Untitled Flashcards Set

Family Cohesion and Conflict

-            Family cohesion – the sense of unity, togetherness, and closeness within a family, and is related to the extent to which family members are affectionate, respectful, and warm with each other and can be.

-            A balanced level of cohesion—one that combines a reasonable and mutually satisfying degree of emotional bonding with individual family members’ need for autonomy.

-            Characteristics of Cohesive Families (by Nick Stinnett)

o   1. Both verbally and nonverbally, family members often openly expressed their appreciation for one another. Intent on finding the best in one another, they “built each other up psychologically.”

o   2. Members of cohesive families had a high degree of commitment to the family group as a whole. Families like this create a shared family identity and reality. From a symbolic interactionist perspective, families create a shared reality through frequent, spontaneous, and unconstrained conversations that allow family members to participate together in defining family beliefs, values, situations, events, and rituals. Social media and video internet communication technologies such as skype allow for developing or ongoing family connectedness across distances and even across continents.

o   3. Dinnertime together is important to family cohesiveness and to positive child and adolescent behaviors. Moreover, rituals surrounding holiday celebrations, birthdays, and rites of passage (e.g. graduations) are important venues of encouraging communication in families. Simply spending leisure time together (game nights, movie nights) is also important for family members. Family meals are difficult to accomplish as children get older and become more involved in activities. 63% of children age 5 and younger ate dinner with their families six or seven days a week, only 53% of children ages 6 to 11 and 37 percent of children ages 12 to 17 did so. Family dinners have less positive effects on children in nontraditional family forms, such as single-parent families and step-families.

o   4. Stinnett found that strong families were able to deal positively with crises. Family members were able to see something good in bad situations, even if it was just gratitude that they had each other and could face the crisis together.

o   5. Many of the families that Stinnett studied had a spiritual orientation. Although they were not necessarily members of any organized religion, some of these families had a sense that their union and family had some “sanctified” purpose and power greater than themselves. Typically, these families had a “hopeful attitude toward life.” Having a “personal relationship with God” is associated with higher marital quality, to the extent that it encourages religious conversations between partners.

o   6. These families had positive communication patterns. Members of families like these talk with and listen to one another, conveying respect, and interest. They confirm, validate, and accept one another. Technology can help and is especially used by younger generations; 41% of 18-29 year olds in serious relationships say that they felt closer to their partner because of online or text message conversations.

o   Cohesive families and supportive couple relationships involve fairness, prudence, humility, tolerance, gratitude, justice, charity, and forgiveness. Maintaining family cohesion can be challenging for families who are separated by long distances or who otherwise live apart. Divorce, incarceration, immigration, and work-related travel can reduce opportunities for the activities listed above, even with advances in technology. Divorced parents can use technology to reduce conflict and reduce the possibility of children having to be the “go-between”.

-            Children, Family Cohesion, and Unresolved Conflict

o   An individual's family life growing up can influence how he or she communicates with others in adulthood.

§  Researchers observed couples’ communication in a lab, male partners who came from a “risky family background” displayed greater negativity toward their female partners than men who did not.

§  Another study indicated that adolescents who enjoyed greater parental support and supervision as children experienced less relationship conflict with intimate partners.

o   A family characterized by warmth, cohesion, and generally supportive communication is better for children. Siblings matter, too. If a child has one or more siblings, feeling close to them is positively associated with healthy social and emotional development.

§  The quality of sibling relationships can also affect romantic relationships. Conflict with a sibling was associated with less perceived power in romantic relationships, whereas closeness with a sibling was associated with greater perceived power.

o   A climate of unresolved marital conflict, especially when accompanied by parental depression, which it often is, correlates with children's emotional insecurity. Children’s responses to ongoing parental conflict found that the children felt anxious over the future of their parent’s relationship as well as felt that they had to mediate the conflict.

§  Negative overt parental conflict styles involved such parental behaviors as calling each other names, telling each other to shut up, or threatening each other in front of the child.

§  Negative covert parent conflict styles included behaviors such as trying to get the child to side with one parent to the other because the parents refused to speak to each other.

o   Although conflict between parents was not the only cause of children’s behavior problems, there was a strong positive correlation between interparental conflict and behavior problem for both girls and boys. When parents used an overtly negative style, the youth were more likely to report externalizing behavior problems. When parents used a covert, negative style, the youth were more likely to report internalizing behavior.

o   Unresolved Family Conflict and Sibling Relationships

§  A study of mothers, fathers, and adolescents from middle and working class, mostly white families found parental conflict to be casually associated with parents’ differential treatment of their children.

Communication and Relationship Satisfaction

-            Relationship ideologies – expectations for closeness or distance as well as ideas about how partners should play their roles.

-            Couples also differ in their attitudes toward conflict. Some expect to engage in conflict only over big issues. Others argue often. Still others expect a relationship that largely avoids not only conflict but also demonstrations of affection.

-            Affection and Antagonism

o   Married, heterosexual couples, classified relationships into four types: warm or friendly; tempestuous or stormy; bland or empty shell; and hostile or distressed.

§  Warm relationships are high on visible signs of love and affection while low on antagonism. Tempestuous unions are high on both affection and antagonism. Bland marriages are low on affection as well as on antagonism. Hostile marriages are low on love and affection but high on antagonism.

o   Some married couples maintain flirtatious and playful communication patterns throughout their marriage. A more common finding is that after the honeymoon stage, there is a “coming down to earth” stage in a marriage.

o   Traditional Gender role expectations – although rigid and limiting – can be a way of expressing love and care.

-            Communicate positive feelings

o   Positive affect – involves verbal and nonverbal expression of affection.

o   Letting someone know you care about them is risky in that you must “put yourself out there” and may end up rejected or hurt. Partners will low self-esteem were more uncomfortable giving and receiving affection and projected their discomfort onto their partners.

Stress, Coping, and Conflict in Relationships

-            Stresses might involve how to balance work and family commitments, conflict between parents over child-raising practices, illness or health concerns about a family member, or neighborhood issues. Bad credit, college loans, and credit card debt on one partner’s part can strain relationships.

-            Communication challenges can surface in same-sex unions as partners may have to negotiate whether and how to “come out” to relatives when one partners wishes to but the other does not.

-            Couples have to negotiate differences related to their children, money, household chores, in-laws and other relatives, how to allocate their time, and irritation with one another’s habits. Another challenging topic involves family communication itself, often with one family member feeling that another is not paying attention or understanding.

-            Relationship-focused coping – coping in which “each partner attempts to cope with his or her own strain in ways that do no harm the relationship and also attend to the other emotional needs.”

-            Conflict among Happy Couples

o   The way couples handle conflict has implications for couples’ sexual relationships. Discussing a problem was negatively associated with women’s motivation to have sex; it was positively associated with men's motivation. Relational conflict increased men’s perception of their partner as sexually attractive but decreased women's perception of their partner as sexually attractive.

-            Indirect Expressions of Anger

o   Passive aggression – Expressing anger indirectly. Chronic Criticism, nagging, nitpicking, and sarcasm. Procrastination.

o   Sabotage – means of getting revenge or “payback”, involves one partner’s attempts to spoil or undermine some activity that the other has planned.

o   Displacement – a person directs anger at people or things that the other cherishes.

§  An individual who is angry with a partner for spending too much time on a career may hate the partner’s expensive car.

John Gottman’s Research on Couple communication and Conflict management

-            The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse

o   Contempt – a feeling that one’s spouse is inferior or undesirable

o   Criticism – involves making disapproving judgments or evaluations of one’s partner.

o   Defensiveness – preparing to defend oneself against what one presumes is an upcoming attack

o   Stonewalling – resistance. Refusing to take a partner’s complaints seriously. Avoiding or evading an argument.

§  Stonewallers react to their partner’s attempts to raise tension-producing issues by refusing to entertain them. Argument evaders use several tactics to avoid fighting, such as vacating the scene when an argument threatens, turning sullen, and refusing to talk.

o   Belligerence – a behavior that challenges the other’s power or authority.

-            Positive vs. Negative Affect

o   Negative affect – anger, sadness, whining, disgust, tension and fear, belligerence, contempt, or defensiveness.

o   Belligerence, contempt, or defensiveness were coded as high intensity and negative affect. The other emotions listed previously (anger, sadness, whining) were coded as low-intensity negative effects.

§  Many couples were likely to communicate with positive affect, responding to each other warmly with interest, affection or shared (not mean or contemptuous) humor. Contempt, belligerence, and defensiveness were destructive attitudes and behaviors.

o   Gottman concluded that the interaction pattern best-predicting divorce was a wife’s raising a complaint, followed by her husband’s refusing to accept influence, followed, in turn, by the wife’s reciprocating her husband’s escalated negativity, and the absence of any de-escalation by means of positive effect.

Gender Differences in Communication

-            During the late 19^th century, expressions of emotion became the domain of middle-class women, whereas work was defined as more appropriate to masculinity. As a result of this historical legacy, we see men as less well-equipped than women for emotional relatedness. Empirical evidence shows that, on average, females in heterosexual relationships do more social and emotional labor than males to keep the relationship in existence and satisfying. More often than a man, a woman acts as a “relationship barometer” continually taking the pressure of the relationship and making adjustments accordingly.

o   Secure attachment to mothers, combined with positive affect, was associated with overall positive family functioning and better adjustment and adaptation in the child. (ability to handle stress, express emotions appropriately, and behave in prosocial ways with parents and peers). Attachment to fathers was not predictive of children’s outcomes.

-            Men are equally loving, but women, not men, are made to feel primarily responsible for love’s endurance or success. Expressions of love are defined and perceived mostly on feminine terms – women are the more verbal sex. Expressions of love that men may make, such as doing favors or reducing their partners’ burdens, are not credited as love.

o   “The consequences of love would be more positive if love were the responsibility of men as well as women and if love were defined more broadly to included instrumental help as well as emotional expression”

o   Couples who engaged in longer post-sex affection like snuggling reported higher sexual and relationship satisfaction. Hormones released during sex also play a role.

-            Report talk – conversation aimed mainly at conveying information.

-            Rapport Talk – speaking to gain or reinforce intimacy or connection with others.

o   Men are likely to bring up problems only when hoping to trigger suggestions for solutions. Women, are likely to talk about problems simply to share or foster rapport.

-            Female-demand/male-withdraw communication pattern – Men and women differ in their responses to negative affect in close relationships. When faced with a complaint from a partner, men tend to withdraw emotionally, whereas women do not. This pattern becomes a repeated cycle of negative verbal expression by one partner and withdrawal by the other that can spiral out of control.

-            It is important for couples to think about communicating with positive affect more often in their daily living and not just during times of conflict.

Working through Conflicts in positive ways – Ten guidelines

-            Guideline 1: Express Anger directly and with Kindness

o   Family members may have the false belief that their intimates automatically know – or should know – what they think and how they feel. This incorrect idea is detrimental to relationships. When complaints are not addressed directly, conflict goes unresolved with lingering grievances sparked again and again by  “subtle triggers.”

§  Counselors advise expressing anger directly because doing so makes way for resolution. They further advise that a grievance will be less threatening to the receiver when positive feelings are conveyed at the same time that the grievance is voiced.

-            Guideline 2: Check out your Interpretation of others’ behaviors

o   Because family members and partners in distressed relationships seldom understand each other as well as they think they do, a good habit is to ask for feedback by a process of checking it out: asking the other person whether your perception of her or his feelings or of the present situation is accurate. Checking it out often helps to avoid unnecessary hurt feelings or imagining trouble that may not exist.

-            Guideline 3: To avoid attacks, use “I” statements

o   Attacks, sometimes interpreted as blame, involve insults or assaults on another’s character or self-esteem, which should be considered a “shared relationship resource” – that is, both partners are happier when each one’s self-esteem is high, rather than low. Attacks do not help either to enhance self-esteem or to bond a couple.

§  Avoiding attack is to use the word I rather than you or why.

-            Guideline 4: Avoid Mixed, or Double, Messages

o   Mixed or double messages contradict each other. Contradictory messages may be verbal, or one may be verbal and one nonverbal. Senders of mixed messages may not be aware of what they are doing, and mixed messages can be extremely subtle. They sometimes result from simultaneously wanting to recognize and deny conflict or tension.

o   Communication involves both a sender and a receiver. Just as the send gives both an overt message and an underlying meta-message, so also does a receiver gives cues about how seriously he or she is taking the message.

-            Guideline 5: When you can, Choose the time and place carefully

o   Family members might negotiate a time and a place for addressing issues. Arguing “by appointment” may sound silly and be difficult to arrange, but doing so has advantages. For one thing, complainants can organize their thoughts and feelings more calmly and deliberately, increasing the likelihood that they will be heard.

-            Guideline 6: Address a Specific Issue, ask for a specific change, and be open to compromise

o   Constructive relationships aim to resolve current, specific problems. Recipients of complaints need to feel that they can do something specific to help resolve the problem raised. Complainants should be ready to propose one or more solutions. Recipients might come up with possible solutions themselves. When family members can entertain potential solutions to a definite problem at hand, they are better able to negotiate alternatives.

-            Guideline 7: Be willing to change yourself

o   The principle that couples or family members should accept each other as they are sometimes merges with the idea that individuals should be exactly what they choose to be.

§  One counselor suggested “acceptance therapy,” helping individuals accept their partners and other family members as they are instead of demanding change.

-            Guideline 8: Don’t try to Win

o   Wanting to win a dispute with a loved one typically encourages us to use unnecessarily hurtful language, which non productively increases the recipients stress.

o   Tactics associated with winning in a particular conflict are also those associated with lower relationship satisfaction.

-            Guideline 9: Practice Forgiveness

o   Forgiveness does not require that the offended partner minimize or condone the offense. Rather, “an individual forgives despite the wrongful nature of the offense and the fact that the offender is not entitled to forgiveness.” Forgiveness is often a process that takes time, rather than one specific decision or act of the will.

-            Guideline 10: End the Argument

o   Sometimes when individuals are too hurt to continue, they need to stop arguing before they reach a resolution. A family member may signal that he or she feels to distressed to go on by calling for a time-out. Or it could help to bargain about whether the fight should continue at all.

-            Relationship and Family Counseling

o   Relationship and family counseling is a professional service having two goals: (1) helping individuals, couples, and families gain insight into the actually or potentially troublesome dynamics of their relationship(s), and (2) teaching clients more effective and supportive communication techniques.

o   Experts advise couples or families to visit a counselor when communication is typically hostile, or conflict goes unresolved when they cannot figure out how to resolve a family problem themselves, or when a partner is thinking of leaving a committed relationship.

o   People go to counselors for help in working through premarital and engagement issues, as well as issues related to cultural clashes, sexual identity, cohabitation, infidelity, divorce, substance abuse, finances, etc.

Chapter 12: Power and Violence in Families

What is Power

-            Power – the ability to exercise one’s will.

o   Power exercised over oneself is personal power, or autonomy. Having comfortable degree of personal power is important to self-development.

-            Social power – the ability to exercise one’s will over others. Social power may be exerted in different realms.

-            Relationship power involves (1) objective measures of power – who makes more, or more important, decisions or who does more housework (2) subjective measures of fairness – whether each partner feels their arrangement is fair or equitable.

o   Equity – Whether the rewards of the relationship feel subjectively proportional to each partner’s contributions, which may not necessarily be equal.

-            Power Bases

o   1. Reward power – based on an individual's ability and willingness to give material or nonmaterial gifts and favors, ranging from emotional support – listening, eye contact, a smile, etc.

o   2. Coercive power – the dominant person's ability and willingness to punish the partner with psychological-emotional or physical violence or, more subtly, by withholding favors or affection.

o   3. Expert power – stems from the perception that the more powerful person has superior ability, knowledge, or judgment.

o   4. Informational power – the persuasive content of what the more powerful person tells the other.

o   5. Referent Power – a person’s emotional identification with the partner. Referent power can enhance couple commitment.

o   6. Legitimate power – the more powerful person’s ability to claim authority, or the right to expect compliance. Urges us to recognize cultural influences on relationships: that is, society and culture define power as legitimate in some circumstances, often related to gender.

The Resource Hypothesis: A Classical Perspective on Marital Power

-            Resource hypothesis – that the partner with more resources has greater power in the relationship.

o   Resources primarily include earnings and education, the latter resulting in informational and expert power.

-            Resources and Gender

o   Egalitarian relationships – relationships that are equal

-            Resources in Cultural Context

o   Resources in cultural context – stresses that society-wide gender structures

o   Egalitarian norm or a patriarchal norm – Individual resources fully influence conjugal power only when there is no cultural norm for conjugal power.

Current Research on Couple power

-            1. Decision making- who gets to make decisions about everything from where the couple will live to how they will spend their leisure time?

o   Wives in evangelical families often have more decision-making power than their formal submission to the male family head would indicate. Research shows that “co-parenting and joint decision-making are more common in evangelical homes than in secular and mainline religious households.”

o   A study of wives who earn more than their husbands suggests that “the gender structure exerts an influence that is independent of breadwinning or relative financial contributions.”

-            2.  Division of labor: Who provides income? Who does the household labor? Who takes primary responsibility for childcare if there are children?

o   Social scientists use housework as one criterion of power on the assumption that (1) doing more of the family housework results in a partner earning less money, and (2) no one really wants to do it. The fact that women continue to do more housework than men do is seen as an objective indicator of their relatively less conjugal power.

§  When the three categories are calculated together, mothers and fathers now spend about the same number of hours in paid work, housework, and childcare. Fathers average four more total hours than mothers – 61% vs. 57%.

o   Being saddled with nearly twice the housework and childcare responsibilities take time from women’s careers and participation.

§  This situation renders wives and mothers – even potential wives and mothers – less effective in the labor force affects the gender wage gap, the disadvantage women experience in respect of the opportunities for career advancement, earnings, and ultimately pensions.

-            3. Allocation of money earned by either or both partners: Who controls household spending? Who has personal spending money?

o   Money allocation systems – whether they pool their money and who controls pooled or separate money – is fairly recent.

§  In the 1800s-1950s, a family’s allocation systems was typically one of complete control of his earnings by the male breadwinner, who doled out of a housekeeping allowance to his homemaker wife.

§  1970s – feminists had begun to criticize the husband-controlled joint pool system. With more women earnings income, separate financial accounts and control began to be seen as favored alternative, with each partner making proportionately equitable contributions to running the household.

§  Currently – a variety of allocation systems operate in American unions and involve two dimensions: (1) whether to pool their money, and (2) which partner controls.

-            4. Ability to influence the other partner and feeling comfortable in raising complaints about the relationship.

o   Each partner feels confident that he or she can be heard, even when raising uncomfortable issues. Partners can air concerns without fear of being dismissed or otherwise treated badly.

o   Either partner may wield considerable power by means of referent power – one’s love for the other. Today, men are encouraged to engage in “emotion work” to express emotion to their wives, to be attentive to the dynamics of their relationships and the needs of their wives, and to set aside time for activities focused especially on the relationship”

Power Politics vs. Freely cooperative relationships

-            Power asymmetry often characterizes dissatisfied couples. Not seeking to “win” an argument and highly respecting each other facilitate satisfying relationships.

-            Power politics – partners lock into a relationship-damaging cycle of behaviors. Sometimes (or often) hinting at leaving the marriage, partners alternate in acting sulky, critical or distant.

o   Partners who see themselves as respected, equally committed, and listened to when they raise concerns are more likely to see their relationship as egalitarian and are more satisfied overall with their relationship. Changing power patterns can be difficult because, usually, power patterns have been established from the earliest days of the relationships.

-            Power domains, decisions about

o   How much time to spend together, and how to spend it

o   Career/ moving decisions

o   Childrearing

o   Demonstrations of affection/sexual relations

o   Division of labor/household tasks

o   Family and friends

o   Finances

o   Philosophy of life/religion. Values

o   A good way to work through power changes is to use communication techniques.

Family Violence

-            Intimate partner violence (IPV) – the physical or emotional abuse of partners of any gender or sexual orientation: current or ex-cohabiting or non cohabiting heterosexual or same-sex relationship partners.

-            The Incidence of Intimate Partner Violence (IPV)

o   Family violence, Intimate Partner violence (IPV), and child maltreatment has declined considerably since first being addressed in the 1970s.

§  However, more than half of the police reported cases were serious violent crimes involving serious injuries or weapons.

o   Family violence crosses all generational, social, cultural, class, and religious groups. IPV rates vary by race/ethnicity. Victimization rates are relatively high for Native American women (11 per 1,000), Black women’s rates are somewhat high (5 per 1000)m Non Hispanic White and Hispanic females have moderate rates (4 per 1000).

-            Correlates of Family Violence

o   IPV perpetrators and victims tend to be young adults. The rate of violence between cohabiting partners is significantly higher than that of married. Overall, cohabitors are younger, less integrated into family and community, and more likely to have psych-behavioral problems such as depression and alcohol abuse – all factors associated with family violence.

o   For both victims and perpetrators, having experienced or witnessed IPV while growing up – either physical or psychological abuse – correlates with family violence as an adult, both against a partner and the family children. Children who grow up with family violence may have trouble emotionally attaching to others and come to regard violence as normal.

§  Children reside in an estimated 35% of households where IPV takes place.

o   Stress is another correlate of family violence. Overload – that is, having too much to deal with or to worry about – creates stress that can lead to family violence, including child abuse. Other causes of family stress are changing lifestyles and standards of living, children’s misbehavior, and parent’s feeling unrealistic pressure to do an excellent job occasions.

o   Poverty and economic stressors as well as neighborhoods with higher concentrations of drug offense arrests and bars and liquor stores are correlated with IPV.

§  The tendency to be concentrated in disadvantaged neighborhoods and lack of affordable housing options are also issues confronting more vulnerable segments of our population. These factors help to explain race/ethnic disparities in children’s exposure to violence as well.

o   In addition to stress, substance abuse, often resulting in impulsivity, together with the tendency to feel put down by other’s family innocent remarks – is a factor in IPV.

-           Situational Couple violence

o   Refers to symmetrical (mutual, perpetrated by women as well as by women) violence between partners that occurs in conjunction with a specific argument, tends to be less severe in terms of injuries, and is unlikely to escalate as the relationship progresses. Situational couple violence typically erupts during a fight and is often accompanied by heavy drinking. It can result in serious injury.

-           Coercive Controlling Violence

o   Refers to abuse that is decisively oriented to controlling one’s partner through fear and intimidation.

§  Feminists maintain and research supports that coercive control is almost focused on a particular matter of dispute between the partners, coercive control is intended to establish an overall pattern of dominance and, at least among heterosexuals, appears to occur more often in marriage than among cohabitors.

o   Cycle of violence –

§  Phase 1 – the violent episode itself, including physical violence, emotional, or sexual abuse, and typically growing more violent over the course of the relationship.

§  Phase 2 – a calm period,  sometimes termed the honeymoon phase, during which the abuser may ignore or deny the violence; blame the episode on the victim or act genuinely sorry, sending cards and flowers.

§  Phase 3 – tension buildup during which the victim feels increasingly disappointed and intimated while the abuser's behavior is unpredictable and threatening.

o   Why do Victims Continue to live with it?

§  Fear – “The wife figures if she calls police or files for divorce, her husband will kill her, literally.” Women also fear that reporting domestic violence to the police will risk contact with child protective services and removal of their children from the home. All women – but especially women of color – may fear discrimination or that nothing can be done to ease the situation. An undocumented immigrant may fear risking contact with immigration authorities – and one never knows how that situation may turn out.

§  Cultural norms and gender socialization – Historically, women were encourage to put up with abuse. The basis of the American legal structure, asserted that a husband had the right to physically “chastise” an errant wife. Cultural norms have traditionally suggested that it is primarily a women’s responsibility to keep a marriage intact. Believing this, wives are often convinced that their emotional support may lead their husbands to reform.

§  Economic Hardship – Economic uncertainty and concerns about future finances can discourage victims from leaving. Leaving – or just pressing charges – can mean loss of a partner’s income or damage to their professional reputation and future success.

§  Low self-esteem –  Low self esteem Interacts with fear, depression, confusion, anxiety, feelings of self-blame, and loss of a sense of personal control to create battered woman syndrome, in which a wife cannot see a way out of her situation.

Violence against Children-child maltreatment

-            Child maltreatment – the “physical or mentally injury, sexual abuse, or negligent treatment of a child under the age of 18 by a person who is responsible for child’s welfare under circumstances that indicate that the child’s health or welfare is harmed or threatened”.

-            Neglect and Abuse

o   Child neglect – Most common form of child maltreatment and involves failing to provide adequate physical or emotional care. Often neglect is grounded in parents’ or guardians’ economic problems, mental health issues, lack of parenting skills, or personal histories of childhood neglect or abuse. Less common, willful neglect involves purposeful failure to provide care even when resources are available. Physically neglected children often show signs of malnutrition, lack immunization against childhood disease, lack proper clothing, attend school irregularly, and need medical attention for such conditions as poor eyesight or bad teeth.

o   Emotional neglect – a parent’s or guardian’s often being overly harsh and critical, belittling a child, failing to provide guidance, or being uninterested in a child’s needs.

o   Child abuse – overt acts of aggression – excessive verbal derogation (emotional child abuse) or physical abuse such as beating, whipping, punching, kicking, hitting with a heavy object, burning or scalding, or threatening with or using a knife or gun.

§  The number of emotionally neglected children more than doubled during that interval, rising from about 500,000 in 1993 to more than 1 million today.

o   Child Sexual Abuse

§  In which a child is forced, tricked, or coerced by an older person into sexual behavior – exposure, unwanted kissing, fondling of sexual organs, intercourse, rape, incest, prostitution, and pornography – for purposes of sexual gratification or financial gain.

§  Incest – involves sexual relations between related individuals. The most common form is sibling incest, followed by father-daughter incest. Incest is the most emotionally charged form of sexual abuse and also the most difficult to detect. Childhood incest appears in the background of a variety of sexual, emotional, and physical problems among adults.

-            How Extensive is Child Maltreatment?

o   Child maltreatment is reported much more frequently among poor and nonwhite families than among middle and upper-class white families. Differences in all maltreatment rates may be partly due to reporting differences, with poor children more likely to be seen by social welfare authorities. Another reason may be unconscious race-or-class based discrimination on the part of medical personnel and others who report abuse and neglect.

o   Risk Factors of Child Abuse

§  Having learned to view children as requiring physical punishment in order to develop properly

§  Having unrealistic expectations about what a child is capable of and being unknowledgeable regarding children’s physical and emotional abilities and needs.

§  Feeling highly stressed or helpless in the parent or provider role

§  Being a young adult and inexperienced with childcare or managing stress

§  Experiencing marital discord or divorce, especially when coupled with children perceived as unusually demanding or otherwise difficult

§  A mother’s cohabiting with a male partner, who could potentially abuse the child – and is significantly more likely to do so than the child’s biological father.

§  Having a stepfather – because stepfathers are more likely than biological fathers to abuse children.

Stopping Family Violence

-            Separating Victim from Perpetrator

o   Separation of the victim from the perpetrator is one approach to stopping family violence. Separating victims from perpetrators involves escaping to shelters for IPV victims and removing an abused child from the home in the case of child abuse.

§  A network of shelters now provides a woman (and often her children) with temporary housing, food, and clothing to alleviate the problems of economic dependency and physical safety.

o   Protecting abused or neglected children may involve removing them from their family homes and placing them in foster care.

o   Family preservation – a child protective services worker is able to “leave the child with (the offending) family and provide support in the form of housekeeping help or drug treatment, and the visit frequently to monitor progress.”

o   Several interventions to address partner violence have been implemented through the criminal justice system, including specialized domestic violence courts, coordinated community response, mandatory arrest, and prosecution policies, and court-ordered batterer treatment.

o   Criminal justice response – the punitive approach – for perpetrators of child maltreatment

§  These advocates believe that one or both parents should be held legally responsible for child abuse.

-            Marco or Structural Approaches

o   A macro approach notes the social, cultural, and economic context of family violence and then provides programs and services to help reduce or otherwise address it.

§  Housing assistance and subsidized childcare might dissuade a low-income or socially isolated parent from neglectfully leaving children alone while working.

§  Violence Against Women Act resulted in greater perpetrator accountability for rape and stalking; in increasing rates of prosecution, conviction, and sentencing of offenders; in more easily granting a victim’s protection order; and in ensuring that police respond to crisis calls.

o   Information, advice, and referral help for IPV and other forms of family violence is available on the Internet.

o   Criminal justice, therapeutic, and social welfare approaches are ways of addressing family violence from IPV to child maltreatment.

Chapter 14: Divorce and Relationship Dissolution

-            Today’s Divorce Rate

o   The frequency of divorce increased throughout most of the 20^th century, with dips and upswings surrounding historical events such as the Great Depression, major wars, and the Great Recession beginning in 2007. There was an unprecedented rise in divorce between 1960 and 1980, when the refined divorce rate (the number of divorces per 1,000 married women) more than doubled. The divorce rate has been declining, aside from a brief increase around 2010, most likely as a result of couples putting off getting divorced during the Great Recession.

§  Divorce is expensive and is sensitive to economic conditions; divorce rates tend to be lower during economic downturns because couples can’t afford to live separately.

o   Crude divorce rate – the number of divorces per 1,000 per population. Includes portions of the population – children  and the unmarried – who are not at risk for divorce.

§  Used for comparisons over time because these data are often the only long-term annual data available. Has declined almost 44% since its peak in 1980.

-            The Divorce Divide

o   Divorce Divide – the large disparity of divorce rates between those with and without a college degree.

-            Starter Marriages and Silver Divorces

o   Starter Marriage – a first marriage that ends in divorce within the first few years, typically before the couple has children.

§  Young men and women listed the desire to move out of their parents’ house, the desire to have a fairytale wedding, and the inevitability of marriage after a long period of dating as reasons why they got married (and why their marriage did not last).

§  The median length of a first marriage that ends in divorce is about five years. Marriage last weeks or months are rare.

o   Silver/Gray Divorce – the proportion of divorces among older couples and those in long-term marriages.

§  The marriage rate declined for people under age 45, it increased between those 45 and older. The divorce rate among adults aged 55 to 65 doubled between 1990 and 2015.

Why did the Divorce Rate rise in the 20^th century?

-            Demographic Factors

o   Remarriage – Remarried couples are more likely than first-married couples to divorce, especially if there are stepchildren in the home.

o   Young age at first marriage, especially marrying as a teenager. Divorce also generally declines with age, although the divorce rate has risen recently among adults 45 and older.

o   Slightly higher divorce rates among women compared to men: whereas 42% of women have ever divorced by age 46, only 36% of men of that same age have.

o   Heterogamous marriage – Marrying someone of a different race, ethnicity, or religion is associated with a higher risk of divorce, and, interestingly, when the wife is older than the husband

o   Cohabitation – About 2/3 of Gen-Xers and Millennial’s agreed that living together before marriage may help prevent divorce. Not surprisingly, cohabitors were more likely than non-cohabitors to feel this way.

o   Premarital sex, premarital pregnancy, and premarital childbearing – these factors increase the risk of divorce in a subsequent marriage.

o   Having no or older children, compared to young children, increases divorce risk.

o   Having parents and grandparents who divorced increases one’s own likelihood of divorce

o   Race and ethnicity – Blacks, Hispanics, and Native Americans have higher divorce rates compared to whites. Among Hispanics, immigration status is also important. Hispanics born outside the United States have lower divorce rates than those who are native-born. The reasons for the racial disparities in divorce are complex, stemming from a mix of individual, family, and community-level forces, cultural norms and beliefs, and low education and income.

o   Military service – the stresses and demands placed on military couples may lead to higher divorce rates, though one study found that military marriages are not more prone to divorce than civilian marriages.

o   Pre-wedding jitters – When the wife, but not the husband, has “cold feet” before the wedding.

-            Economic Factors

o   The higher a couple’s social class as defined by education, employment, income, and wealth (including home ownership), the less likely they are to divorce.

o   The upward trend of divorce and the upward trend of women in the labor force have accompanied each other historically. A woman’s earnings might give an unhappily married woman the economic power, increased independence, and self-confidence that helped her decide on divorce.

o   Independent effect – Wives who were dependent on their husbands for health insurance had lower divorce rates. May hold for white women only.

o   A wife's education and earnings may actually help to hold the marriage together by counteracting the negative effects of economic insecurity and related economic stressors.

Why is the Divorce Rate dropping?

-            The divorce rate has stabilized since its height in the 1980s, but a decline is currently being observed. Social scientists propose several reasons for this development. First, fewer people are marrying at younger ages – the median age at first marriage is 28 for women and 30 for men. Those who wait are likely to make better choices and to have the maturity and commitment to work through problems. In addition, married people are more likely to be college-educated than in the past and may be better able to communicate and work out any issues.

-            The standard of living has improved over the past few decades for two-earner families with good jobs, a situation that lead to less tension at home and lower probability of divorce. At the same time, the bad economy and real estate market and the high costs of obtaining legal divorce also keep people married. Couples today are more inclined to seek marriage or family counseling, which may prevent them from splitting up.

Getting the Divorce

-            Legal divorce – the dissolution of the marriage by the state through a court order terminating the marriage.

o   The principal purpose of the legal divorce is to dissolve the marriage contract so that emotionally divorced spouses can conduct economically separate lives and be free to remarry.

o   Two aspects of the legal divorce make marital breakup painful. First, divorce, like death, creates the need to grieve. But the usual divorce in court is a rational, ceremonial exchange that takes only a few minutes. The adversary system is the second aspect of legal divorce that aggravates conflict and misery.

-            Divorce Mediation – an alternative, non-adversarial means of dispute resolution by which a couple, with the assistance of a mediator or mediators who negotiate the settlement of their custody, support, and property.

-            Divorce “fallout” – ruptures of relationships and changes in social networks that come about as a result of divorce. Involves financial fallout or the economic consequences of divorce.

The Economic Consequences of Divorce

-            The economic fallout of divorce can be severe. No one “wins” financially in a divorce. Everyone’s standard of living suffers, especially children’s. The economic consequences of divorce vary for husbands and wives; however, wives (and children) experience greater and more enduring losses.

o   Among those 50 and older, household income drops 23% for men and 41% for women. Among people who divorce and do not repartner, women are over twice as likely to live in poverty.

-            Consequences for Children: Single-Parent Families and Poverty

o   Non-Hispanic white children (75%) and Asian children (85%) are most apt to be living with two-parent families (with biological parents or a parent and stepparent). Only 68% of Hispanic children and 42% of black children live with two parents. Single fathers are more likely than single mothers to have a bachelor's degree (23 percent vs. 18 percent), and children in single-parent households are half as likely to live in poverty as children living with single mothers.

-            How Divorce affects Children

o   Although the divorce experience is psychologically stressful and, in most case, financially disadvantageous for children, children in high-conflict marriages may benefit from a divorce. Living in an intact family characterized by unresolved tension and alienating conflict can cause as great or greater emotional stress and a lower sense of self-worth in children than living in a supportive single-parent family.

o   Reasons for Negative Effects of Divorce on Children

§  1. Life stress perspective – Divorce is known to be a stressful life event for adults; it must also be so for children.

§  2. Parental loss perspective – A family with both parents living in the same household is the optimal environment for children’s development.

·       Both parents are important resources, providing children love, emotional support, practical assistance, guidance, and supervision, as well as modeling social skills such as cooperation, negotiation, and compromise.

§  3. Parental adjustment perspective – The importance of the custodial parent’s psychological adjustment and the quality of parenting. Supportive and appropriately disciplining parents facilitate their children’s well-being

·       The stress of divorce and related problems and adjustments may impair a parent’s child-raising skills. Divorced parents are “less supportive, have fewer rules, dispense harsher, discipline, provide less supervision, and engage in more conflict with their children.”

§  4. Economic Hardship Perspective – Economic Hardship brought about by marital dissolution is primarily responsible for the problems faced by children whose parents divorce.

·       Divorced households have lower incomes, greater food insecurity, lower rates of homeownership, and less savings, and are less likely to have health insurance.

§  5. Interparental conflict Perspective – That conflict between parents is responsible for the lowered well-being of children of divorce.

·       Negative results for Children may not result simply from divorce per se, but from exposure to parental conflict prior to, during, and after the divorce.

§  6. Selection Perspective – At least some of the child’s problems after the divorce were present before the marriage.

·       Might be the result of the forthcoming marital breakdown, but some may be due to earlier dysfunctional family patterns, behaviors, or personality traits on the part of the child’s parents.

§  7. Family instability perspective – stresses that the number of transitions in and out of various family settings is the key to children’s adjustment.

Child-Custody Issues

-            Legal custody – Who has the right to make decisions with respect to a child’s upbringing (e.g., health, religion, education.

-            Physical custody – where a child will live.

Styles of Parental Relationships after Divorce

-            Parallel parents – parents who parented alongside each other but with minimal contact or communication or conflict.

Co-parenting – a team approach to raising children after divorce, where both parents actively communicate and collaborate on decisions regarding their children's upbringing.