Family Structures and Dynamics
Two-Parent Families
Traditionally, families consisted of two opposite-sex, married adults and their children.
This was considered the ideal for raising children.
Contemporary families have many variations.
Cohabiting couples with children and same-sex couples with children face similar challenges.
There's a move toward dual parenting with gender equality, where both parents contribute regardless of traditional roles (Kadala, Shop Sullivan, and Camp Dash, 2013).
Ideally, in dual-income families, all tasks are shared equally.
In practice, traditional gender role divisions may be blurred.
Dual parenting ideally implies both parents contribute equally based on the situation, not traditional gender roles.
Parents bring different strengths to the relationship.
Androgynous parenting involves gender-neutral roles or roles performed by the opposite-sex parent.
Example: Strengthening nurturing aspects in fathers.
Blurring gender roles can enhance gender equality in children.
Generations X and Y are more dual-centric or family-centric.
They emphasize work and family equally and plan to allocate time to family life (Dawson, Sharma, Irving, Marcus, and Kiriko, 2015; Cray, Belinsky, and Thompson, 2002).
Much research on parent-child relations is based on two-parent families.
This remains a predominant family form in the U.S. (US Census Bureau).
This family form is declining due to changing attitudes toward cohabitation and divorce (Wagner, Schmidt, and Way, 2015).
There's an upward trend in single-parent families.
Most children in the U.S. still experience growing up with two parents (Vespa, Lewis, and Crider, 2013; US Census Bureau, 2016).
Many couples choose to cohabit rather than marry while raising children (Richards, Rothblum, Beauchaine, and Balsam, 2016).
The number of adults who cohabit is increasing (Loftwist, Lou Gehla, O'Connell, and Feliz, 2012; US Census Bureau, 2016; Vespa, Lewis, and Crider, 2013).
Cohabiting couples' relationships resemble those of married couples.
They face similar risks of separation and distress (Manning, 2015).
Cohabitation doesn't necessarily lead to marriage (Rose Greenland and Smock, 2013).
About 1 in 9 cohabiting couples is in a same-sex partnership (Carl, 2012).
Single Parent and Binuclear Families
Single-parent family: one adult parent and one or more children.
Binuclear family: children have access to two families, usually after divorce.
The number of single-parent families is increasing rapidly.
This may be due to divorce or unmarried women choosing to have children.
In 2010, there were about 75,000,000 minor children in the U.S.
About 2/3 lived in dual-parent households, and 1/3 lived in single-parent setups.
The number of children living with both parents decreased by about 10% between 1980 and 2010.
Older children were less likely to live with two parents.
In 2010, of children in single-parent households:
23% lived only with their mother.
3% lived only with their father.
4% lived with neither parent (Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics, 2015).
Single-parent families accounted for about 26% of all families with children in 2010.
Single-parent families are more prevalent among African Americans (US Census Bureau).
A single-parent family is created through:
Divorce, desertion, or separation.
Death of one adult.
Having a child while unmarried.
The most common means is divorce.
Courts typically award full physical custody to the mother, considering the child's best interests.
Quality of life is a major issue for many single-parent families (Mckinen et al, 2016).
Any disruption in family life can produce a crisis; divorce is one of the most stressful experiences.
It can be traumatic for children.
Divorce forces many short and long-range adjustments.
The experience of being a single parent differs for women and men.
Women generally expect financial difficulties, and more children live in poverty in single-parent families headed by women (Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics, 2015).
Children in single-parent families, especially those headed by mothers, can face serious implications.
Children in poverty are at greater risk for problems at school, teen parenthood, unemployment, and lower wages.
Many choose divorce over an unhappy relationship.
This arrangement can be more efficient/harmonious than a household marked by tension/strife, especially if abuse is present.
Same-sex married couples may face similar stressors of divorce (LeBlanc, Frost, and White, 2015).
Blended Families
Blended families are formed when at least one adult partner remarries or when a couple cohabits and children are involved.
Typically, the vacant adult role in the new blended family is filled by a man (Nixon and Hatfield, 2016).
The man may or may not have been divorced and may have children of his own.
Same-sex couples can also choose to live in blended families.
Remarriage is popular, but these relationships have a higher risk of ending in divorce (Carl, 2012 Kennedy and Ruggles, 2014).
The median length of marriages in the U.S. is about seven years.
Most persons who divorce remarry within three years.
Marriages tend to last about the same length as marriages.
It is unusual for an individual to have been married three times or more.
Blended families involve children from one or both remarried partners (Augenbach, Robles, and Son, 2013).
Researchers have found that this family form may be no better or worse than other family forms, although the challenges are unique.
These challenges include dealing with a complicated extended family network, difficulty in establishing step-parenting roles, and the unique developmental tasks associated with forming a new and cohesive family identity (Zalesnikko and Zalesnikko 2015).
Families with Adult Children
Families with adult children are a modern phenomenon.
The family emerges when children who have been launched into independence return home to their family of origin.
Young adult children or emerging adults are also referred to as boomerang kids (South and Lay, 2015).
Some estimates suggest that more than 60% of all young adults between ages 18 and 30 will return to their family of origin at some time.
It is estimated that about 56% of men and 43% of women between ages 18 and 24 live with one or both parents (Vespa, Lewis, and Crider, 2013).
During extended economic downturns, these numbers tend to increase.
The phenomenon primarily occurs when young adult children experience some type of transitional life crisis, such as job loss or divorce.
Young adults in stable partnerships are less likely to return home, whereas single moms are more likely to return to the parental base (Hayford and Gezzo, 2016).
Some families are formed when adult children return to care for their elderly parents, while others need grandparental support in raising their own children.
Families need to adapt and respond to the development of a young adult.
Family rules may need to be changed, and new boundaries established.
Arrangements involve new definitions of family relationships that reduce the social power of the parents.
Parents feel more positive when their boomerang kids reciprocate by contributing to the household and are respectful of family rules.
It is beneficial if the adult children can maintain their autonomy (Tanner and Arnett, 2016).
The sandwich generation refers to adults who are looking after their own parents as well as their offspring (Bogan, 2015).
Kinship Families, Custodial Grandparents and Grandchildren
American grandparents may be faced with the responsibility of raising their grandchildren and possibly providing some financial support for their own children.
Typically, grandchildren live in grandparent-maintained households, although it can include extended family members.
In 1970, in the U.S., there were about 2,200,000 of these households.
By 2010, this number reached about 7%, or 4,900,000 children living with a grandparent.
About half of the children in grandparent-maintained households are Caucasian, followed by about a quarter African American and just under 20% Hispanic/Latino (US Census Bureau, 2014).
For the grandchildren, there may be very real reasons why their biological parents cannot raise them.
The lives of the grandparents are also transformed.
A significant number of grandparents find themselves overburdened and overwhelmed, especially if the children display behavioral issues or if the grandparents have failing health.
The scenario is more positive if the grandparents are healthy, coping, and have the resources to fulfill this variation of the parenting role.
For some, it adds meaning to their lives.
Postponement of having children may mean that grandparenthood arises at a later age (Margolis, 2016).
The grandmother maintains the household in the majority of these families (Wees, Burke, and Yekel, 2016).
Families are typically created when parents experience some type of personal problem.
Examples include incarceration, addiction, child abuse, chronic illness, or even death.
Grandparents may step in to assume custody and provide a stable environment rather than the children being placed in foster care.
Grandparents may perceive these challenges differently (Weis et al, 2016).
Grandparents may take on their roles when they are older than when their parents before them claim the title of grandparent (Margolis, 2016).
Many grandparents find that their plans for a serene retirement must be postponed or abandoned.
Others have to apply for public assistance because of increased expenses challenging an already limited fixed income.
The grandchildren may display problems related to parental divorce, addiction disorders, and inconsistent parenting behavior.
Grandparents in coresident households are more likely to be poor.
Providing for the educational needs of grandchildren may be difficult if their own education was incomplete (Joy, Sprang, and Esslinger, 2016).
Diversity
Diversity, in structure and form, are principal characteristics of contemporary American families.
Significant variations in the ways that families are defined and how they are composed reflect changes occurring in the larger society.
This in turn affects the parenting role.
The influences can be bidirectional.
Families of Choice
Family of choice denotes family formation not exclusively relying on shared genetics or legal parental status.
Family members choose to function as a family, and this is often favored in same-sex unions.
The concept family and what that implies is continuously evolving.
Created and assigned kinship roles represent variations in the family bonds.
In single-parent families, cohabiting and repartnered unions, same-sex unions, including persons identifying themselves as LGBT and LGBTQ, as well as transnational families, the expression of a family of creation can be varied, even ambiguous (Cherilyn, 2012, Gerhardt, 2016 b).
In families of choice, we can choose our families.
Children in the Civil War
Amidst the devastation of war, children forfeit their childhoods.
Women and children waged their own battles sustaining the home front as they were fighting for survival.
Children would help with farming responsibilities, looked after younger siblings, sewed, made soap and candles, or scavenged for food.
When their teachers joined the war effort, educations were interrupted unless children were homeschooled.
Children on the civil war homefront encountered trials, hardships, and violence that forced them to grow up quickly amidst a nation at war with itself.
Children comprised a much bigger portion of The US population in 1860 than in the 20th century, with persons <19 making up nearly half of the population compared to less than 25% today.
Many soldiers on both sides invoke the future of their children as to why the war should be fought.
A number of children took up arms with their elders and served as enlisted soldiers or regimental musicians.
Around 48 soldiers who were under the age of 18 won the congressional medal of honor for their bravery and service (Schwartz, retrieved 2017).
Military Families
Soldiers may go to war as individuals, but they come from families that are impacted by their deployment (Myers Walls and Myers Baumann, 2015).
Military families face unique challenges, which may be even more pronounced in families with two serving members.
Deployed military mothers are a fairly recent phenomenon.
During deployment, military families share some of the stressors and challenges with families who function as single-parent units.
While deployed, parenting from a distance and maintaining family cohesion is challenging.
The deployed soldier is also forming a surrogate family with similarly deployed colleagues.
Military life affects marital and family functioning and are closely related to parenting and child rearing.
If one person from a family unit is deployed, it affects that entire unit (Ossery, Lucier Greer, O'Neill, Arnold, Mancini, and Ford, 2015).
About February US service men and women are on active duty, and the number of spouses and children affected number, three million.
Based on figures released by the US Department of Defense in 2013, about 200,000 persons were actively deployed at that time (Yablonsky et al, 2016).
Millions of Americans have experienced the deployment of a family member.
The cycle and transitions around deployment contain stressors of their own.
This cycle contains the stages of pre-deployment, deployment, post-deployment, and possible re-deployment (DeVoe and Ross, 2012).
Military personnel, as well as their families, face significant adjustment when the family member returns from deployment (Willerton, McDermott Wadsworth, and Riggs, 2011).
For some of the families, this adjustment cycle and its subsequent challenges is repeated with re-deployment.
Each phase can have its own tasks and outcomes (Yablonsky et al, 2016).
Pre-deployment phase: getting ready, facing uncertainty, and some emotional distancing.
Deployment phase: staying engaged by connecting with own family and finding a support or surrogate family in the deployed setting.
Transposement during deployment: altering the family, taking on new roles, challenges of communication.
Post-deployment: reintegrating with own family. Requires understanding, appreciation, and renewed family bonding.
The period of deployment averages about 15 months.
Spouses and children worry about the safety of the family member who is deployed and they suffer from what has been called ambiguous loss (Yablonsky et al, 2016).
These families face stressors that affect many areas of family functioning and seem to increase with repeated deployment (Lucia Greer, Arnold, Mancini, Ford, and Bryant, 2015).
The sustaining and positive factors in these families are the strength and stability of a marriage relationship, combined with their social connectedness to a network of supportive and significant others (Saltzman, Lester, Milburn, Woodward, and Stein, 2016).
Deployment increased the stability of many military marriages (Carney and Crown, 2011).
Marital stability varies according to gender, race, length of deployment, and age at the time of marriage.
Multiple and prolonged deployments appear to escalate general family-related difficulties (Lucia Greer et al, 2015).
Female service members faced almost double the risk of marital breakup as compared with their male counterparts (Ross, 2016).
Soldiers who return with post-combat mental health problems affect the entire family.
Major depression, PTSD, and generalized anxiety can affect as many as one in five soldiers (Ross, 2016).
The community’s capacity and ability to support military families is crucial in positive outcomes (Oshrey. Lucia Greer, O'Neill, Arnold, Mancini, and Ford, 2015).
There is an immense positive power contained in our expressions of care, support, and appreciation toward military families.
The cohort represents about 2,000,000 children who have to deal with potentially traumatic challenges such as separation from a parent and the potential risk to that parent (Wadsworth et al, 2016).
Ethnography, Diverse Family Forms
Family forms described previously are those typically found in developed nations.
In remote and fairly isolated contexts, other variations on the marriage and family theme exist.
Polygamy: marriage that may include several adults.
Polygamy falls under the umbrella term polyamory.
Polygyny: a man and several wives. gyne=woman (Nanda and Worms, 2014).
Polyandry: a woman partnered by several husbands simultaneously. andro=male
Endogamous marriages: marriages between members of the same group.
Exogamous marriages: marriage partner does not belong to the same group.
Morganatic marriage: marriage between two persons who did not have the same social class or rank.
In morganatic marriages ways were found to avoid some of the legal rights and responsibilities accompanying marriage.
Family Well-Being
The quality of the relationships within diverse families is a key indicator of overall well-being.
Making value judgments about one particular family form or configuration over another is not a constructive exercise.
Relevance lies in how well the members of the family are functioning within their particular family group.
Family wellness is affected by so many factors, from the economic to the emotional.
Access to economic, educational, and social resources, the quality and consistency of parental nurturance, guidance, and responsibility, and the degree of domestic harmony, conflict, and hostility affect child development and welfare far more substantially than does the particular number, gender, sexual orientation, and marital status of parents or the family structure in which children are reared (Stacy, 1998).