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“Raising Children in a Diverse Society” by Lamanna, Riedmann, and Stewart

Chapter 9-1aParenting Challenges and Resilience

We would not want to point out the difficulties facing parents without noting some positives. In general, parents now have more education and are likely to have had some exposure to formal knowledge about child development and child-raising techniques. Many fathers are more emotionally involved than several decades ago (Fagan et al. 2014; Palm 2014). Despite media attention to street crime, fewer children are exposed to violent crimes today than twenty years ago (Goode 2012). Cell phones and social media allow parents and children to keep in virtually continuous contact and make being in touch with other family members far more likely than a generation ago (Khrais 2012). The Internet offers information for parents dealing with just about any situation.

Raising a child with disabilities reminds us that parents and children can evidence resilience, which is enhanced by feeling of empowerment, significant father involvement, and strong familial bonds (Fox et al. 2015).

iStockphoto.com/ktaylorg

Nevertheless, parents—even doing their best!—can make mistakes. Sometimes they blame themselves when outcomes for their children are not what they would have wanted (Moses 2010). It helps, though, to know that children can be remarkably  resilient : Children and adults can demonstrate the capacity to recover from adverse situations and events (Criss et al. 2015; Masten and Monn 2015). There is evidence that one caring, conscientious adult can generate a resilient child (Johnson 2000; Soukhanov 1996). We return to the topic of resiliency in Chapter 13. Meanwhile, the family ecology perspective (see Chapter 2) leads us to look at ways that society challenges parents today.

Here we list six societal features that make parenting difficult:

1. In our society, the parenting role conflicts with the working role, and employers typically place work demands first (Barnett et al. 2009; Bass et al. 2009; Sullivan 2015). A majority of parents worry about juggling work and family demands and wish they had more time with their children (Pew Research Center 2013b, 2015d).

2. Today’s parents raise their children in a society characterized by conflicting values and points of view. Not only parents but also schools, peers, television, movies, music, and the Internet influence children. You may know parents who have responded to this situation by homeschooling their children (Perlstein 2012). Concerns about outside influences may be greater for immigrant parents whose values differ from some that they encounter in the United States (Killoren et al. 2011).

3. Although lots of parenting advice is useful, the emphasis on how much parents influence their children’s health, weight, eating habits, intellectual abilities, behaviors, and self-esteem can be overwhelming (Valencia 2015). Furthermore, experts’ advice can be contradictory. Some experts advise against children’s sharing a parent’s bed, for instance, while other experts find bed sharing okay (Gordon, Rowe, and Garcia 2015).

4. Today’s parents are often sandwiched between caring simultaneously for children and elderly parents. Although caregiving can increase life satisfaction, stress builds as family members juggle employment, housework, childcare, and parent care (Cullen et al. 2009).

5. Over the past fifty years, parenting has become one lifestyle choice among many, and society-wide support has diminished for the child-raising role, once taken for granted as central. For instance, as a declining proportion of Americans are raising children, some communities show less willingness to support publicly funded child-centered facilities and programs for children (Whitehead and Popenoe 2008; Wilcox, Marquardt et al. 2011).

6. Today’s parents are given full responsibility for successfully raising “good” children, but their authority is often questioned. The state may intervene in parental decisions about schooling, discipline and punishment, medical care, children’s safety as automobile passengers, and even whether a child can be trusted to walk home from school or play in a nearby park alone (Wergin 2015). Immigrant parents from cultures that espouse parenting practices that are illegal or discouraged in the United States face difficulties. For instance, “Parents who try to correct their children’s misbehavior through physical punishment [that is defined as extreme in the United States] risk losing their children to the child protection authorities” (Bledsoe and Sow 2011, p. 755).

Due to these factors, being a parent can be far more challenging than many nonparents realize. It’s no wonder that parents, especially when employed, are considerably more stressed than nonparents (Sullivan 2015; Carroll 2007b). Then, too, a parent’s physical illness, as well as raising a child with special needs, can add stresses peculiar to these situations.

Chapter 9-2aDoing Motherhood

Although heterosexual parents’ gender expectations and behaviors are becoming more and more alike, mothers still engage in more hands-on parenting than do fathers, and they take primary responsibility for their children’s upbringing (Pew Research Center 2013b, 2015d). In heterosexual families, adolescents of both genders are likely to name their mother as their closest family confidant (Nomaguchi 2008). A study of employed, coupled heterosexual parents found that mothers often define “quality time” differently from fathers. Fathers are more likely to see quality time with their children as being home and available if needed. Mothers more often see quality time as having heart-to-heart talks with their children or engaging in child-centered activities (Snyder 2007).

Some women quit successful careers to accommodate their mothering role (Slaughter 2012). For women of color who have made this choice, an organization called Mocha Moms (www.mochamoms.org) provides social support (Crowley and Curenton 2011). As more and more moms have entered the labor force, we have redefined men’s roles to include a larger part in the day-to-day care of their families (Pew Research Center 2013b, 2015d). When mothers see fathers as competent parents—and when fathers believe that their child’s mother has confidence in them—fathers are more likely to be highly involved (Fagan and Barnett 2003). Though stressful for virtually all mothers, mothering as a single parent is generally even more so.

Single Mothers

About 44 percent of all births occur to unmarried women (Martin et al. 2015). Some of these births are to women in same-sex couples. In addition, up to one-half of all nonmarital births occur to cohabiting heterosexual couples (Martin et al. 2015). We can therefore conclude that between 15 percent and 20 percent of all births occur to uncoupled, single mothers. The intersection of gender with family form is evident in the fact that single women, dramatically more than single men, assume responsibility for child raising (U.S. Census Bureau 2015b, Table FG10). Especially when there is only one adult in the household, interaction in single-mother families can be highly intense emotionally as parent and child(ren) work to negotiate their respective roles—child or listener/caregiver/problem solver? Parent or friend? (Nixon, Greene, and Hogan 2015).

The category single mother is diverse by race/ethnicity, immigration experience, education, and socioeconomic class. Some women have purposefully decided to raise a child as a single parent. However, the vast majority of single mothers never intended to raise their children without a partner. Some women, becoming mothers while married or cohabiting, believed that their relationship would last but have since divorced or separated. Others realized that their relationship was not permanent and the pregnancy may have been unplanned, but they chose to bear the child rather than have an abortion (Carter 2009). As one never-married college student and single mother told an interviewer, “My heart felt ready for the baby. I knew it was something I could do with or without a spouse” (in Holland 2009, p. 173).

As a category, single mothers’ median family incomes are considerably lower than those for either married mothers or single fathers, and single mothers are more likely to live in poverty, as shown in Tables 7.1 and 7.2. Some single mothers may have wanted to wed but did not find a man whom they considered acceptable (Holland 2009). Some single mothers keep the fathers of their children at a distance due to poor relationships with them, safety concerns for their children, or apprehension about the father’s illegal activities, or because they see him as generally unreliable (England and Edin 2007).

Nevertheless, single mothers are well aware that to be married is the cultural ideal. One told an interviewer, with reference to her never-married status:

Even though I have come so far, I have a car, I have a house, not just an apartment, and I’m a CNA [certified nursing assistant] and I will never have to work a minimum wage job again ever. My kids aren’t in want for anything really important, but … I’m nowhere. I’m at the bottom, you know. (in Gemelli 2008, p. 112)

In a society that strongly advocates a two-parent model, single mothers report feeling stigmatized (LaRossa 2009; Mollborn 2009). But single mothers evidence creativity and resilience as they construct support networks to help with finances, housing, childcare, and other needs (King, Mitchell, and Hawkins 2010). For instance, a service called CoAbode (www.coabode.com) facilitates house sharing for single mothers. In addition, single mothers maintain Web-based support groups that offer practical assistance, such as providing business clothes for those in need. Single mothers may rely on brothers, brothers-in-law, grandfathers, uncles, or male cousins to serve as father figures for their children (Richardson 2009).

A  private safety net , or social support from family and friends, is associated with children’s better adjustment (Ryan, Kalil, and Leininger 2009). Ironically, those most in need of financial or other practical assistance are often in neighborhood, family, or friendship networks that are least able to help because their own circumstances preclude doing so (Gordon and Cui 2014; Harknett and Hartnett 2011; Phan, Blumer, and Demaiter 2009). Moreover, social support from extended family is not always without cost. For example, a single mother told of her father’s offer to pay for her family’s medical insurance but only on the unspoken condition that she listen while he regularly criticized her (Brush 2008, p. 128).

To improve life for themselves and their children, many single mothers choose further education. This decision is not without added stress, however. Given work and parenting obligations, finding time to attend assigned off-campus activities or meetings to plan group projects poses problems (in Duquaine-Watson 2007, p. 234).

In accordance with the stress model of parental effectiveness, the average result of single mothers’ time constraints, generally poorer economic resources, and resultant higher depression levels—not family structure per se—is less effective parenting behaviors (Riley, Scaramella, and McGoron 2014; Teachman 2009). Instead of between-group comparisons of children raised by single mothers with those raised in two-parent homes, researchers sometimes make within-group comparisons of children raised in various single-mother families. In these latter cases, variations in income, education, stress, and depression levels largely explain child-outcome differences (Crawford and Novak 2008). It is not surprising that stress is less pronounced among single mothers with relatively higher education, fewer children, better jobs, and more personal resources (Riley, Scaramella, and McGoron 2014).

Whether a mother is partnered or not, finding time for herself along with work and household and childcare responsibilities can be daunting. Exercise classes that include baby are one community response to mothers’ time pressures.

Chapter 9-2bDoing Fatherhood

In general, research shows that a father’s involvement in his child’s upbringing is related to positive cognitive, emotional, and behavioral outcomes from infancy into adolescence (e.g., Mallette et al. 2015; Mandara, Rogers, and Zinbarg 2011; Palm 2014). Especially for boys, father absence has generally been associated with adverse effects on children’s cognitive, moral, and social development (Bronte-Tinkew et al. 2008; Leonhardt 2014; Mitchell, Booth, and King 2009). We note that “father absence” can be other than simply residential absence and can include psychological absence, or indifference with minimal positive father-child interaction. Of course, residential fathers have more opportunities to develop psychological presence than do nonresident fathers (Cabrera et al. 2014; Krampe 2009).

However, incidences of a father’s substance abuse and of father-perpetrated partner violence and child abuse remind us that encouraging father contact is not always best for children (Osborne and Berger 2009; Salisbury, Henning, and Holdford 2009). Furthermore,  social fathers  (nonbiological fathers in the role of father, such as stepfathers) do not seem to improve adolescents’ outcomes when compared with living in a single-mother household (Bzostek 2008). Indeed, a mother’s male relatives—for example, the child’s uncle or grandfather—may be more effective parent figures than a mother’s romantic partner (Jayakody and Kalil 2002). Nevertheless, research does show that, compared to growing up in a single-mother home, younger children benefit economically from living with a social father, provided he shares his financial resources with the family (Manning and Brown 2006).

Married fathers are increasingly involved and invested in their children’s daily lives from birth as they engage in breadwinning, planning, sharing activities, and teaching their children (Kotila, Schoppe-Sullivan, and Dush 2013; Livingston and Parker 2011; Wilcox, Marquardt et al. 2011). Children’s interactions with fathers often differ from those with their mothers; fathers more typically play with or engage in leisure activities with their children than do mothers (Cancian and Oliker 2000). Although we tend to stereotype low-income fathers of color as unmarried and absent, interviews with young African American and Hispanic fathers in New York City uncovered married fathers who were actively involved with their children. Better educated fathers with more satisfying jobs showed higher levels of parental engagement. Experiencing high unemployment, money problems, or workplace pressure adds to fathers’ stress, resulting in less effective parenting (Wilkinson et al. 2009).

Married-Couple Families with a Stay-at-Home Father

In 2010, about 154,000 married-couple families had stay-at-home fathers (U.S. Census Bureau 2012a, Table 68), situations that have become more prevalent with men’s losing jobs during the recession that began in 2007 (Chesley 2011). Some of these men have been laid off or closed family-owned businesses and remain out of the workforce (Livingston 2014). Others have wives who earn more than they could and question sending their children to day care when the father could stay home (St. George 2010; Smith 2009). Despite gender role changes (see Chapter 3), couples with breadwinning mothers and full-time caregiver fathers continue to be viewed as norm violators (Livingston 2014).

Fathers point out the relative lack of status associated with full-time parenting, at least in some circles, as well as in the media, where fathers caring for babies are often the butt of jokes (Poniewozik 2012). One stay-at-home father, recently laid off from a Fortune 500 company, told a New York Times reporter, “To go from the 24-7, high-end, deal-making prestige of working for places that are written about in newspapers to this, it took a long time to get comfortable…. It’s humbling” (Kershaw 2009a).

Single Fathers

Compared to single mothers, the proportion of single fathers is dramatically small. Among families with children under age 18, about 4.7 percent are single-father families—5 percent for blacks, Hispanics, and nonHispanic whites, and 3 percent for Asians (U.S. Census Bureau 2015b Table FG10).

Single fathers often assumed their role when they “stepped up” in difficult and unforeseen circumstances (Coles 2009). Single fathers often know that extended family support is available but may not rely on it: “I call my sister occasionally for advice, but I have a strong autonomous streak in me. I’d rather do it myself” (in Coles 2009, p. 1,329).

Whether single or married, poor or financially better off, fathers as primary parents report fighting stereotypes that regard them as odd, unmasculine, or weak (Troilo and Coleman 2008). Watched and evaluated as parents, they feel that they have to prove themselves capable (Coles 2009). In response, single fathers have organized various support groups (e.g., the National At-Home Dad Network).

A parent’s deployment overseas means considerable changes in the family system. Responsibility for household chores may change; the family may move to be with extended kin; the nondeployed parent may experience higher stress and anxiety; or children may develop new behavior problems (Schlomer et al. 2012). Available online, “Flat Daddies” and “Flat Mommies,” cardboard cutouts of a parent deployed overseas, serve as symbolic placeholders in the families left behind. Flat Daddies and Flat Mommies can go to school, sports events, and holiday dinner tables. They remind family members of their ongoing connection during deployment (www.flatdaddies.com).

Linda Coan O’Kresik/The New York Times/Redux Pictures

Nonresident Fathers

Nonresident fathers are biological or, less often, adoptive fathers who do not live with one or more of their children. Less true for divorced fathers, never-married nonresidential fathers move in and out of their children’s lives (Cross-Barnet, Cherlin, and Burton 2011). Due to multipartnered fatherhood, a father may be living with one or more of his biological children but be “nonresident” with regard to others. Then, too, a nonresident father may be serving as a social father to one or more children whom he did not conceive, usually because he lives with a woman who had at least one child from a previous relationship (McMahon et al. 2007; Rackin and Gibson-Davis 2012).

Research shows that, in fact, “cooperative coparenting does not occur in most nonresident father families” (McGene and King 2012). However, although often stereotyped as “absent” and disinterested, many nonresident fathers express love and genuine concern for their children: “These two guys… are the reason I live, you know” (in Coles 2009, p. 1,334; also see Hohmann-Marriott 2011; Karre and Mounts 2012). The majority of nonresident fathers maintain some presence in their children’s lives and provide them with various kinds of practical support, such as diapers, formula, or childcare (Amato, Meyers, and Every 2009; England and Edin 2007). Researchers have found that whether a nonresident father is involved depends on his employment status, age, education, religious participation, and substance abuse history as well as family background (Goldscheider et al. 2009). Some research shows that a nonresident father is more involved when his child is male (Bronte-Tinkew and Horowitz 2010). A nonresident father’s involvement also depends on a conflict-free relationship with his child’s mother and, to a lesser extent, her extended family (Fagan and Lee 2011; Gonzalez and Barnett 2014; Carlson et al. 2011;).

Nevertheless, given limited resources, involvement of nonresident fathers typically declines over their children’s lifetimes, especially for daughters (Bronte-Tinkew and Horowitz 2010; Mitchell, Booth, and King 2009). Many researchers encourage policy support—programs to bolster nonresident father employment and self-esteem as well as encourage their parenting involvement—for these single-parent families, especially in communities where father absence is commonplace (Cowan et al. 2014; Porter 2014). The next section explores what children need, regardless of the family form in which they reside.