As students enter, please review this NY Magazine piece about Carolyn Dweck's book, Mindset.
Today's Lesson:What are the ways that family influences individuals?
What are the ways that family is changing in the U.S.?
How does this research compare to your family?
Family; The Most Influential Agent of Socialization
Family is the most important agent of socialization. Family shapes our self-concept first and before we are even conscious of it. Human brain development happens most rapidly and greatly in the first few years after birth. This UNICEF website (2016) explains what experts have concluded about brain development. Dr. Suzana Herculano-Houzel explains the latest conclusions in this 5 min video. The point is that much growth and development happens in the earliest years of human life so our first caregivers have an enormous impact on who we become.
Answer individually
1. What are some ways that you are similar to your family? Is this latent or manifest? Why?
Evidence for Family Socialization
How is Dweck's research an example of family's influence on "self"?
Carol Dweck explains how parents, and eventually schools, both work to create a fixed mindset that actually prevents learning. See the first chapter of her book here.
This Atlantic article the latest update to Dweck's research which shows that praise cannot be empty. It must be directed in specific nuanced ways to promote growth.
This NPR review of the book includes an excerpt and an interview.
This NY Magazine article explains how to apply Dweck's research to parenting and talking to kids.
Brain Pickings review of Dweck's Research provides a thorough explanation and a few quotes from the book.
Family is the most important agent of socialization. Family shapes our self-concept first and before we are even conscious of it. Human brain development happens most rapidly and greatly in the first few years after birth. This UNICEF website (2016) explains what experts have concluded about brain development. Dr. Suzana Herculano-Houzel explains the latest conclusions in this 5 min video. The point is that much growth and development happens in the earliest years of human life so our first caregivers have an enormous impact on who we become.
Some of the influences from family are intentional. Sociologists call direct lessons that are consciously taught manifest lessons. Conversely, latent lessons are lessons that you learn unconsciously. An anecdotal example from my own life is about my dad smoking.
Manifest - Don't smoke.
Latent - Stand this way.
And another example is when I was in college and considering what jobs to do afterwards. Besides teaching, I considered both the Chicago Police and FBI - both jobs that my parents did. But they never influenced me to do those jobs in a manifest lesson, instead it was more latent - I heard them talk about those jobs and it swayed me to consider them.
Google Form for today's lesson.
Answer individually
1. What are some ways that you are similar to your family? Is this latent or manifest? Why?
Evidence for Family Socialization
There is much evidence for how individuals are socialized to think about their "self". Examine the evidence below from sociologists.
Family Integration and Self-Esteem
Family shapes your "self"
How is Dweck's research an example of family's influence on "self"?
This Atlantic article the latest update to Dweck's research which shows that praise cannot be empty. It must be directed in specific nuanced ways to promote growth.
This NPR review of the book includes an excerpt and an interview.
This NY Magazine article explains how to apply Dweck's research to parenting and talking to kids.
Brain Pickings review of Dweck's Research provides a thorough explanation and a few quotes from the book.
Dweck explains her work on this TED Talk
And she explains how we can teach a growth mindset in this talk from Stanford U.
Read more about Dweck’s book at this post and also see me tell a story about how her book affected my life.
Cross-Cultural Example of Family and Production of Culture and the Self
Life Lessons from Chinese Culture from NPR shows how families influence kids to accept aspects of their culture. What are the hidden messages in the storybooks we read to our kids? That's a question that may occur to parents as their children dive into the new books that arrived over the holidays.
And it's a question that inspired a team of researchers to set up a study. Specifically, they wondered how the lessons varied from storybooks of one country to another.
2. Explain how you have been shaped by parents to have either a "growth mindset" or a "fixed mindset"?
Life Lessons from Chinese Culture from NPR shows how families influence kids to accept aspects of their culture. What are the hidden messages in the storybooks we read to our kids? That's a question that may occur to parents as their children dive into the new books that arrived over the holidays.
And it's a question that inspired a team of researchers to set up a study. Specifically, they wondered how the lessons varied from storybooks of one country to another.
The Changing Structure of Family
One sociologist who researched the American family extensively using historical methods is Stephanie Coontz who writes,
6. If you are in a relationship, how does this compare to where you met?
3. If I told you that I live with my family, who would you assume I mean?
4. What are some other ways to define family different than above?
My family and I dressed up as the family from Despicable Me one Halloween. This was one of my favorite costumes but it also is an interesting example of the changing family in the U.S. Most often, when Americans think of "family" they think of the nuclear family - two heterosexual partners, married and their children. Although this is an ideal in many Americans' minds, sociologists question whether or not it was ever a reality. Most family researchers will trace this back to the post-WWII era when these types of families seemed to peak. However, the romanticized notion may be from media that created an ideal image of this family even if the reality was much different then and certainly is now.
One sociologist who researched the American family extensively using historical methods is Stephanie Coontz who writes,
Leave It to Beaver was not a documentary, a man’s home has never been his castle, the ‘male breadwinner marriage’ is the least traditional family in history, and rape and sexual assault were far higher in the 1970s than they are today. In The Way We Never Were, acclaimed historian Stephanie Coontz provides a myth-shattering examination of two centuries of the American family, sweeping away misconceptions about the past that cloud current debates about domestic life. The 1950s do not present a workable model of how to conduct our personal lives today, Coontz argues, and neither does any other era from our cultural past. This revised edition includes a new introduction and epilogue, looking at what has and has not changed since the original publication in 1992, and exploring how the clash between growing gender equality and rising economic inequality is reshaping family life, marriage, and male-female relationships in our modern era.
Here is a review of Coontz's book from the New Republic.
Here is a review of her work on Goodreads.
Family Structure in the U.S. is Changing
From the PEW Research Center, Trends Shaping the US (2017):
Americans’ lives at home are changing. Following a decades-long trend, just half of U.S. adults were married in 2015, down from 70% in 1950. As marriage has declined, the number in cohabiting relationships (living with an unmarried partner) rose 29% between 2007 and 2016, from 14 million to 18 million. The increase was especially large among those ages 50 and older: 75% in the same period. The “gray divorce” rate – divorces among those 50 and older – roughly doubled between 1990 and 2015.
Also, a record number of Americans (nearly 61 million in 2014) were living in multigenerational households, that is, households that include two or more adult generations or grandparents and grandchildren. Growing racial and ethnic diversity in the U.S. helps explain some of the rise in multigenerational living. The Asian and Hispanic populations overall are growing more rapidly than the white population, and those groups are more likely than whites to live in multigenerational family households.
Here is a graph from Phil Cohen showing different types of households by decade 1900-2017:
5. What is one conclusion that can you make from the graph?
Americans are more accepting of the changing structures than they have ever been. From the Pew:
As family structures change in U.S., a growing share of Americans say it makes no difference
The American family is changing in many ways: Cohabitation is on the rise, more adults are delaying or forgoing marriage, a growing share of children are living with an unmarried parent, and same-sex marriage is legal in all 50 states. Amid these changes, three-in-ten U.S. adults think it’s a good thing that there is growing variety in the types of family arrangements people live in, while about half as many (16%) say this is a bad thing. The largest share (45%) don’t think it makes a difference, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted in June 2019.
Where couples meet has changed over time
Here is longitudinal data from Stanford showing the changing places where couples have met over time:
If your parents were a couple in a relationship, where did they meet?
And this video on Youtube shows the change over time:
American and Cohabitation
From the PEW,
Trends in Divorce
(Legal marriage age is determined by state laws see here for more and the graphic below)
6. What demographic is most likely to divorce according to the graphs above? What other conclusions can make from the graphs above?
Where Americans live as adults is connected to Family as well
From The NY Times Upshot (2015), based on a U Mich study:
Americans and Interracial Marriage
7. Who is most likely to intermarry? Is this surprising to you - why/why not?
8. Hypothesize why these groups may intermarry more.
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