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Dynamics & Diversity of Families: The History of the Family
in the U.S.

For Each Historical Period Describe…

  • Families of production or families of consumption?
  • Arranged or romantic love marriages?
  • Family types and marriage forms?
  • Group or individual focus?
  • Change or decline?

Native American Families
1100s-1500s

Native American Families

  • 240 cultural/family types
  • Berdache
  • Tolerance, diversity

Colonial Families
1600s-1700s

Colonial Families

  • Largely European based families
  • Influence of Puritanism/Calvinism
  • Protestant work ethic
  • Non-hedonism
  • Sexually strict
  • Bundling board
  • Extended/reconstituted

families

  • Fathers emotional base

Upper Class Bundling Board

Victorian Families
1800s

Victorian Families

  • Industrialization
  • Urbanization
  • Immigration
  • Breadwinner/Housewife
  • Nuclear families
  • Mothers starting to be the

emotional base

  • Arranged marriages

to romantic love

Companionate Families
early 1900s

Companionate Families

  • Relationships should be emotionally and sexually satisfying for women
  • Men should assist with household duties
  • Notion of children and childhood changing
  • Birth control, Margaret Sanger
  • Anthony Amendment (19th), 1920

Women’s Suffrage Movement (1848-1920)

  • Agenda:
  • Abolition of slavery
  • Right to vote
  • Prohibition

New Jersey

  • New Jersey granted women the vote (since married women did not own property in their own right, only unmarried women and widows qualified) under the state constitution of 1776.
  • New Jersey women, along with "aliens...persons of color, or negroes," lost the vote in 1807, when the vote was restricted to white males.

The Golden Age
1950s

  • Why called “Golden Age?”
  • WWII over, more affluent
  • Much govt. financial support
  • Women left their jobs so

men could have jobs

“The Golden Age”

  • Dramatic influence of television
  • Families watched t.v. together in one room
  • And the shows they watched the most were shows about –
  • FAMILIES!

Leave It To Beaver (1957-1963)

Father Knows Best (1954-1960)

Ozzie & Harriet (1952-1966)

2nd Generation Nelsons

The Way We Never Were

  • Stephanie Coontz, Ph.D.

Myths & Realities According to
Dr. Coontz

  • Myths –

- traditional roles

- mother/child relationship intense

- families independent

- families can meet all the needs of the individual

- family related to values and morality

- women shouldn’t work

Realities

  • Roles have been varies
  • Mother/child relationship not always intense
  • Women in the workforce
  • Families need govt. support, can’t go it alone
  • Families can’t meet all the needs of indiv.
  • Family and values and morality not necessarily together

Momism and the Motherhood Mystique

  • Momism – over-attachment to Mother; blame Mom for everything
  • Motherhood Mystique - Women should want to be mothers and instinctively know how to be mothers; women are fulfilled by being mothers

Consequences of Motherhood Mystique

  • Post-partum depression

Infanticide

  • Andrea Yates

Why Would Moms Do This?

Contemporary Families
1960s-Present

  • Diverse family forms
  • Factors promoting change

from the Golden Age:

- economic changes

- technological innovations

- demographic changes

- gender role changes

- cultural changes

Women’s Liberation Movement (1960s-1973)

  • Agenda: private relationship issues, public issues work/ pay equity, abortion, including women of color and lesbians

Let’s Examine the Effect of Social Class on Families

  • What do we get from our social class?
  • Life chances, Lifestyles
  • Health, safety, religious and political views
  • Class variations regarding the family experience (age at marriage/parenthood, division of household labor, socialization, sexuality, domestic violence, divorce)

Social Stratification Systems

  • Social Stratification – a ranking system
  • How can societies stratify their members?
  • Income, occupation, education, gender, race, religion, etc.
  • Open v. Closed Systems
  • Social Class v. Caste Systems

http://www.csuchico.edu/~cheinz/syllabi/asst001/spring98/india.htm

Social Class in the U.S.

  • 9 major classes
  • Upper – upper, middle, lower
  • Middle – upper, middle, lower
  • Lower – upper, middle, lower
  • Upper - $250K+
  • Middle - $25K - $250K
  • Lower – Below $25K

Social Class Variations in Families
Upper Class Families

  • 7%-10% of all families
  • Have the bulk of the wealth
  • Sex-segregated marriages
  • Women often serve as support

to successful husbands

  • Women often volunteer
  • Have servants

Middle Class Families

  • At least 70% of the population
  • Ideologically egalitarian
  • Two-career marriages
  • Women still hold bulk of

responsibility for housework

and child-care

Working/Lower Class Families

  • 25% of the population
  • Marriages least stable
  • Men often absent from daily

family life

  • Highest divorce rates
  • Highest nonmarital childbearing
  • Highest poverty rates among single mother headed households

Social Class is Dynamic

  • Social Mobility
  • Vertical
  • Horizontal
  • Intergenerational


  • Race refers to the concept of dividing people into groups on the basis of certain physical characteristics such as skin color, facial features, and hair texture.
  • Ethnicity refers to the country into which you are born.

U.S. Total Population Figures

  • 1790 - 3.9 million
  • 1830 – 12.8 million
  • 1850 – 23 million
  • 1890 – 63 million
  • 1910 – 92 million
  • 1930 – 123 million
  • 1950 – 151 million
  • 1960 – 179 million
  • 1970 – 203 million
  • 1980 – 226 million
  • 1990 – 248 million
  • 2000 – 281 million
  • 2013 – 310 million

U.S. Population - 2013

  • 310 million total population in U.S.
  • 172 million European Americans
  • 46 million Latino/Hispanic Americans (projected to be 102 million in 2050; was 22 million in 1990)
  • 38 million African Americans
  • 15-16 million Asian Americans
  • 4-5 million Arab Americans

Immigration

  • Movement of individuals or groups to the U.S. from other countries
  • Why?
  • Push vs. Pull factors
  • Assimilation
  • Acculturation

African American Families

Legacy of Slavery (1619-1865)

  • By 1860, 4 million slaves in the U.S.
  • Slaves, average age: 35

Slave Families

  • Slaves not allowed to marry legally
  • Slave children often grew up in families w/out their own biological parents; this separation undermined authority of parents
  • Slave spouses often lived on different plantations

Slaves Were Bought and Sold

  • So, families were separated, sometimes forever

Bucks and Wenches…

Slave Families

  • Some slaves were forced to “breed”
  • From the ages of 13-20 female slaves expected to have 5 children already
  • One slave trader from Virginia boasted that his breeding policies enabled him to sell 6,000 slave children a year

Non-Compliant Slaves…

  • Were whipped and brutalized

And Really Non-Compliant Slaves…

  • Got the iron mask

and collar…

More on Slave Families

  • Originally from Africa, some practiced polygamy
  • In U.S. had monogamous relationships, not arranged, based on love
  • Gender roles divided
  • Sometimes large kinship

systems

  • Slaves would not ‘marry’

first cousins, unlike the

white plantation owners

Slave Cabin

Sexual Abuse of Slaves and Master/Slave Relationships

  • Some masters, like James H. Hammond (1807-1864), a Congressman, Governor, and U.S. Senator from South Carolina, took slave mistresses.

Sen. James Hammond

  • Hammond, whose wife bore him eight children, purchased an 18-year-old slave named Sally and her infant daughter, Louisa, in 1839. He made Sally his mistress, and fathered several children by her, and then when the daughter reached the age of 12, fathered several children by her.

Slave Marriage

  • Through it all, African Americans displayed strong family values to be together despite risks

Contemporary African American Families

  • About 38 million African Americans in U.S.
  • 80% are descendants of captive Africans who were enslaved
  • 20% are voluntary immigrants

from Africa, the Carribbean,

South America, etc.

Contemporary African American Families

  • Less likely to marry
  • No more likely to divorce or be widowed
  • More likely to live in single-parent mostly mother-headed families
  • Less likely to complete college
  • Less likely to be employed
  • Race wage gap 85% compared to gender wage gap of 73%
  • More likely to live in poverty

Contemporary African American Families Continued

  • Long history of dual wage earner families
  • More like to have egalitarian roles
  • Slightly higher rate of marital distress and domestic violence
  • Kinship bonds important b/c they provide emotional and financial support
  • More likely to live in extended households
  • Upper class African American families just as stable as Middle and Upper Class Caucasian families

Latino Families

Latino Families

  • About 46 million Latinos in the U.S.
  • 66% Mexican, 10% Puerto Rican and Cuban, 17% from Central and South America, etc.
  • Much diversity, as with all groups
  • For example, unmarried Cuban mothers 27%, Mexicans 41%, and Puerto Ricans 60%, highest to lowest educational levels respectively.

Latino Families

  • Value family unity, loyalty to the family, and an emphasis on cooperation rather than competition among family members and friends
  • Familism is a value that underlies the strong Latino identification with members of the extended family. Latino families have a strong sense of family identification and structure as well as support for extended family.
  • The extended family often includes not only blood relatives but also non-blood relatives such as the best man (padrino), maid of honor (madrina), and godparents (compadre and comadre).

Asian American Families

Asian American Families

  • About 15-16 million Asian Americans in U.S.
  • Major ethnic groups: 23% Chinese, 20% Filipino, 16% Asian Indian, 10% each Korean and Vietnamese, 9% Japanese
  • More than half of all Asian Americans live in 3 states: CA, NY, and HI

Asian American Families

  • 60% of Asians in the U.S. are married – a higher percentage than the national total of 54%. Certain Asian groups in the U.S. have even higher rates of marriage: 67% of Asian Indians and 67% of Pakistanis are married.
  • Only 4% of Asians in the U.S. are divorced – lower than the national total of 9.7%.
  • Only 3% female headed households, also lower than the national average of 12%.

Traditional vs. Contemporary Asian American Marriages/Families

  • 2/3 of Japanese & Chinese report marriages based on responsibility not necessarily love.
  • 3/4 of Japanese-American women and Chinese-American women surveyed said that dating Asian-American men was difficult, because the men wanted the women to adopt traditional, submissive gender roles, while the women were looking for men who would share child-rearing and household responsibilities.

Arab American Families

Arab American Families

  • About 4-5 million Arab Americans in U.S.
  • Immigrated from North Africa or the Middle East
  • Closely identified with religion
  • The countries of the Arab world

largely follow Islam

  • However, most Arab Americans

are Christian (70%);

30% are Muslim

Early Arab American Immigration

  • Early immigration of Arabs to the U.S. took place between 1886 - 1914. Most came from greater Syria (included Libya, Palestine, Jordan, and Iran). The majority were poor and under-educated.
  • There were many thousands of Arabs working as slaves on plantations. Others were primarily traders, peddlers, industrial workers and farmers. Later some enterprises grew into large businesses such as Haggar and Farah.
  • These early communities, cut off from their heritage and families, inevitably lost their Islamic identity as time went by. Immigration slowed during the period between W.W.I and W.W.II (1915 - 1945) due to immigration laws.

Later Arab American Immigration

  • Arabs who immigrated to the U.S. after 1945 were more educated, professional, and mainly of the Muslim faith. Most came from Egypt, Iran and Palestine.
  • This group has been able to retain more of their culture than the earlier group. Those who arrived during the first group attempted to distant themselves from the Arab world by adopting western culture and language.

Arab American Families

  • In a traditional Arab-American family, gender and age plays a big role in defining family role responsibilities. The father is usually the head of the family and the provider for its needs, while the mother has the primary responsibility of raising the children and taking care of the house.

Sons and Daughters of Arab Americans

  • Sons and daughters are taught to follow the inherited traditions and are given responsibilities that correspond with their age and gender. Sons are usually taught to be protectors of their sisters and to help the father with his duties inside and outside the house.
  • Daughters are taught to be the source of love and emotional support in the family, as well as helping their mother to take care of household chores.

Arab American Families

  • Although the parents have the responsibility of raising a child, family members, relatives, friends and neighbors share in taking care of each other’s children.
  • A known Arabian proverb, “He who grows on something, will grow old with it,” means the behavior that children are being taught will be the behavior they will have as they grow older.

Diversity

  • No matter what the racial and ethnic background we can learn lessons from American’s original ancestors, Native Americans:
  • Tolerance and Diversity…