As students enter, please review this NY Magazine piece about Carolyn Dweck's book, Mindset.
Lesson Focus: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.
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.
Answer individually:
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 Dinner - Latent Lessons from the Dinner Table
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.
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.
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.
Have you ever been in trouble for poor grades? You may want to read this research by Keith Robinson and Angel Harris.
A main finding from our analyses is that a non-punitive parenting philosophy enhances future academic performance. It may be that non-punitive strategies are particularly effective because they create an optimal setting under which children can devote more attention to schooling. This setting, void of punitive restrictions on activities, might foster the intrinsic motivation necessary for improved performance (Deci and Ryan 1985). It might also be that parents are re-organizing the way children spend their time, for example, suggesting (rather than explicitly demanding) they exchange some time spent on extracurricular activities for time on activities more essential for academic success. An exchange of this sort may involve spending fewer hours watching television or time alone in recreation, to more time studying with friends or attending after-school classes over the same number of hours. In this way, parents are not using punitive measures to adjust the way their child spends time, which might be the most effective way to motivate children academically.
Angel Harris is a widely respected sociologist from Duke University who focuses on the effects of family, race and social class on student education. Harris's book Kids Don't Want to Fail explains the influences that limit poor minority students. From Harvard University Press,
"Despite achieving less in school, black students value schooling more than their white counterparts do. Black kids perform badly in high school not because they don’t want to succeed but because they enter without the necessary skills. Harris finds that the achievement gap starts to open up in preadolescence—when cumulating socioeconomic and health disadvantages inhibit skills development and when students start to feel the impact of lowered teacher expectations. Kids Don’t Want to Fail is must reading for teachers, academics, policy makers, and anyone interested in understanding the intersection of race and education."
The Changing Structure of Family
One sociologist who researched the American family extensively using historical methods is Stephanie Coontz who writes,
Wendy Manning, Susan Brown and Krista Payne find that, among young adults, cohabitation no longer offsets the decline in marriage because cohabitation has plateaued. This cohabitation stall portends a shift to lower levels of overall union formation during young adulthood and may presage declining levels of marriage and cohabitation into middle age. Further, our findings call into question the widely accepted notion that the U.S. is on a path to reach the nearly universal levels of cohabitation observed in Western Europe. In the U.S., if current trends among young adults continue across age groups, cohabitation will no longer supplant marriage. Women will be less likely to form any union instead.
Size of Households
1. If I told you that I live with my family, who would you assume I mean?
2. 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.
Americans are more accepting of the changing structures than they have ever been.
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.
Here is a graph from Phil Cohen showing different types of households by decade 1900-2017:
3. What conclusions can you make from the graph?
The share of adults who have lived with a romantic partner is now higher than the share who have ever been married; married adults are more satisfied with their relationships, more trusting of their partners
This 2019 Pew Research explains Average US Household is Bigger for first time in 160 Years
The number of people in the average U.S. household is going up for the first time in over 160 years. This decade’s likely upturn in average household size reflects several demographic trends:
- A growing share of the population resides in multigenerational family households.
- More Americans in the wake of the Great Recession are “doubled up” in shared living quarters.
Related to the size of households, this report from Pew explains that a majority of young adults in the U.S. live with their parents for the first time since the Great Depression The coronavirus outbreak has pushed millions of Americans, especially young adults, to move in with family members. The share of 18- to 29-year-olds living with their parents has become a majority since U.S. coronavirus cases began spreading early this year, surpassing the previous peak during the Great Depression era.
Trends in Divorce
(Legal marriage age is determined by state laws see here for more and the graphic below)
4. What demographic is most likely to divorce according to the graphs above? What other conclusions can make from the graphs above?
Americans and Interracial Marriage
Other trends from the Pew Research Center on Family and Relationships and Family Roles, Household/Family Structure and Intermarriage including these:
Sharing household chores is an important part of marriage for a majority of married adults. But among those who have children, there are notable differences in perceptions of who actually does more of the work around the house.More than half of married couples in the United States say sharing household chores is “very important” to a successful marriage. But when it comes to grocery shopping and cooking, women tend to say they’re the ones usually doing the work, according to a time-use survey sponsored by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).C. How American parents balance work and family life when both workToday’s American families are more likely than those of past decades to feature two full-time working parents. A new Pew Research Center report looks at how working moms and dads in two-parent households are balancing their jobs with their family responsibilities and how they view the dynamics of sharing child care and household responsibilities.D. As Millennials Near 40, They’re Approaching Family Life Differently Than Previous Generations
A new analysis of government data by Pew Research Center shows that Millennials are taking a different path in forming – or not forming – families. Millennials trail previous generations at the same age across three typical measures of family life: living in a family unit, marriage rates and birth rates.
E. School Outcomes of Children Raised by Same-Sex Parents: Evidence from Administrative Panel Data These data include 2,971 children with same-sex parents (2,786 lesbian couples and 185 gay male couples) and over a million children with different-sex parents followed from birth. The results indicate that children raised by same-sex parents from birth perform better than children raised by different-sex parents in both primary and secondary education. Full article here.
Choose one of the above articles from the PEW that looks interesting. Answer the questions below:
6. Which article did you choose?
7. After reading it, do you think the findings are interesting?
8. What is either one finding you think is interesting or one criticism of the article?
9. Is this true for your family or families that you know?
Extra Resources about the changing family:
Cohabitation in Chicago Tribune
Seven percent of U.S. adults are currently cohabitating, and among that 7%, the fastest growing cohort consists of people 50 and older. Kevin McElmurry, Indiana University Northwest quoted in Chicago Tribune (2019)
Professor Medley-Rath from Sociology In Focus
Census Bureau and Changing Family
And from the Census Bureau, there is this data exercise which shows family changing. The Census Bureau published this news release explaining the data.
Seven percent of U.S. adults are currently cohabitating, and among that 7%, the fastest growing cohort consists of people 50 and older. Kevin McElmurry, Indiana University Northwest quoted in Chicago Tribune (2019)
Professor Medley-Rath from Sociology In Focus
In this post, Stephanie Medley-Rath discusses a few growing trends in family structure.
Medley-Rath covers data and changing families in these areas:
- Cohabitation
- Remaining Single Longer
- Unmarried Parents
- Living with Mom and Dad
And from the Census Bureau, there is this data exercise which shows family changing. The Census Bureau published this news release explaining the data.
