Historically, marriage was the basis for family life. In recent decades, however, the rising rate of divorce and the growing number of singles and single parents has changed the form of many families, especially in the United States. As a result, everyone is talking about the American family. Some say it is dying, others say it is adapting to social change. Some see it as the center of meaning and intimacy in people's lives, others charge that it is a nest of emotional, social, and physical abuse. These contradictory charges clearly suggest that the family is an important institution for a lot of people and for society. Why else would so many people be giving so much thought to it?

Sociologists point out that some form of the family appears universally in all cultures and societies. On the other hand, they, like other social observers, wonder if the family is declining in U.S. society or simply adapting to social changes. If it is adapting, how and why is it changing?

In the first section of this chapter we examine the functions the family has traditionally filled in society, including sexual regulation, member replacement, care and socialization of the young, and economic functions. Relatively recently in historical terms, love and emotional intimacy have been added to the functions the family is expected to serve.

In the next section we consider some of the major changes in family forms that have emerged in the last 25 years. These include more single-parent households, declining marriage rates, later marriages, more cohabitation without marriage, more childless couples, two-paycheck families, smaller families (fewer children per couple), generally higher divorce rates, and more step families.

The existence of these changes raises the question: Why have these changes occurred? So in the third section we examine possible causes of these trends, including demographic changes, economic conditions, the "sexual revolution," and cultural attitudes and preferences. Some of the consequences of these trends for family life and for society are analyzed in the fourth section, including changes in family roles and power relations, family violence, and sibling interactions within the family. The societal implications of the increasing "privatization" of the family, and the effects on children of divorce, single-parent families, working mothers, and step families are also examined.

In light of these trends and their consequences, we return in the final section to the question of whether the family is declining or adapting, and we consider what various groups in society propose doing for and about the family.

The U. S. Bureau of the Census defines a family as two or more persons who are related to each other by blood, marriage, or adoption and who live together. Many people would broaden this definition to include the family units of young adult college students who live away from home. Some people feel the definition should be widened further still to include adults who are not relatives but who have made a commitment to each other and want to live together in some sense as a family-for instance, two unrelated old people or homosexual couples. The preceding definition differs from a more traditional conception of the nuclear family, which consists of a mother, a father, and their children. Sometimes sociologists and anthropologists use the term conjugal family to refer to the same unit.

In the conjugal family, primary emphasis is on the husband-wife relationship rather than on their relationships with blood relatives. The conjugal family may be far removed from its relatives, as when a husband and wife and their unmarried children move to a distant city, away from their families. An extended family is one in which relatives from several generations live together. The family is a unit within a larger kinship network. Kinship refers to socially defined family relationships, including those based on common parentage, marriage, or adoption.

THE FUNCTIONS OF THE FAMILY

Traditionally, the family as an institution has served a number of important functions in society, including sexual regulation, biological reproduction, the care and socialization of the young, and the economic functions of providing food, shelter, and warmth for family members. In most societies few institutions filled these functions better than the family. It is worth considering each of these functions and how they are changing.

Sexual Regulation

Sex is an important drive in human beings, and it has the potential for disrupting relationships in social groups. For this reason, virtually every society has developed norms governing sexual relations. In all societies, various categories of sexual relations are possible, including marital relations, incest, and homosexual relations, for example. Marriage is a social institution that recognizes and approves the sexual union of two or more individuals and includes a set of mutual rights and obligations. Virtually all societies encourage sex within marriage and forbid incest, but how other forms of sexual relations are regulated varies widely. Western societies, at least until recently, have generally forbidden everything except marital sexuality. In the 115 societies around the world that Murdock (1967) studied, however, only three were as strict as Western societies. About 70 percent of them, under certain conditions, allowed sexual freedom prior to marriage.

Some social analysts have suggested that sexual regulation increased when private property and a surplus of food or wealth developed, because the existence of inheritable property made it important to establish the legitimacy of heirs. The desire to regulate reproduction naturally focused on sexual relations.

Virtually every society has norms governing sexual relations. 'zany societies encourage marriage and yet at the same time try to regulate marriage.

Member Replacement

All societies need to replace their members. The needs of societies, however, vary widely. When people had a relatively short life span and infant mortality was high, it was important for families to have as many children as possible. Societies therefore placed great value on fertility and reproduction. Modern industrial societies show opposite tendencies. Life expectancy has been extended greatly, and infant mortality has declined. As a result, it is no longer widely believed that people should have as many children as possible.

The number of births to unmarried mothers has increased in recent years. In 1986, more than 878,000 babies were born to unmarried women, representing nearly one-quarter of all live births that year. By contrast, in 1950, only 4 percent of all babies were born to unmarried women (U. S. Bureau of the Census, 1985a, p. 62). About one-third of unmarried mothers in 1986 were 19 years old or younger. Teenage mothers are more likely than other mothers to be poor, to live in inner cities or isolated rural areas, and disproportionately, to be black (Geronimus, 1987) .

What are the consequences of teenage pregnancy? Compared to other teenagers, adolescent mothers are (1) less likely to complete high school, (2) more likely to remain in the lower occupational status and income groups, (3) more likely to suffer complications in their deliveries, and (4) more likely to suffer from emotional problems related to sexuality and pregnancy (Kephart and Jedlicka, 1988, p. 279) . What about the consequences for their children? Their children are more likely to suffer from complications at delivery, to have below-average birth weights, and to experience serious adjustment problems in their teen years (Kephart and Jedlicka, 1988, pp. 279-280).

Every effort is made to teach new members of a society the norms, values, beliefs, and behaviors appropriate for membership in that society. These parents have brought their young son to their college graduation.

Care and Socialization of the Young

Humans require many years of nurture and socialization before they can become full-fledged members of society. The care and the socialization of the young ensure that a society will have cultural as well as biological reproduction. Every effort is made to teach new members the norms, values, beliefs, and behaviors appropriate for membership in society. In a fairly simple society, such as that of hunters and gathers, virtually everyone of the same age and sex learns similar norms and values. In more complex societies, however, there is considerable variation in the content of social learning and teaching, in accordance with the class, ethnic group, or nationality of an individual. Such societies and groups transmit their cultures from one generation to the next. Part of the cultural content that is so transmitted may include the social relations between various groups. The family is an important means of such social and cultural transmission.

Economic Functions

To survive, all societies must meet the subsistence needs of their members; that is they must provide food, clothing, and shelter. The family has been a traditional means for seeing that the dependent members of a society were cared for by other members who were able to produce these basic necessities. With the advent of industrialization, more and more individuals stopped producing food, clothing, and shelter themselves and began working for others in exchange for money. They then used this money to purchase the things that they and their families needed.

In recent years, especially in Western societies, women have been increasingly able to work outside the home. Although they still do not earn as much as men, they are able to meet some of their subsistence needs without depending on a male earner. Some of the economic functions traditionally performed by women in the family-such as cooking, sewing, and canning have been learned by men or arc available in exchange for money. As a result of these and related changes, more and more individuals are able to sustain themselves economically without living in families.

Do family members still provide the basic economic support for their family units? It is difficult to answer this question fully, but sociologists do know that in 1975 one-quarter of U.S. households had no members who worked. By 1990, this will be true of 29 percent of households. Such households include the retired, the widowed, nonworking single parents, and handicapped or infirm single individuals. These families receive income from the government, their kin, private pension plans, and their own savings and investments The biggest single source of government payments comes from the social security system, which makes old-age, survivor's, and disability payments. That program presumes that at least one member of the family has worked at some earlier time.

Presumably, three-quarters of households have at least one member who works. Some would argue that "two can still live as cheaply as one." One person needed $5778 to be above the government's definition of poverty in 1987, while a second person living with the first was considered to need only an additional $1619 to escape poverty (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1989a) .

Although the family's economic needs arc currently being met by work, government programs, and kin, the growth of households without any workers may make it more difficult for such families to meet their needs for food, clothing, shelter, and health care. As a result, we would expect the family's role in meeting economic needs to decrease for some people and the role of the government and outside jobs to increase.

Emotional Intimacy

In many societies there is little expectation that wives and husbands will be emotionally close. Among the Nayar of India, for example, girls are married before the age of puberty to establish their place in the community. Although they and their ritual husbands are secluded together for four days, they do not necessarily have sexual relations. After that, the ritual husbands and wives have no special relationship except that the ritual wife and any children that she may have must observe rites when the husband dies. The ritual wife and husband may become lovers when they are older if both are willing, but it is not required that they do so. They may or may not be close sexually and emotionally.

In some societies, marriages are arranged by parents, sometimes when the partners are children, and the partners may not even know each other when they get married. More than 2000 arranged marriages occurred in the United States in 1982, when Rev. Sun Myung Moon, leader of the Unification Church, selected partners for 4150 of his young followers and then performed a massive group wedding in New York's Madison Square Garden. Many of these young people had met for the first time only days before. Some did not even speak the same language as their new spouses and could converse only through interpreters. In such situations an individual's needs for emotional intimacy may be met by other family members, such as siblings, parents, or children.

In contemporary Western society there is a fairly strong and widely held expectation that husbands and wives will be intimate emotionally as well as sexually. Although most couples expect intimacy, some can realize their expectations better than others. Lower-income couples may worry less about intimacy than about paying their monthly bills. Blue-collar workers have been found to expect less sharing and emotional intimacy in their marriages than white collar workers (Komarovsky, 1962). However, Rubin (1976) suggests that these expectations in the working class may be changing as working-class wives come increasingly to look for emotional intimacy in their marriages.

Emotional intimacy is expected by most couples, but the amount of sharing couples experience may vary according to their social-class background. Roseanne Barr and John Goodman play a working-class couple in the television comedy series Roseanne "

Most adults (78 percent) in a recent national survey said they get a great deal of satisfaction from their family lives; only 3 percent said they get little or none. If they feel their needs are not being met, they may seek a new relationship. Unlike people 25 years ago, they are slower to get married, more likely to live together without marriage, and less likely to have children. Also, they are likely to have fewer children and more likely to get a divorce.

Despite the positive functions of the family for society, the basic role structure of the family may also have some previously overlooked dysfunctions (Komarovsky, 1988). If so, we might expect some changes in family forms and activities.

CHANGES IN FAMILY FORMS AND ACTIVITIES

Family forms in Western industrial societies have been shifting markedly in recent decades. In the United States, for example, fewer families consist of married couples. In 1970, seven out of ten households consisted of married couples, and more than half of these had one or more children (Figure 12.1). By 1985, however, less than six out of ten households consisted of married couples. By the year 2000, married couples may represent barely half of all households, according to U. S. Bureau of the Census estimates (Ferriss, 1988).

These shifts are reflected in marriage rates, the increase in the number of singles, birth rates, more working wives, divorce rates, and more step families.

Marriage Rates

The marriage rate per 1000 single women, representing an average for all age groups, has declined from 90 in 1950 to 57.0 in 1985 (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1989a, p. 85). This may be due in part to women's increased options outside of marriage (Goldscheider and Waite, 1986). Marriage rates peak for both sexes between the ages of 25 and 29. By age 30, about 90 percent of women and 83 percent of men have married at least once. Figure 12.2 shows the changes over time in the percentage of American women in various age groups who had never married. Some young people are simply postponing marriage while they obtain more education or get established in a career. The age at marriage for both sexes depends heavily on the timing of young men's entry into relatively stable occupational careers, suggests Oppenheimer (1988). Others will not marry at all. The national median age at first marriage reached a low of 20 for women and 23 for men in 1956. After rising steadily, it was 23.0 for women and 24.8 years for men in 1985 (National Center for Health Statistics, 1988).

Figure 12.1 Changing Household Composition in the United States, 1960-2000.

In 1960, three-quarters of all households consisted of married couples, and more than half of those had children. By 2000, only slightly above half of all households are expected to be married couples, and half of them will have children. The percentage of single male and female-headed households is increasing markedly.
Source: U.S Bureau of the Census, 1986a, p. 2, and 1986b, p. 2.

Despite the rising age at which people marry and the growing number of women who have never married, 88 percent of all women think of marriage as an ideal way of life, according to a 1987 Gallup poll. As recently as 1980, however, 94 percent of women favored marriage as a way of life, so this represents some decline. It is notable that only 33 percent of 18-year-old daughters in 1980 said they would be bothered "a great deal" by not marrying and another 34 percent would be bothered "some," although 97 percent expected they would get married (Thornton and Freedman, 1982). The nature of the marriage relationship they desire has changed, however. A majority of women (57 percent) feel that marriage responsibilities should be shared equally by both partners, with both earing salaries and sharing family and household activities. Half of men (50 percent) agree. Support for this type of relationship is greatest among younger and college-educated women. Two-thirds of them favor such a marriage (Public Opinion, 1985, p. 47).

Figure 12.2 Percentage of Women Who Never Married, in Different Age Groups, 1940- 1987.

Between 1940 and 1960, the percentage of women between the ages of 18 and 29 who had never married declined. Between 1960 and 1987, the percentage who had never married increased to a new high.

Source: U. S. Bureau of the census, 1989a p. 41.

Even though women overwhelmingly favor marriage as a way of life, they continue to get married at a slower rate today than they did 20 years ago. Several reasons have been offered for this trend. First, women are more likely to pursue higher education today than in the past, a factor that is related to later marriage. Second, there has been a rise in cohabitation among unmarried couples and an increase in same-sex (homosexual and lesbian) relationships.

The number of cohabiting couples has more than quadrupled, from about half a million in 1970 to more than 2 million in 1987. Most of these couples are in the 25 to 44 age range, followed by those under 25; the third largest age group among cohabitors was people who were 45 to 64 years old. Despite the rapid rise in cohabiting couples, they still make up only about 4 percent of all couples living together in the United States (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1989a). If other countries are any indication, however, this percentage will continue to grow in the United States. In Denmark more than one quarter of women 18 through 25 live with a man without being married, and in Sweden about 12 percent of all couples (aged 16 to 70 are not married (Westoff, 1978).

One study compared cohabiting cross-sex, homosexual, lesbian, and married couples in terms of how they handled money, occupational responsibilities and housework, and sexual relations (Blumstein and Schwartz, 1983). Stability in their relationship was similar for cross-sex couples, homosexual, and lesbian couples. Those who broke up were likely to have argued about money or work or to include one partner who was more dependent or ambitious than the other (Hubert and Spitzes, 1988).

Not all cohabiting relationships are the same, however. They differ in terms of motivation and commitment. At least six types of cohabitation have been noted: (1) relations of temporary convenience or mutual benefit; (2) affectionate relationships that are open to other, simultaneous relationships; (3) affectionate monogamous relationships; (4) trial marriage or a conscious test relationship; (5) temporary alternatives to marriage-for example, while awaiting a divorce settlement or graduation; (6) permanent alternatives to marriage (Macklin, 1983).

A majority of college students approve of living together before marriage In 1987, a national survey of first-year college students showed that 58 percent of melt and 47 percent of women approved of living together before marriage (Astin ct al., 1987). As compared to a similar survey done in 1974, that represents a 7 percent increase for men and an 8 percent increase for women.

Does cohabitation affect the stability of marriage later on? Two hypotheses have been offered. One suggests that cohabitation is a form of trial marriage, with the result that only the most stable of cohabiting couples marry. Thus, cohabiting couples should be better able than noncohabiting couples to avoid marital dissolution. The second hypothesis suggests that those who cohabit are a self-selected group of people whose relationships, both non-marital and marital, are notable for their lack of commitment and stability. They may also attach less importance to traditional institutions such as marriage. Thus, cohabitors would have higher rates of marital dissolution than married couples who did not cohabit. Research has shown that Swedish women who cohabited before marriage later dissolved their marriages almost 80 percent more often than did women who had not cohabited (Bennett, Blanc, and Bloom, 1988). Women who cohabit for more than three years prior to marriage have marriage dissolution rates that are over 50 percent higher than those of women who cohabit for less time. Cohabitors and noncohabitors whose marriages remained intact for eight years show no differences in their rates of marital dissolution after that time (Bennett, Blanc, and Bloom, l988). Although they cannot pinpoint the exact cause of higher marital dissolution rates among cohabitors, the researchers see their findings as consistent with the hypothesis that cohabitors may be a select group who tend to lack the "interests" or "values" typically associated with marriage (Bernard, 1982, p. 159, cited in Bennett et al., p. 136). Another indication of the trend is the attitudes of single women, who were twice as likely in 1976 than they were in 1957 to view marriage primarily as a burden and restriction. In 1976 only 17 percent of single women held positive attitudes toward marriage (Bernard, 1981a).

More Singles

In 1940 fewer than 8 percent of all U.S. houscholds consisted of people living alone, but by 1987 the figure was 24 percent of households. There are 36 million single women and 29 million single men, but their ages are not comparable. One out of every two single women is over age 40, whereas only one out of four single men is. About half of all singles have never been married. Their numbers have increased as the marriage age and divorce rate have risen and as more people choose not to marry at all. Although their life situations and life-styles are quite different, they do share some common satisfactions and frustrations.

The young singles are in their twenties and are just out of school and into their first jobs. Although traditionally this group stayed at home with their parents until they married, in recent decades many have been able to afford their own place to live, which they often share with one or more roommates. This group, which may be paying off educational loans, faces the high cost of everything from rent to transportation, clothes, and furnishings. Nevertheless, they may be the most likely to live the "swinging singles" life- style characterized by lots of night life and parties. Their roommates may provide support and friendship, but they may also feel pinched for privacy.

The divorced or never-married middle-aged singles very often live alone or cohabit with a special partner. If they are divorced, they may have financial, social, and emotional involvements with and obligations toward dependent children. They may be somewhat more established in their work than the young singles and be earning somewhat more. They are likely to have clarified their own likes, dislikes, and interests and to have developed a good circle of friends.

Singles over the age of 65 are more likely to be women because of their longer life expectancy and because three quarters of husbands are older than their wives. Many are poor and subsist on social security payments and other meager sources of income. Many never worked for income in their own lifetimes and therefore do not receive pensions from their own work. Many are involved in church or other groups that provide a sense of community and friendship.

All singles face the possibility or fear of loneliness. Rather than being socially isolated, many people who live alone compensate by having many more contacts outside their homes than people who live with others (Alwin and Converse, 1984). Some of the younger and middle-aged ones report the pressures of living in a "pro-marriage" environment (Stein, 1976). Many singles who are economically independent say they enjoy their freedom and find that being single provides them with greater variety and more opportunitics for personal development.

More Two-Earner Families

In 1968, 45 percent of all married couples had one wage earner (a male) and 45 percent were two-earner families. (The other 10 percent had either no earners or the husband did not earn.) As noted in the previous chapter, many more wives and mothers are working today than were working in 1970 (see Figure 12.3). As a result, by 1980 two-earner families were 52 percent of all married couples, whereas only 31 percent of families had a sole male wage earner. Two-earner families are smaller and younger; the adults have more education and earn more jointly than families with only one male wage earner (Hayghe, 1982, p. 29; see the debate on two- earner families).

Many more wives and mothers are working today than were working 25 years ago. Here a four-year- old daughter is emulating her lawyer mother on their way home from day care.

About one-quarter of all two- earner families may be characterized as dual- career families. These are families in which both husband and wife have occupations that require special training and where they move through a pattern of jobs of increasing prestige (Wilensky, 1961, p. 523).

It is helpful to consider two-earner families in relation to the eight major stages in the family life cycle noted by Duvall (1971). These are:

1. Beginning families (married couples without children) .

2. Childbearing families (oldest child under 30 months) .

3. Families with preschool children (oldest child 30 months to 6 years).

4. Families with school-age children (oldest child 6 to 13 years).

5. Families with teenagers (oldest child 14 to 20 years) .

6. Launching-center families (between the time that the first and last child leaves home).

7. Families in the middle years ("empty nest" to retirement).

8. Aging families (retirement of both spouses; cited in Poloma et al., 1982, p. 180).

Childless women find that marriage does not alter their career development. The major limitation of marriage for wives' careers is the lack of geographic mobility. Among women who have children, many reduce their career involvement in stages 2 and 3 of the family cycle and begin to increase it again in stages 4 and 5. In stages 6 and 7 the professionally employed wife really hits her stride in her career (Astin, 1985; Poloma et al., 1982). Little research has been done about the last stage of family life for dualcareer couples.

Figure 12.3 Labor-Force Participation Rates for Married Women Aged 16 to 44 with Husbands Present, by Presence and Age of Children: 1970, 1980, and 1988.
Betwecn 1970 and 1988, marricd women who lived with their husbands moved into the labor force in growing numbers. Those with children aged 6 to 17 were most likely to work. But even among those with children under 6, more than half were working in 1988.
Source: U. S. Bureau of the Census, 1989a, p. 386.

For men in careers, the pattern is one of professional or graduate school right after college and then an uninterrupted career line that builds to its high point, levels off, and is followed by retirement (Poloma et al., 1982). Married women's career lines are different from those of most men. Although many young women today report that they want "to have it all"-usband, career, and family-hey havc very little idea about what "having it all" involves (sce, for example, Scarr, 1984; Komarovsky, 1985). Women with children are likely to follow one of four different types of career, depending on how they cope with the various stages of family life. They may follow regular careers, interrupted careers, second careers, or modificd second careers (Poloma et al., 1982).

Mothers pursuing regular careers tend to follow the same sequence as men except that they need to fit in the birth and care of one or more children. If they pursue full-time careers, they need considerable help with child care and home responsibilities See, for example, Epstein's (1981) study of women lawyers]. Part-time regular careers arc sometimes pursued by women octors or lawyers who can set up limited private practices (Poloma et al., 1982) Interrupted careers begin like regular ones but arc interrupted for several years, usually for child rearing in stages 2 or 3. They may be resumed in stages 3 or 4. The professional training for second careers may begin in stage 4, after the first carder of child rearing is well along, and actual career activities may not begin until stages 5 or 6. A modified second career begins earlicr (Poloma et al., 1982). For the two-earner family as for all family forms, a lifecycle perspective illuminates possible strains and ways people compensate for them (Gerson, 1983; Rossi, 1983).

Do the Advantages of Two-Earner Families Outweigh the Disadvantages?

Ed is a computer programer, and his wife Cindy is a teacher. Their children are cared for by his mother three days a week and by a neiglabor the other two days. Cindy generally has vacations When their children do. Ed earns about twice what she does.

Kathy earns much more in her job as a television newscaster than Mike, her bank officer husband, does. They both travel a lot, and in some ways their marriage is like the computer marriages of couples who live apart for days or even weeks at a time for the sake of their jobs. When they had twins, Kathy took a three-month maternity leave. They have a live-in housekeeper and extra help to aid in running the household.

Orlando is a youth worker married to Jenny, who runs a gift shop. He makes dinner on the nights she works late at the store and takes the kids on Saturday outings when she works. She has Mondays off, and on that day she cooks several main dishes for the week's dinners. Orlando and Jenny spend Sundays cleaning the house, doing laundry, and grocery shopping, because they have decided they would rather save the money it would cost to pay someone to come in and do these things for them. They are hoping to save enough to buy their own home. As the children grow older, they are helping more with family chores, becoming "part of the solution rathcr than part of thc problem," as Jenny puts it. When the children were young they went to a day care center four days a week. Now that they are in grade school they have after-school sports and activities until 5 o'clock.

Social scientists studying the lives of couples like these point out some of thc advantages and disadvantages of two-earner families:

Advantages

1. Two-earner families generally have higher incomes than one-earncr families. Having two adults working may provide a cushion for the family if either partner is unemeployed for a time.

2. Their good income may help to pay for their children's education, travel, eating out, shows

and other leisure activities.

3. Both partners are more likely to have interesting work lives, since they may be more able to seek jobs they enjoy.

4. They may have more to talk about with each other and may have good insights into each other's worlds.

5. The other spouse and the children may be able to go along on some business trips.

6. Both individuals tend to face challenges and keep growing personally, socially and intellectually.

Disadvantages

1. Role overload is possible for both husband and wife, particularly if they have children. This sometimes leads to excessive fatigue and illess. Husbands need to help more with children and housework than in traditional familics.

2. There may be rather limited time for housework, social life, entertaining, liesure, relaxation, volunteer activities, care of aged relatives, and other things women have traditionally done when they have not been working outside the home

3. Husbands my receive little social support for helping with child care or household tasks.

4. Thc family needs additional help with child care until both partners have relatively low-key, perhaps even part-time jobs.

5. Sometimes competition flares bectween husbands and wives when both have careers they consider important.

6. Vacation times of both spouses and children may not always coincide. So even though the family may have the money to vacation together, members may not always have the time to do so.

7. Finding good jobs for both husband and wife in the area may be dificult and one may have to take a less desirable job.

What do vou think? Do the advantages outweigh the disadvantages? If, as the chapter suggests more and more familiess will need two incomes to maintain the standard of living they desire, what could be done to reduce some of the disadvantages?

At current rates, 40 percent of today's marriages will end in divorce. (See Figure 12.4 for divorce rates since 1920.) Sociologists have identified social factors that are related to divorce. They also address the question: Will divorce rates continue to increase or will they stay the same?

Three types of factors appear to affect divorce rates: preparation for marriage, investment in it, and economic and marriage markets (Huber and Spitze, 1988). More education may bc considcred as preparation for marriage and is related to lower divorce rates (Bahr and Galligan, 1984; Moore and Waite, 1981). People who marry at a somewhat later age are less likely to divorce, perhaps because they are more mature (Thornton, 1978). Children are considered one form of investment in marriage, but their presence has no consistent relationship with divorce (Waite, Haggstrom, and Kanouse, 1985; Cherlin, 1977; Morgan and Rindfuss, 1985), although preschoolers seem to have some deterrent effect. Home ownership, clearly a joint investment, also decreases the likelihood of divorce (Becker, Landes, Michael, 1977; Moore and Waite, 1981), but couples who fear for the stability of their marriage may be less likely to invest (Huber and Spitze, 1988). Remarriages are more divorceprone than first marriages, especially if there are stepchildren (White and Booth, 1985). One reason may be their greater normlessness (Cherlin, 1978). Another reason may be that people who divorced once may simply have less commitment to permanence in marriage and hence may be more willing to divorce again (Furstenberg and Spanier, 1984). Also, people whose parents divorced have more positive attitudes toward divorce than do others (Greenberg and Nay, 1982).

Market influences on divorce seem to include changes in husbands' socioeconomic level (Cherlin, 1979; Hampton, 1979; Mott and Moore, 1979; Ross and Sawhill, 1975) and wives' employment (Mott and Moore, 1979; Ross and Sawhill, 1975; Cherlin, 1979). Blacks are more likely to experience divorce than whites, even when key variables are controlled (Espenshade, 1983; Moore and Waite, 1981; Thornton, 1978). A major reason may be the lack of good jobs, a market-related factor (Kitson et al., 1985; Patterson, 1982). Although divorce rates for Hispanic groups have risen in recent years (Miranda 1985), they tend to be lower than those for other groups.

Regarding the future direction of divorce rates, some factors suggest that levels will rise while others suggest they will fall. The number of adults in the most divorce-prone age (between 25 and 40) will not peak until about 1990 (Glick, 1988). Other factors that might push toward higher divorce rates include a continuing low birth rate, a continuing increase in the employment of women, a continuing high level of cohabitation outside marriage, and a continuing acceptance of divorce as a way of resolving marital difficulties (Glick and Norton, 1979). Factors that might tend to lower the divorce rate are the trend toward lower remarriage rates (thus shrinking possible candidates for redivorce), the rising age at marriage, and a "growing fear of consequences of divorce" (Kemper, 1983, cited in Glick, 1986). Another factor in the late 1980s is the relative scarcity of eligible women in the usual age range for first marriage, a condition that has historically tended to promote marital stability (Guttentag and Secord, 1983, cited in Glick and Lin, 1986). The combination of these factors is likely to produce divorce rates that "continue to fluctuate moderately near the current level before reaching a period of relative stability" (Glick and Lin, 1986, p. 745).

Figure 12. 4 Marriage Rates per 1000 Unmarried Women 15 Years of Age and Over, 1920-1985

Marriage rates declined between 1920 and 1930 but incrcased again between 1930 and 1950 Since 1950 the marriage rate has generally declined except for slight rises in 1965 and I970.

Divorce Rates per 1000 Married Women 15 Years of Age and Over, 1920-1985 The divorce rate incrcascd dramatically in 1946, as World War II ended then it declined until 1950, then climbcd to a new high in 1979. At that time it began to stabilize

Source: National Center for Health Statistics, 1983, p 1 ; U. S. Bureau of thc Census 1975, p64.

What happens to the individuals who divorce? Some research suggests that they are lonelier than the married (Gerstel et al., 1985; Kelly, 1986; Spanier and Thompson, 1984). According to an interview study of 104 women and men (Gerstel, 1988), separated and divorced women were better at maintaining close relationships than were men or than they themselves were while married, but they had a more difficult time making new and casual ties. Men were in

a better structural position to activate "instant networks" that provided new, casual ties.

Birth Rates

Lower marriage rates and higher divorce rates depress birth rates. The long- term trend in this century in the United States, except for the post-World War II "baby boom," has been toward fewer children and smaller families. Figure 12.5 illustrates the rising absolute number of births between 1945 and 1965, the declining number from 1970 to 1975, the upturn since 1975, and another rise in 1988.

The rising number of births between 1975 and 1985 reflects the large number of women of childbearing age, women who are part of the post-World War II baby boom generation. In the 1970s and 1980s there were so many women of childbearing age that the absolute number of babies born rose. The actual rate of births, however, has dropped from 118.0 per 1000 women aged 15 to 44 years old in 1960 to 65.4 per 1000 in 1986. It is this decline in birth rates rather than the absolute number of births that sociologists and population counters have tried to explain.

Figure 124.5. Annual Number of Births in the United States, 1930-1988

The absolute annual number of births began increasing enormously in 1946. In 1961, it began a general decline lasting until 1975. For the past decade the number of births generally increased each year until 1983 and 1984, when it dipped slightly It rose again in 1985, 1987, and

1988.

Source: Figures through 1978 from Masnick and Bane, 1980, p. 156;

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, various issues; U . S . Bureau of the Census, 1 989a, p. 63; National Center for Health Statistics, 1989, p. 1.

Several factors seem to explain the general trend toward lower birth rates. First, the economic value of children has shifted in this century from being an asset to being a liability. This has resulted from laws against child labor in the early 1900s and from Social Security and other legislation to provide benefits to retired persons. Second, the dramatic growth of women's laborforce participation (Figure 12.3) is related to lower birth rates for several reasons. Outside work increases opportunities for women outside the housewife/mother role. Increased employment opportunities for women mean greater opportunity costs for women (and families) when they choose not to work in the paid labor force. This is consistent with reports from women who do not graduate from high school. Compared to women who graduated from high school or college, they are more likely to report that the benefits of children outweigh the costs (Blake and del Pinal, 1981; Veroff et al., 1981). The opportunity costs of children are lower for such women because they are not able to earn as much outside the home as more educated women can. Outside employment of women may cause role overload and conflict over traditional gender-based divisions of labor, a factor that raises the "costs" of children for women and men (McLanahan and Adams, 1987). More divorce also depresses birth rates, because it is related to the growth of singleparent families, who face numerous forms of stress (Garfinkel and McLanahan, 1986). Single mothers are more likely than married women to say that the costs of children outweigh the benefits (Blake and del Pinal, 1981).

If current birth rates persist, some 30 percent of U.S. women now of childbearing age will never have children. Only once before did so few women have children, and that was during the Great Depression of the 1930s. Even then, only 22 percent of women were childless (Westoff, 1978). Westoff suggests that the decline in births can be seen as both a cause and a consequence of changes in marriage and the family.

All these trends are rejected in attitudes about ideal family size, which have changed visibly. Nearly two-thirds of all women in 1941 thought that the ideal family should include three or four children. In 1968 more than half thought that the ideal family size was two children (Roper Organization, 1980). The other spectacular shift in the 197()s is reflected in the large numbers of young women who plan to have no children at all. In 1978, l l percent of all women aged 18 to 34 said they planned to have no children; among women 18 to 34 with postgraduate education, 21 percent expected not to have children (Bernard, 1981a). The stigma and pity attached to "childless" marriages in the past has been rcplaced by the voluntary choice of child-free marriages for many. As a result of these tendencies, the number of children under the age of 5 dropped from 20 million to 18.3 million between 1960 and 1987 (U.S. Census, 1989a).

Birth rates are also declining because people in the United States have been legally able to terminate unwanted pregnancies ever since the 1973 Supreme Court ruling that state laws forbidding abortion were unconstitutional. If many states limit abortion as a result of the Supreme Court's 1989 decision in Webster v. Reproductive Health Services, birth rates could rise again.

Between 1975 and 1985, 17.5 million American abortions were reported (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1989a) . If these abortions were evenly spread among women of childbearing age in 1980 (which they weren't because younger women are more likely to have abortions than older ones and some women have more than one), then it would represent one abortion for every four women of childbearing age (15 to 44 years of age). Many of these abortions terminated the pregnancies of unmarried teenagers. Most abortions arc obtained by younger women (nearly two- thirds are 24 years old or younger and 29 percent are 19 or younger), unmarried women (four out of five are single), and white women (70 percent) (Henshaw et al., 1985, p. 92).

A 1989 New York Times/CBS News poll found that 49 percent of American adults favored keeping abortion legal and an additional 39 percent favor legal abortion under certain circumstances .

If these trends toward lower birth rates are seen as representing a social problem, then societal solutions are needed to address the lack of family resources (time and money). Numerous other industrial nations have child allowances and/or subsidized child care (Hewlett, 1986; Kamerman and Kahn, 1978) . Public solutions would reduce the economic and psychological strains of childbearing for both men and women (McLanahan and Adams, 1987).

Growing Numbers of Stepfamilies

More than three-quarters of divorced people remarry, and about half of them do so within three years of their divorces. This means that as divorce rates have increased, the number of stepfamilies has also been increasing. In 1965 there were twice as many marriages as remarriages, but in 1985 the numbers of marriages and remarriages were nearly equal.

Remarriage adds a generally higher male income and help in running and supporting a household. It also adds new and more complex family relationships. The higher divorce rate for remarriages than for first marriages may be due to the complexity and the incomplete institutionalization of remarriage in the United States, suggests Cherlin (1978). He examines language and law as two indicators of incomplete institutionalization. While the term "stepparent" exists, it is still unclear what a child who calls her mother "Mom," should call her stepmother, and whether "Dad" is a term reserved for biological fathers alone. The lack of appropriate terms for parents in remarriage can hurt family functioning and corresponds to the absence of clearly defined roles and relationships in stepfamilies, notes Cherlin (1978, p. 643). The law also ignores many of the special problems of stepfamilies. Although all states prohibit marriage and sexual relations between persons closely related by blood, many states do not have laws restricting sexual relations or marriage between other family members in a remarriage between a stepmother and a stepson, for example, or between two stepchildren (Goldstein and Katz, 1965). Despite the lack of institutionalization for remarriage, many couples and children feel the new marriage is a big improvement over their previous one (Cherlin and Furstenberg, 1983).

Increasing rates of divorce and remarriage create increasingly complex family relationships. Here children of the bride and groom participate in the wedding of their mother and father, respectively.

LIKELY CAUSES OF THESE TRENDS

At least four interrelated factors lie behind these changes in family forms, namely, economic conditions, demographic changes, the "sexual revolution," and changing cultural expectations and preferences.

Economic Conditions

There was a time in the United States when one paycheck could maintain a middle- class family. Today that is no longer possible for most Americans. Over the last two decades, the purchasing power of the dollar has declined, service jobs have replaced many higher-paid manufacturing jobs, and promotions to higher-paying jobs have become more competitive. These factors reduce the ability of one earner to provide for a family. It is not surprising, then, that an increasing number of wives, including those with children, are in the paid labor force. By 1988, 52 percent of women with newborn children were in the labor force, compared to 31 percent a decade earlier (U. S. Bureau of the Census, 1989). When women work, the cost of raising children soars because families must earn the money not only to raise children but also to pay for child care.

Assuming a mother employed full-time, with medium family SES and medium inflation, a first child born in 1981 might cost $184,000 to raise through age 17 (Espenshade, 1984). College costs would be additional. Although everyone is not aware of these numbers, more individuals seem to be sensitive to the financial and personal costs of child rearing.

In the 1950s and 1960s a young man who left his parents' home would quickly catch up to what his father had been earning at the time of his departure. By age 30 he would have been earning one-third more than his father earned. But today a 30-year-old man is earning about 10 percent less than the father earned when the son left home, and the father pays a much lower rate of interest on his home mortgage (Levy and Michel, 1985). In short, as a result of changing economic conditions, families feel the need for two incomes to get along, thus making them

more cautious about having childrcn.

The period from 1940 to 1960 was one of rising demand for workers in traditionally female occupations -- clerical work and several categories of professional and service work. Moreover, the growing demand for female workers was greatest for more educated women. At the same time, there was a dramatic decline in the number of single women 18 to 34 years old. These younger single women were the ones employers had preferred during the war. As they became increasingly unavailable, employers began turning to older married women to maintain and expand the female labor force. These women, in turn, responded to the expansion of job opportunities and entered the labor force, thus producing the postwar rise in thc female work rate (Oppenheimer, l970).

Demographic Changes

The extraordinarily large number of young adults from the Baby Boom generation (see box on the "Baby Boom" in Chapter l8, "Population, Health, and Aging") that began looking for jobs and housing in the 1970s contributed to the sense of occupational and economic urgency that they felt. In 1970 only 39 percent of college freshmen felt that "being very well off financially" as "essential" or "very important" in their lives, but by 1987 three-quarters of them felt that way, a change that may be related to reluctance to marry and have children.

Longer life expectancy also affects family forms. Because people live longer in general, there may be a sense that each stage of life can be lengthened -- from adolescence, to starting work, to marrying, to having children, and even to retiring later. People may feel less urgency about marrying and having their children quickly when they see a longer life span ahead of them. A new development in this century is the fact that women now outlive men by a wide margin, thus contributing to the growing numbers of older women who become single through being widowed.

The sex ratio of men to women is another demographic factor that may influence family forms. When one sex outnumbers the potential marriage partners of those of the other sex, there is a "marriage squeeze." When unattached women outnumber available men, argue Guttentag and Secord (1983), men will seek to shape to their advantage the forn that relationships between men and women take. Guttentag and Secord see the decreased willingness of men to commit themselves to an exclusive lifetime relationship with one woman as consistent with the sex ratio imbalance. Some of the trends of the 1970s, including more premarital sex, delayed marriage, more divorce, and a stronger push by women for sexual, economic, and political independence, are consistent with the sex-ratio imbalance.

When men outnumber women, more women marry and at younger ages; that ratio depresses rates of divorce, illegitimacy, and female labor-force participation. Those trends were observed in ll7 countries when the level of socioeconomic development of the countries was Controlled, and the effect of the sex ratio on women's roles was more pronounced in developed than in developing countries (South and Trent, l988). Is there any evidence that such a trend is beginning in the United States? In l987, younger male "baby boomers" began to outnumber their potential marriage partners. Under such conditions, men become more eager to pursue marriage, according to the sex-ratio hypothesis.

For the past three years the average age at first marriage for women has been dropping, a reverse of the previous trend and perhaps an indication that their relative undersupply is being felt. "Between 1986 and 1987, for the first time in 20 years, the number of family households grew faster than the number of non-family households" (Fowles, 1988). In 1975 the birth rate started increasing, for the first time since its long decline began in the late 1950s. Over the next decade, it will be interesting to see what effect a shifting sex ratio has on marriage, divorce, birth rates, and gender roles.
An additional demographic change that affects marriage and families is the "graying of the suburbs" discussed in Chapter 20. Because of high housing costs, many suburban residents are "aging in place," making it difficult for young families to buy homes.

The Sexual Revolution and AIDS

In an earlier era, sex was supposed to be reserved for married adults. Today about 70 percent of women experience premarital coitus before their twentieth birthday (Forste and Heaton, 1988). Even twenty years ago, most teenage men experienced premarital coitus, whereas fewer than one-third of women had done so (Robinson and Jedlicka, 1982). At that time it was generally considered acceptable for men to have premarital sex but not for women. This dual standard of morality was called the "double standard." One idea of the "sexual revolution" beginning in the 1960s was the notion that premarital sex should be equally acceptable for men and women. Some argued that premarital sex should be unacceptable for both sexes, but that was probably a minority view.

By the late 1980s, more than half of first-year college students agreed that "If two people really like each other, it's all right for them to have sex, even if they've known each other for only a short time" (Astin et al., 1987). Has the emergence of acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) reduced the rate of premarital coitus? Fear of AIDS appears to have had no effect if we measure sexual activity by the percentage of young people who had engaged in premarital coitus at least once. In the mid1980s, more college students had premarital coital experience than before AIDS became a public concern (Kephart and Jedlicka, 1988, p. 276). Heterosexual college students do not seem to perceive themselves or their partners as being at risk for AIDS, although fear of the disease may reduce the number of partners a sexually active person has. However, a long history of research suggests that moral convictions tend to be more important determinants of sexual behavior than even the fear of a deadly disease Jedlicka and Robinson, 1987).

When sex becomes more acceptable outside the bonds of marriage, one of the major reasons for getting married is undermined, helping to contribute to lower marriage rates. At the same time, fairly strong prohibitions still exist concerning extramarital sexual relations. About 80 percent of the population feels that infidelity among married men and women is morally wrong (Yankelovich, Skelly, and White, 1977).

These prohibitions, combined with rising expectations that sexual relations in marriage should be satisfying for both partners, may contribute to rising divorce rates.

Cultural Expectations and Preferences

As already noted, the expectation that marriage should meet one's needs for emotional intimacy and love is a relatively recent idea in social life, as is the idea that one might dissolve a marriage if those needs were not being met.

The generally rising divorce rate over the last two decades should not be taken to mean that people have stopped valuing marriage. It may mean the opposite namely, that the importance of marriage as a source of emotional satisfaction has increased and that people end marriages that fail to provide such satisfaction. This interpretation is supported by the high remarriage rate for divorced persons.

The remarriage rate for divorced men and women is higher than first-time marriage rates. In 1985, marriage rates were 61.5 and 50.1, respectively, per 1000 single women and men over 15 years of age. In contrast, remarriage rates that year were 81.8 and 121.6, respectively, per 1000 divorced women and men (National Center for Health Statistics, 1988, p. 10). Apparently people are not soured on marriage in general, but only on particular marriages.

Do factors other than degree of happiness influence divorce rates? A model developed by Levinger (1965) suggests an answer to this question. The model identifies three major factors affecting divorce the attractiveness of the marriage relationship itself, the strength of barriers to marital dissolution, and the attractiveness of alternatives. His model rests on and makes sense of a great many research studies. The attractiveness of a relationship depends on whether the marriage offers emotional, social, and economic rewards to the people in it. These rewards include companionship, good communication with one's spouse, enjoyable sex, shared values, and the social and economic status obtained from a marriage. If people enter marriage largely because they feel they are experiencing a high degree of romantic love, they may find that superficial romantic love declines over time. If they do not share some common life values, companionship, or something else that makes them feel the marriage is rewarding, they may be more likely to get divorced.

Wives who married at an older age, who have been married longer, and whose husbands contribute to the housework are less likely to consider divorce than wives who married younger, have been married for a shorter time, and whose husbands do not help out (Huber and Spitze, 1980). Wives with work experience, whose youngest child is between 6 and 11, and who have egalitarian housework attitudes are more likely to consider divorce than those without work experience, whose youngest child is under 6 or over 11, and who do not have egalitarian housework attitudes (Huber and Spitze, 1980).

In addition to cultural expectations regarding sexual satisfaction and emotional intimacy, people's preferences for different types of marriages vary by age, suggesting a change over time (Figure 11.3). Younger people are more likely than older ones to prefer a marriage of shared responsibility in which husband and wife cooperate on work, homemaking, and child rearing.

Barriers to divorce the second factor in Levinger's model exists both within and beyond the individual. They include feelings of Ligation to dependent children or of the sanctity of the marriage bond itself. In general, people are much more likely today to believe that separation or divorce is the best solution when marital problems cannot be solved than they were 20 years ago (Thornton, 1985). The size of a husband's earnings and the presence of children are less of a deterrent to considering divorce than they were in the past (Huber and Spitze, 1980).

Marriages between partners of the same religious faith are less likely to end in divorce, perhaps because of their shared views about marriage. Divorce is less likely in marriages where couples attend church together, where they share a common network of friends and kin, and in communities where divorce is stigmatized (Levinger, 1965). The more people there are in a community who are divorced, the greater is the likelihood of divorce (Goode et al., 1971). When barriers to divorce are strong, divorce will be less likely; when they are weak, it will be more likely.

The third set of factors affecting divorce in a major way is the attractiveness of the alternatives to the current marriage. Is there a preferred sex partner outside the marriage? Does the wife have opportunities for independent income? Are there other individuals that one partner finds more compatible with respect to major values and goals? Are there other kin relationships that conflict with the marriage relationship? Has superficial romantic love faded from the marriage but flamed up with someone else? Any of these possibilities might make the alternatives to a marriage more important than the marriage itself.

But none of these factors alone seems to be enough to produce the dissolution of a marriage relationship. It seems more likely that as the appeal of a relationship diminishes, the relatively weak barriers to marital dissolution, combined with increasingly attractive alternatives, increase the chances of divorce.

Booth et al. (1984) found that a wife's employment was related to increased marital instability, especially if she worked more than 40 hours per week. Wives with higher incomes may have been more willing to leave a marriage they found unsatisfactory than wives with lower incomes, but the size of the wife's income was not related to marital happiness. Marital instability increased when disagreements between husbands and wives increased and marital satisfaction declined. The weakening of barriers to divorce and the appeal of alternatives also contribute to marital dissolution.

IMPLICATIONS OF THESE TRENDS

Shifts in family forms, along with the underlying changes that fostered them, have important implications within the family and for society generally. The roles of men and women within families are changing. Instances of family violence may be increasing and sibling interactions are also changing. Society is being affected by the increasing "privatization of the family" and by the possible effects on children of divorce, single parents, working mothers, and stepfamilies.

Changing Family Roles

The changing role of married women in the work force is reflected in changing roles in the family. As women have entered the labor market, men have taken more responsibility for rearing children. Some husbands attend natural childbirth classes with their wives, remain in the delivery room during birth, and spend more time caring for the baby than fathers in earlier decades did. Considerable research suggests that men are just as loving and capable caregivers as women (Berman, 1980; Lamb, 1977; Parke, 1981; Sawin and Parke, 1979). Such role changes reflect the capacity of the family to adapt to changing conditions.

Ross et al. (1983) theorize that particular marriage patterns emerged historically in response to macro-level changes in society. They set out to study whether different marital forms were related to the amount of depression experienced by husbands and wives. They suggest that there are four types of marriage: Type I, or what they call complementary marriage, is the most traditional type. Here, the wife cares for the home and children and the husband is the breadwinner but plays no part in the housework and child care. Both spouses approve of the arrangement and see their specific gender roles as proper and as part of their identities. In Type I marriages the husbands have greater power and prestige than wives but both are comfortable with the arrangement. This type is consistent with the structural-functiollal view of marriage and the family. Because male and female roles were tightly prescribed by norms within the functional view, the operation of power and exchange within the family was not a significant research topic. In the nineteenth century a great many marriages may have had tightly structured normative constraints placed on them, partly because there were so few resources and alternatives available to women (Brickman, 1974; Rosaldo and Lamphere, 1974).
Type II begins to reflect changes in the larger society. More wives are employed, but both spouses still feel that a woman's place is in the home and they would prefer that she did not have to work for pay. But in these marriages husbands' and wives' traditional expectations about marital roles are not being met. Hence Ross et al. (1983) hypothesize that the highest levels of depression are here, especially for husbands. The wife in this situation is fully responsible for the housework.

In Type III marriages more wives work, more wives and husbands prefer this arrangement, but wives still do all the housework. Ross et al. (1983) predict lower levels of depression in Type III marriages than in Type II, especially among men. They see Types II and III as transitory stages. Type IV, or what they call parallel marriage, is like Type III except that household tasks are shared. Many of the strains found in the transitional types of marriages are gone in Type IV marriages. People's actions and attitudes are in agreement, and working women are no longer faced with full responsibility for the home and the wife no longer has the lower status of wives in Type I marriages. Ross et al. (1983) hypothesize that women will have the lowest levels of depression in Type IV marriages and that the more equitable arrangement may lower tension between husband and wife, thereby leading to lower levels of depression in husbands as well. As a result, they expect to find similar levels of depression among husbands and wives in Type IV marriages.

Their statistical analysis reveals results consistent with their hypotheses (Figure 12.6) . For both men and women, the lowest levels of depression occur in parallel marriages (Type IV), and the second lowest levels occur in complementary marriages (Type I), whereas the highest levels of depression occur in the transitional marriages (Types II and III). This suggests that depression is more likely in situations where people's preferences and behaviors are at odds than in situations where their preferences and behaviors are in agreement. It also indicates that wives are less depressed if their husbands help with the housework, and husbands who help are no more depressed than those who do not (Ross et al., 1983). A related and perhaps also surprising result was reported by Kessler and McRae, Jr. (1982), who found that the mental health of husbands improves as their wives' incomes increase (p. 223).

In marriages where husbands do not help with the housework, women often face role overload as they take on new responsibilities. Help with their numerous duties has not always been forthcoming from husbands, child-care facilities, or employers. This overload has been documented in both capitalist and communist countries. In the Soviet Union, despite the deliberate expansion of female economic and political participation, wives spend 2.5 times as many hours on housework as their husbands (Lapidus, 1978). Despite the expansion of women's participation outside the home, their home duties have often not been lightened. Child carc is the single biggest problem faced by working mothers (Kamerman, 1979)

Despite the prospects of role overload, nearly half of all the women polled by Roper in 1980 would prefer to have a job than to stay at home all the time. As recently as 1974, only about one-third of all women expressed this preference. Moreover, younger and collegeeducated women are even more likely to want to work. These figures suggest that women's participation in the work force will continue and perhaps increase in the future. At the same time, the majority of women and men feel strongly that more day-care centers should be set up for working women.

Figure 12.6 Rates of Emotional Depression* Among Husbands and Wives in Four Types of Marriages.

The rates of emotional depression among both husbands and wives were lowest in Type IV marriages where both spouses worked, both spouses preferred that arrangement, and they shared the housework Source: Adapted from Ross et al, 1983, p 819

* Depression was measured by a modificd form of the Centcr for Epidemiological Studies' Depression scale (CESD). This scale measures symptoms of depression in community populations rather than diagnosing clinical depression (Ross ct al., 1983, p 813)

The greater economic independence of women that has accompanied these trends has several important implications. First, fewer women need to enter or stay in marriage primarily for economic reasons. From colonial times to the present there is evidence that whenever women had alternatives to unsatisfactory marriages, they used them, as Bernard (1981b) suggests. Moreover, she feels that the widespread wife abuse that has begun to come to light reflects the number of women who may have felt trapped in destructive marriages because they lacked alternatives. Now more women feel they can publicly protest the abuse they are receiving. The growth of jobs for women is one such alternative, at least for some women.

The availability of alternatives to marriage can also influence the type of marriage relationship women enter into. As already noted, women and men increasingly favor more egalitarian marriages. For men, this means that both the burden and the social esteem that came from being the sole breadwinner and head of the household may have lessened somewhat. Some men welcome this, others do not. There is still rather limited social support for men who take on primary responsibility for housekeeping or child care, although such support seems to be growing. In 1970 only one out of eight women and one out of five men said they would respect a male homemaker, but by 1980 two out of five women and men said that they would.

Women with higher educational levels and income were more likely to respect a male homemaker than women of lower socioeconomic status (Roper Organization, 1980) . Moreover, in 1980 a significant percentage of men were quite willing to help with household chores traditionally performed by women. College educated men are most likely to help with household tasks. Among all men, more than three-quarters help with grocery shopping and two-thirds help with housecleaning, dishwashing, and cooking. Nearly half help mind the children, whereas two out of five sometimes do laundry. Mending still seems to be a job men seldom do; three out of five say they never do it (Roper Organization, 1980).

Family Violence

For a long time the social science literature on the family was filled exclusively with discussions of the functions of the family in society, with little or no attention to violence in the family. Those who did mention it considered only the dramatic extremes, such as homicide.
Various American and British studies reveal that about 90 percent of all parents have used physical punishment at some point in a child's life. Punishment continues into adolescence with more than half of the student population reporting they have been hit during high school (Bachman, 1967; Steinmetz, 1971, 1974; Straus, 1971). Physical punishment may step over the boundary into what is called child abuse.

Child abuse is defined differently by different people, but most would agree that broken bones, concussions, lost teeth, burns, and serious neglect constitute child abuse. Physical punishment may result in child abuse quite unintentionally when adults do not realize their own strength and hit children too hard or throw them down. Probably most adults do not set out deliberately to abuse a child. They may get so angry they lose control, they may be drunk and not fully aware of what they are doing, or they may unintentionally hit a child harder than they meant to. Because physical punishment of children receives some normative support in our society, this support may contribute to the likelihood of child abuse.

Family violence sometimes leads to murder (Gelles and Straus, 1979). Across the country, family fights are the single most frequent reason for calling the police. This and other evidence suggests that violence is a major feature of family life in America and probably in most other societies as well (Straus, 1976).

Family abuse of all kinds is more prevalent in lower socioeconomic homes and in families where unemployment and economic hardships are serious problems, but it occurs with great frequency in the general population as well (Finkelhor, 1979; Meiselman, 1978; Pelton, 1981; Straus et al., 1979). The extent of family violence is estimated by national surveys in 1975 and 1985 (Straus, Gelles, and Steinmetz, 1979 and Straus and Gelles, 1986). The encouraging feature of the second study was that rates of child abuse and wife beating decreased between 1975 and 1985. However, current rates are still quite high. A minimum estimate is that more than a million children aged 3 through 17 in two-parent households were abused in 1985, and more than 1l/2 million wives were beaten (Straus and Gelles, 1986, p. 475). The researchers think their results probably reflect a combination of changed attitudes and norms and changes in actual behaviors. The decline may have been influenced by changes in family structure, such as higher average age at first marriage, fewer children per family, and tendencies toward more egalitarian marriages; economic changes such as lower unemployment and less economic stress; the lessened social acceptability of family violence and more social control of its expression; the availability of alternatives for women; and the availability of treatment and prevention services (Straus and Gelles, 1986).

Despite the positive direction of change, we can ask why so much violence still occurs in families. Is it caused by pathological individuals, or do social factors encourage the use of violence in the family? According to conflict theorists, conflict occurs in all human relationships, including the family. By its very nature, the family is a center of competing interests that result in conflicts (Sprey, 1969). Violence is one means of advancing one's interests when other methods fail (Steinmetz and Straus, 1974). In some families, violence may be the first method adopted, depending on how individual members have been taught to view violence or depending on the other resources available to individuals.

When individuals lack the resources to influence people around them, they may use violence (Goode et al., 1971). For example, a husband who receives little prestige or income from his job may resort to violence to dominate his family (Gelles and Straus, 1979). Similarly, men married to women with higher educational and occupational status than their own are more likely to use force and violence on family members than are men with higher-status occupations (O'Brien, 1971). It may be that given the cultural pressures on men to dominate in the family, men lacking the social resources for such dominance resort to superior physical strength.

This explanation stresses the use of violence as a resource for domination. Another explanation suggests that stress is a major contributor to family violence. Straus, Gelles, and Steinmetz (1979) found that low income, unemployment, part-time employment, and four or five children in the home were all related to violence toward children and between spouses.

A third factor associated with family violence was the concentration of family decision making in the hands of only one person, whether husband or wife. There was less violence in families where a democratic system was used to make decisions (Gelles, 1974).

Family Size and Sibling Interaction

The marriage relationship is obviously one key type of family interaction. In any family that has children, however, there are other important interactions. These include parent-child and child-child interactions (if there is more than one child in the family). One of the key determinants of family interaction is family size. The larger the family is, the fewer individual parentchild interactions there are.

In bigger families, siblings must share family resources such as parental attention. Family size is negatively related to IQ, college plans, and education (Blake, 1981, 1985), but birth order is not (Hauser and Sewell, 1985). Choosing the number and spacing of children is a very significant way in which parents can influence the success of their children (Heer, 1985).

The larger the family, the more sibling interaction there is. Siblings help to socialize each other. They also increase the complexity of family interactions and conflicts. One of the ways siblings socialize each other is by performing pioneering functions for one another. Usually the older siblings blaze the trail for younger ones (Bank and Kahn, 1975), although as they get older, younger siblings sometimes take the lead. This may happen because each additional child tends to open the family more to outside influences (Schvaneveldt and Ihinger, 1979)). As a result of the gradual loosening of the family system that occurs with the birth of each new member, the younger siblings tend to be more likely to break with family traditions. This phenomenon may explain why first-born siblings are more sexually conservative than later-born siblings (Weiss, l '367), and younger siblings may pave the way for the greater experimentation of their older brothers and sisters.

In many other areas as well, siblings seem to help each other develop their individual identities through the dual processes of identification and differentiation (Hank and Kahn, 1975). In identification, siblings may identify possibilities for themselves in the actions of their siblings and include some of these altonlatives in their own repertory. Teaming sexual behavior is a good example of the use of identificatioll. Siblings also help each other to differentiate themselves through the process of recognizing how they differ from each other ("He's that way, but I'm this way"). This helps individuals to dcfine their own unique identities. The processes of individuation may be spurred along by sibling rivalries and conflicts.

One result of such conflict is the greater tendency to form coalitions. Siblings have more chance than only children to form alliances. They may do this to gain greater strength in relation to their parents or to forge alliances against other sibling coalitions in the family. Same-sex sibling coalitions are most common (Caplow, 1959). First-born siblings may lead a coalition against the parents because other siblings may feel that firstborns have greater power and access to the parents. Tattling, squealing, and shifting coalitions all occur in sibling coalitions.

To the degree that families represent a relatively closed and enduring social system, they need to resolve or at least stalemate the tensions and conflict within them. Sometimes parents mediate the conflicts between competing groups of siblings; at other times the eldest child or one of the sibling coalitions may try to be the peacemaker. Sibling coalitions may produce family isolates, "black sheep," scapegoats, winners, losers, and "pets" within the family (Schvaneveldt and Ihinger, 1979). A family may also direct its unresolved hostilities between its coalitions at a scapegoat or enemy outside the family.

If current trends lead to more single-child families and smaller families, then clearly sibling interactions will be affected. The increasing numbers of children living in stepfamilies will add to the complexity of sibling interactions.

Changing expectations about the family and changing family forms have profound implications for the larger society as well as for the internal life of families. Social observers highlight two major consequences the increasing privatization of family life and the effects on children of changes in family composition.

Adult Offspring and Elderly Parents

Longer life expectancy increases the chances that middle- aged adults will have parents living. In 1980, the average 40- year- old couple had nearly the same number of parents and children (2.6 and 2.7 respectively) . The trend is toward slightly more parents than children (2.9 and l.8; Preston, 1984). One result may be more shared households across generations (Hess and Waring, l984; Troll, Miller, and Atchley, 1979) . Care and services are more likely to be provided by women (Brody, 1985; Lopata, 1973; Treas, 1977), an issue that is generally not discussed in

studies of the division of household labor. Financial support, on the other hand, is more likely to be provided by sons (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1988). Fewer than one million parents of providers receive regular cash support payments from people not living with them, representing less than 10 percent of all persons receiving support (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1988). Most studies have not analyzed the interaction between the care of elderly parents and women's changing role in the labor market. One study found that being employed limited the helping behavior of sons but not daughters (Stoller, 1983). Middle- aged women may also be caught between the needs of elderly parents and those of children, who remain dependent longer (Huber and Spitze, 1988).

These trends mcan that more children know their grandparents. Divorce and remarriage complicate relationships with grandparents. For the child, parental divorce and remarriage may beneficially increase the child's network of relatives (Furstenberg and Spanier, 1984). But the grandparents may have to share a grandchild, as low fertility is shrinking the supply (Matthews and Sprey, 1984). Older parents may also receive less help from their divorced daughters, who generally need more child care and money than before their divorce (Cherlin, 1983).

Increased Privatization

Observers suggest that the rise of industrialization led to the family being viewed as a retreat from the outside world. The expectation grew that emotional intimacy and love were a primary function of marriage and family. People escaped from the demands of the community and workplace by withdrawing into privacy, domesticity, and intimacy (Hareven, 1982; Lasch, 1979; Laslett, 1974; Zaretsky, 1976). The premodern family had many outside social ties, and families were the foundation of commuIlities, suggests Aries (1962). But the modern family separates itself from the larger community and spends much of its energy helping individual children achieve social mobility. The family no longer works to advance itself as a social unit or to improve the community in which it lives (Aries, 1962).

High expectations for emotional intimacy and withdrawal from larger social circles may place a heavier burden on the family than it can bear. It also pulls family members away from public issues, as they seek private solutions to public problems (such as crime and poor public education). Observers call the tendency of families to turn away from the community and workplace toward a primary focus on domesticity and intimacy privatization.

The elderly, for example, increasingly fend for themselves, rather than forging collective responses to the condition of aging. Among women aged 65 or above, four out of ten live alone, and among those without a spouse, two out of three live alone (Michael et al., 1980). Both generations prefer the autonomy that separate households provide (Cherlin and Furstenberg, 1983), but it does represent a noteworthy change. The highly privatized family is particularly vulnerable when it comes to dealing with stressful events like divorce.

Effects of Divorce on Children

A child's cumulative probability of parental divorce is about 40 percent, with black children's rates much higher than white children's. A child's chances of living at some stage of life in a single- parent family, including those families that result from premarital births, are about 50 percent (Bumpass, 1984a; Bumpass and Rindfuss, 1979; Furstenberg et al., 1983).

In their five- year study of 60 divorcing California families, Wallerstein and Kelly (1980) noted that children went through at least four stages as the divorce proceeded. The initialperiod was very painful for all of the children and many of the parents. Within a year children had returned to their usual behavior and were able to do so faster than were their parents. The children were greatly helped if both parents were supportive, understanding, nurturing, and affectzonate toward them during the process (Clingempeel and Reppucci, 1982; Little, 1982). Children who were drawn into marital and divorce battles might passively submit, act out their aggressions, or learn to manipulate their parents, all negative consequences for the child (Harris, 1972) .

The transition period lasted two or three years in most families. Divorce led to changes in social and economic circumstances as well as in relationships within the family. Divorced women and their children suffered a 73 percent drop in their standard of living while exhusbands enjoyed a 42 percent rise in theirs, according to Weitzman (1985). Nationally, fewer than one child out of five saw the outside parent as often as once a week during the year. Despite the media coverage that joint custody arrangements have received, only 3 percent of all the children of divorce are in such arrangements (Furstenberg, Jr., et al., 1983).

At the five-year mark (which was as long as Wallerstein and Kelly studied the families), some parents had made new marriages, whereas others had stabilized the postdivorce family. Some postdivorce families were stable and reflected an improvement in the quality of life for all family members. Others were no happier or were less happy than they had been during the marriage breakdown. The effects of divorce on children are bound up with single- parent homes and stepfamilies.

Effects of SingleParent Families on Children

The number of families with children under the age of 18 headed by women has soared in recent years, from about 1.5 million in 1960 to 6.3 million in 1987 (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1989a). This figure is projected to jump to 6.5 million by 1990 (Masnick and Bane, 1980).

Although the children of divorce may not see their second parent very often, that parent does not become less emotionally important to the child, even as much as five years after the divorce. In fact, the children of divorce would not consider the term "one- parent family" appropriate. The self- images of these children "were firmly tied to their relationship with both parents and they thought of themselves as children with two parents who had elected to go their separate ways," note Wallerstein and Kelly (1980, p. 307).

They also observed that when the burden of child care falls mostly on one parent in a divorced family, that family is more vulnerable to stress. "Chronic emotional and economic overload was frequently intolerable for the custodial parent, and the cumulative effect on the children was all too visible in their unhappiness and depression," write Wallerstein and Kelly (1980, pp. 308-309). They became aware that divorced middle-class families lack social supports. The withdrawal of middle-class families from extended kin networks and community involvement makes such families more isolated and vulnerable when one of the adults in the family leaves. The incidence of depression was higher among children of divorce five years after the divorce than it was 18 months later, suggesting that the initial breakup is but one of a number of stresses that the postdivorce family has to face.

Given the increasing numbers of children born to single parents, however, and the rising divorce rate among very young parents, how are the nearly 14 million children of such families being cared for and socialized? Some single parents do not work, feeling that they should stay home and care for their children. Others share the responsibility for child care with relatives, neighbors, and friends (Kamerman, 1979; Stack, 1974). More children attend preprimary programs than in the past, although higher-income families are more likely than lower- income families to enroll their children in such programs. Slightly more single parents report that they do not have enough time to help their children with their homework in the evenings than do individuals in two-parent families (Dearman and Plisko, 1979). The difficulties of child care and socialization are compounded when parents are themselves very young, lack education, are unable to obtain decent jobs, and are poor.

Research has been conducted to explore the relationship between growing up in singleparent homes and later achievement. Children who grew up in one-parent homes complete fewer years of schooling (Hauser and Featherman, 1976), enter lower-status occupations (Duncan and Duncan, 1969), and have less stability in their own marriages (Bumpass and Sweet, 1972). The lower educational attainment of children from singleparent households is largely explained by the much greater poverty among female- headed families (McLanahan, 1985).

Effects of Stepfamilies

Remarriage helps to solve the economic problems that face families headed by a single female because it adds the new husband's income to the family. It also adds another adult to help carry the burdens of running a household. But often remarriage also includes combining two families into one. Probably one- fifth of all children living with their mothers share homes with half siblings and face the adjustment problems associated with such arrangements (Bumpass, 1984b).

This can be a difficult process, which is not helped by the lack of clear norms about how to proceed. For example, how much are stepparents supposed to discipline their stepchildren? How many sets of grandparents do you invite to a child's birthday? Even economic obligations may be unclear. How does a father balance the claims of children from previous and current marriages. There are no agreed on ways of answering these questions. When children of divorce were asked who was in their families, the majority of those with stepparents included them, but only half included noncustodial biological parents (Furstenberg and Nord, 1985).

Such combined families can be quite complex. There may be children from each spouse's previous marriage and from the new marriage, and there are multiple sets of grandparents, stepgrandparents, ex- spouses, aunts, uncles, and cousins from prior marriages. Just keeping everyone straight takes heavy concentration. The complexity has long- term consequences as well. For example, will children who barely saw their absent parent while growing up feel responsible for the care of that parent when that parent is older? Many of the consequences of stepfamilies remain to be studied by sociologists .

Effects of Working Mothers on Children

In the last two decades there has been a steady increase in the proportion of working mothers whose preschool children are cared for outside the home, rising from 33 percent in 1968 to 59 percent in 1988 (U.S. Bureau of the Census,1989a). Children are not worse off because they spend more time with others besides their mothers (Zinn and Eitzen, 1987). Working mothers can provide quality care "by earmarking time to pay exclusive attention to their children" (Levitan and Belous, 1981, p. 102).

Of paramount importance is the quality of the relationship between mother and children when they are together. Can the children have fun with the mother, can they share confidences with her, do they feel she loves them and cares about them a great deal, even though they cannot be together every moment?

In crisis-ridden families with severe economic problems, mothers may not be able to provide quality care, whether or not they are employed. Equally important is the quality of care children receive from other adults, whether it be from relatives, friends, neighbors, or a day-care center. Are there loving, caring adults with whom the child can have fairly long- term relationships? These two conditions seem to be crucial for the healthy development of children (Bronfenbrenner, 1981).

Not only is employment of the mother by itself not harmful to children, but it appears to have some positive effects. The child of a working mother seems to see the division of household tasks as being more egalitarian (Finkelman, 1966; Hoffman, 1963), to see maternal employment as not threatening to a marriage (King, McIntyre, and Axelson, 1968), to indicate higher esteem for his or her own sex (Vogel et al., 1970), to favor social equality for women (Meier, 1972), and to do more household chores than other children (Rallings and Nye, 1979). Overall, the children of working mothers evaluate female competence more positively, and the daughters of working mothers have higher levels of independence.

One possible negative effect was observed in the sons of working-class mothers. Maternal employment is related to a lower evaluation of their fathers by these boys, perhaps because they see their mothers as having to work and hence consider the fathers to be economically inadequate (Railings and Nye, 1979) . The sons of middle-class working mothers, however, are likely to see their fathers as more nurturant, warm, and expressive individuals (Vogel et al., 1970).

On balance, the negativc effects on children of divorce or of a mother working appear to depend heavily on the social conditions surrounding the divorce or the work. When divorce results in a happier family and when a working mother is pleased with her work and with her children, the children may benefit from the situation.

These changes and their consequences do not reflect the death of a narrowly defined American family but rather the emergence of new family forms. The issue for citizens and policy makers is to determine what kinds of social supports all types of families need, so that they can raise their children as well as possible. Ross et al. (1983) suggest that the first and most important starting point is achieving equal pay for women in the workplace, so that they will have sufficient resources to support their children. It should be apparent that the institutions of the family and the economy are closely bound up together.

SUMMARY

1. Traditionally, the family has been defined as two or more persons who are related by blood, marriage, or adoption and who share a common residence.

2. Generally, the traditional family fulfilled the functions of sexual regulation, member replacement, socialization of the young, meeting economic needs, and sometimes emotional intimacy.

3. These functions have been performed increasingly outside the traditional family as more unmarried people live together, the number of children born to single mothers increases, child care is shared by more people, women enter the work force in growing numbers, and the nun1ber of stepfamilies increases.

4. Changing family functions have been paralleled by major changes in family forms and activities. By 2000 only about one in four households in the United States will consist of a married couple with one or more children. The number of couples without children and the number of singles is growing rapidly.

5. Changing family forms are affected by economic conditions, demographic changes such as the Baby Boone, and longer life expectancy. Other factors are the sex ratio of men to women, the sexual revolution, cultural expectations that marriage should meet both spouses' needs for love and intinzacy, and increasing acceptance of divorce as the best solution when marital problems cannot be solved.

6. These changes in family forms are related to changes in the roles of mall and women in marriage and to possible role overload for women. Moreover, family violence has become an increasingly visible problem. Sibling interactions are affected by shrinking family size and by the growing complexity of stepfamilies.

7. Longer life expectancy increases thc chances that adults will have living parents and that children will know at least some of their grandparents. It also increases the complexity of family life.

8. The trend toward increasingly privatized nuclear- family life affects the family's involvement in the larger society and increases its vulnerability to divorce or other stressful events.

9. Divorce is a painful process for almost all children and many parents. The effects last beyond the stress of the initial breakup. The incomes of many divorced women drop dramatically, and children do not see their second parent very often.

10. About one- quarter of all American children live with one rather than two parents. Second parents remain important to children, however, even if they see them infrequently. The lower educational attainnzel1t of children from single- parent households appears to be due primarily to the greater incidence of poverty among such families rather than to their social characteristics, the absence of a father figure, or the stress resulting from marital disruption.

11. Stepfamilies are not yet fully institutionalized, as reflected in an incomplete language for the social roles in them and in the legal status of stepfamily relations. Many of their long- term effects remain to be studied.

12. Children do not seem to be worse off because their mothers work, as long as other adults take care of them. Of paramount importance is the quality of the relationship between mother and child when they are together.