions influence this the most
• Life Stress: Accumulation of stressors results in problems for children of divorce.
• Parental Loss: Assumes both parents in the same house is best for children.
• Parental Adjustment Quality of parenting is important in children's adjustment to divorce
• Economic Hardship: Assumes economic hardship is responsible for problems
• Interparental Conflict: Conflict between parents is responsible for lowered well-being
• Selection Perspective: Problems existed before the divorce.
• Family Instability: Number of transitions in and out of family settings.
• Children of divorce have risk of social and emotional problems but not as "serious" issues such as being clinical ly anxious or depressed
• being forced to take on adult responsibilities before children are developmental ly mature enough to handle them
• Child Custody: Extension of traditional gender roles.
  • Divorced fathers typical ly have legal responsibility for financial support
  • Divorced mothers continue the physical, day-to-day care of their children
• Custodial Parents: 80% are mothers.
• Legal Custody: Right to make decisions about child's upbringing.
• Physical Custody: Where the child will live.
• Joint Custody: Equal responsibility for decisions.
  * Joint legal and physical custody parents or children move periodical ly so that the child resides with each parent in turn on a substantial ly equal basis.
  * Joint legal cus- tody both parents have the right to participate in important decisions and retain a symbolic important legal authority-- with physical custody going to just one parents
• Binuclear Family: Child is the nucleus in two households.
• Co-Parenting: A team approach to raising children.
• Collaborative Divorce: Based on mutual respect.

Re-Partnering and Stepfamilies

• The united states has the highest rate among industrialized countries;
• Stepfamilies can be formed through legal marriage, cohabitation, marriage after childbirth or other arrangements
• simplest step- family divorced or widowed spouse with one children remarries a never-married partner without children
• Stepfamilies are complicated and emotional ly charged affair
• mixed emotions children of remarrying couples are likely to have about the event
• Women whose children see their nonresident fathers more often are more likely to remarry factors: trust and more time
• Men with children are more likely than childless men to cohabit or marry a woman with children
• Stepparent (originally): Meant a person who replaces a dead parent. -
• most complex stepfamily Both remarrying partners bring children from previous relationships, and also have a mutual child or children together
• preexisting coali- tions because relationships between at least one parent and child wil l predate the step- family formation may have significant relationship losses for al l family members
• Only hers, child lives in household 44%
• only his and only hers, only hers in household 25%
• only his, child lives elsewhere 19%
• *only his and only hers, both in household 5%
• *only his, child lives in household 4%
• Stigmatized: stepfamilies perceived this way as being less functional and desirable than origi- nal two-parents families
• People who remarried are more accepting of divorce in general.
• Stepchildren are the most important factor in higher divorce rates for remarried couples;
• Cultural Script: Guidelines for responsibilities and obligations.
• Underdeveloped Script: Society offers less guidelines.
• Cultural Ambiguity: Lacking social norms.
• Boundary Ambiguity: Uncertainty about who is in/out of the family.
• Interdependence: Family systems theory emphasizes in family relationships.
• Triadic Communication: Patterns among biological parent, stepparent, and child.
  * Linked triad- a child's interaction is connected with the stepparent through the child's biological parent
  * Outsider triad- the child and biological parent maintain interactions but the step parent remains an outsider and pretty much irrelevant to the child's life
  * Adult-coalition triad the child views the biological and step parent as maintaining the couple relation- ship ignoring the child
  * Complete triad communication flows freely, involving al l stepfamily members equal ly
• Dipolator Effects original two-parents families operate from "top down"
• Percolator Effect: Bottom-up operation of a stepfamily.
• Role Ambiguity: Lack of guidelines for stepfamily responsibilities.
• Stepmother Trap: Society expects loving relationships but stigmatizes stepmothers as evil.
• **resident biologi- cal fathers after divorce tend to have greater difficulty than mothers in the areas of communication and monitoring (especial ly with adolescent daughters) but they have fewer problems with control and are as warm and nurturing as mothers
• biological sib- lings are closer and more engaged than stepsiblings as are siblings who live in the same household
• Relationships with grandparents step-grandparenting is increasingly common; about 15% of total grandparenting time for those at age 65
• Contact with pa- ternal grandpar- ents depends on level of conflict between parents, and how involved nonresident father is in children's lives post divorce
• Couples with stepchildren argue more about money
• Common-Pot System: Resources pooled and distributed according to need.
• Two-Pot System: Resources divided along biological lines.
• Incomplete Institution: Lack of laws on stepfamily relationships.
• Stepfamily Cycle: Developmental approach.
  * does not unfold in a near and percise way and it can take anywhere from 4-12 years to complete
  * Turning Points stepfamily closeness sometimes surges in relation to significant events
  * Fantasy Stage- adults hope for an "instant family" while children hope that their parents wil l reunite
  * Immersion Stage- reality of chal lenges of living in a step- family sets in, causing unease
  * Awareness Stage stepparents become aware that they are "outsiders"
  * Moblization Stage differences are aired more openly, lead- ing to increased chaos and conflict
  * Action Stage power struggles between insiders and outsiders diminish
  * Contact Stage stepparents and stepchildren forge a "real" relationship and the marital relationship improves in this "honeymoon" period
  * Resolution stage- stepfamily norms are established and the stepparent becomes an "intimate outsider"

Aging Families

• In 1980, there were 25.5 million Americans age 65 and older whereas today there are 50 million Americans are age 65 and older; by 2050, nearly 88.5 mil lion Americans 65 and older 19 mil lion 85 and over
• Baby Boom: Between 1946-1964, more women married and had children.
• Aging Baby Boomers: unprecedentedly large elderly population
• Life expectancy differs by race and ethnicity.
• Family consequences of longer life ex- pectancy with more generations alive at once
• Active life ex- pectancy the period of life free of disability
• Informal Caregiving: Unpaid and personal provided care.
• hierarchical com- pensatory model of caregiving: Spouse, adult children, siblings, grand- children, nieces and nephews, friends and neighbors, and formal service provider
• Latent Kin Matrix: Web of shifting linkages.
• Elder Abuse: Mistreatment or neglect.
• Elder Neglect: Acts of omission.
• Elder Care: Supervision of elderly persons.