Unit 7

Unit 6.1: Families and Intimate Relationships

15-1Families in Global Perspective

LO 1

Explain these key concepts: families, kinship, family of orientation, family of procreation, extended family, and nuclear family.

As the nature of family life has changed in high-, middle-, and low-income nations, the issue of what constitutes a “family” continues to be widely debated. In the “Universal Declaration of Human Rights,” Article 16, adopted by the United Nations (1948), the family is defined as follows:

· Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality, or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family. They are entitled to equal rights as to marriage, during marriage and at its dissolution.

· Marriage shall be entered into only with the free and full consent of the intending spouses.

· The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the States.

According to this declaration, the social institution of family must be protected in all societies because family is the “natural” and “fundamental” group unit of society. Although families differ widely around the world, they also share certain common concerns in their everyday lives. Food, clothing, shelter, and child care are necessities important to all people.

In the United States the Census Bureau defines a family as consisting of two or more people who are related by birth, marriage, or adoption, and residing in the same housing unit. (The Census Bureau specifies that one person in the household unit will be identified as the “householder.”) For many years the standard sociological definition of family has been a group of people who are related to one another by bonds of blood, marriage, or adoption and who live together, form an economic unit, and bear and raise children. Some people believe that this definition should not be expanded—that social approval should not be extended to other relationships simply because the persons in those relationships wish to consider themselves to be a family. However, other people challenge this definition because it simply does not match the reality of family life in contemporary society, particularly at a time when only about half of adults ages eighteen and older are married in the legal usage of the term.

Today’s families include many types of living arrangements and relationships, including single-parent households, unmarried couples, LGBTQ couples with or without children, and multiple generations (such as grandparent, parent, and child) living in the same household (Figure 15.1). To accurately reflect these changes in family life, some sociologists believe that we need a more encompassing definition of what constitutes a family. Accordingly,  families  are relationships in which people live together with commitment, form an economic unit and care for any young, and consider their identity to be significantly attached to the group. Sexual expression and parent–child relationships are a part of most, but not all, family relationships.

Figure 15.1

Contemporary families are more diverse than in the past, including an increasing number of households made up of young people who, at least temporarily, have returned to live in their parents’ homes. What larger societal factors contribute to this living arrangement?

Denise Hager, Catchlight Visual Services/Catchlight Visual Services/Alamy

How do sociologists approach the study of families? In our study of families we will use our sociological imagination to see how our personal experiences are related to the larger happenings in society. At the microlevel, each of us has a “biography,” based on our experience within our family; at the macrolevel, our families are embedded in a specific culture and social context that has a major effect on them. We will examine the institution of the family at both of these levels, starting with family structure and characteristics.

15-1aFamily Structure and Characteristics

In preindustrial societies the primary form of social organization is through kinship ties.  Kinship  refers to a social network of people based on common ancestry, marriage, or adoption. Through kinship networks, people cooperate so that they can acquire the basic necessities of life, including food and shelter. Kinship systems can also serve as a means by which property is transferred, goods are produced and distributed, and power is allocated.

In industrialized societies, other social institutions fulfill some of the functions previously taken care of by the kinship network. For example, political systems provide structures of social control and authority, and economic systems are responsible for the production and distribution of goods and services. Consequently, families in industrialized societies serve fewer and more-specialized purposes than do families in preindustrial societies. Contemporary families are primarily responsible for regulating sexual activity, socializing children, and providing affection and companionship for family members.

Families of Orientation and Procreation

During our lifetime, many of us will be members of two different types of families—a family of orientation and a family of procreation. The  family of orientation  is the family into which a person is born and in which early socialization usually takes place. Although most people are related to members of their family of orientation by blood ties, those who are adopted have a legal tie that is patterned after a blood relationship (Figure 15.2). The  family of procreation  is the family that a person forms by having, adopting, or otherwise creating children. Both legal and blood ties are found in most families of procreation. The relationship between a husband and wife is based on legal ties; however, the relationship between a parent and child may be based on either blood ties or legal ties, depending on whether the child has been adopted.

Figure 15.2

Whereas the relationship between spouses is based on legal ties, relationships between parents and children may be established by either blood or legal ties.

Myrleen Pearson/Alamy

Some sociologists have emphasized that “family of orientation” and “family of procreation” do not encompass all types of contemporary families. Instead, many gay, lesbian, transsexual, bisexual, and transgender persons have families we choose—social arrangements that include intimate relationships between couples and close familial relationships among other couples and other adults and children. According to the sociologist Judy Root Aulette (1994), “families we choose” include blood ties and legal ties, but they also include fictive kin—persons who are not actually related by blood but who are accepted as family members.

Extended and Nuclear Families

Sociologists distinguish between extended families and nuclear families based on the number of generations that live within a household. An  extended family  is a family unit composed of relatives in addition to parents and children who live in the same household. These families often include grandparents, uncles, aunts, or other relatives who live close to the parents and children, making it possible for family members to share resources. In horticultural and agricultural societies, extended families are extremely important; having a large number of family members participate in food production may be essential for survival. Today, extended-family patterns are found in Latin America, Africa, Asia, and some parts of Eastern and Southern Europe. With the advent of industrialization and urbanization, maintaining the extended-family pattern becomes more difficult. Increasingly, young people move from rural to urban areas in search of employment in the industrializing sector of the economy. At that time, some extended families remain, but the nuclear family typically becomes the predominant family form in the society.

A  nuclear family  is a family composed of one or two parents and their dependent children, all of whom live apart from other relatives. A traditional definition specifies that a nuclear family is made up of a “couple” and their dependent children; however, this definition became outdated when a significant shift occurred in the family structure. A comparison of Census Bureau data from 1970 and 2015 shows that there has been a significant decline in the percentage of U.S. households comprising a married couple with their own children under eighteen years of age, so we will look at what some social analysts refer to as the contemporary, diverse family.

The Contemporary Family—Family Diversity in the Twenty-First Century

In the second decade of the twenty-first century, researchers have found that there is no such thing as a typical family. In the past the typical family comprised two married, heterosexual parents in their first marriage and their children under 18 years of age. In the 1960s, this was the norm for 73 percent of children living in the United States. However, by 1980, only 61 percent of children lived in such families, and the percentage reached a new low at less than one-half (46 percent) in 2014 (Livingston, 2014). In the words of a Time magazine article, “Pretty much everyone agrees that the era of the nuclear family, with a dad who went to work, and the mom who stayed at home, has declined to the point of no return” (Luscombe, 2014). Of course, the question remains: “What is taking the place of the nuclear family?” And more family researchers are finding that the answer is diversity—a wider variety of family living arrangements has become the norm. According to the sociologist Philip Cohen (2014), three major factors have contributed to this dramatic change in family structure in the United States:

· (1)

a decline in marriage rates;

· (2)

a rise in the number of women who are employed in the paid workforce, and

· (3)

a shift from the majority living in a nuclear family to a wider variety of living arrangements, such as blended families, cohabitation, and more-extensive patterns of remarriage (discussed later in this chapter).

15-1bMarriage Patterns

LO 2

Describe the differences among the following marriage patterns—monogamy, polygamy, polygyny, and polyandry—and the differences among these patterns of descent—patrilineal, matrilineal, and bilateral.

Across cultures, different forms of marriage characterize families.  Marriage  is a legally recognized and/or socially approved arrangement between two or more individuals that carries certain rights and obligations and usually involves sexual activity. In most societies, marriage involves a mutual commitment by each partner, and linkages between two individuals and families are publicly demonstrated.

In the United States the only legally sanctioned form of marriage is  monogamy —the practice or state of being married to one person at a time. For some people, marriage is a lifelong commitment that ends only with the death of a partner. For others, marriage is a commitment of indefinite duration. Through a pattern of marriage, divorce, and remarriage, some people practice serial monogamy—a succession of marriages in which a person has several spouses over a lifetime but is legally married to only one person at a time.

Polygamy  is the concurrent marriage of a person of one sex with two or more members of the opposite sex. The most prevalent form of polygamy is  polygyny —the concurrent marriage of one man with two or more women. Polygyny has been practiced in a number of societies, including parts of Europe until the Middle Ages. More recently, some marriages in Islamic societies in Africa and Asia have been polygynous; however, the cost of providing for multiple wives and numerous children makes the practice impossible for all but the wealthiest men. In addition, because roughly equal numbers of women and men live in these areas, this nearly balanced sex ratio tends to limit polygyny. Contemporary cable TV shows have portrayed several U.S. families whose members live the polygamous lifestyle (Figure 15.3).

Figure 15.3

Polygamy is the concurrent marriage of a person of one sex with two or more persons of the opposite sex. Although most people do not practice this pattern of marriage, some men are married to more than one wife. Shown here is a polygamist family made up of Kody Brown and his four wives, who have been featured on the TLC reality television series, Sister Wives.

WENN Ltd/Alamy

The second type of polygamy is  polyandry —the concurrent marriage of one woman with two or more men. Polyandry is very rare; when it does occur, it is typically found in societies where men greatly outnumber women because of high rates of female infanticide.

15-1cPatterns of Descent and Inheritance

Even though a variety of marital patterns exist across cultures, virtually all forms of marriage establish a system of descent so that kinship can be determined and inheritance rights established. In preindustrial societies, kinship is usually traced through one parent (unilineally). The most common pattern of unilineal descent is  patrilineal descent —a system of tracing descent through the father’s side of the family. Patrilineal systems are set up in such a manner that a legitimate son inherits his father’s property and sometimes his position upon the father’s death. In nations such as India, where boys are seen as permanent patrilineal family members but girls are seen as only temporary family members, girls tend to be considered more expendable than boys.

Even with the less common pattern of  matrilineal descent —a system of tracing descent through the mother’s side of the family—women may not control property. However, inheritance of property and position is usually traced from the maternal uncle (mother’s brother) to his nephew (mother’s son). In some cases, mothers may pass on their property to daughters.

By contrast, kinship in industrial societies is usually traced through both parents (bilineally). The most common form is  bilateral descent —a system of tracing descent through both the mother’s and father’s sides of the family. This pattern is used in the United States for the purpose of determining kinship and inheritance rights; however, children typically take the father’s last name.

15-1dPower and Authority in Families

LO 3

Identify the authority figure(s) in each of the following kinds of families: patriarchal, matriarchal, and egalitarian.

Descent and inheritance rights are intricately linked with patterns of power and authority in families. The most prevalent forms of familial power and authority are patriarchy, matriarchy, and egalitarianism. A  patriarchal family  is a family structure in which authority is held by the eldest male (usually the father). The male authority figure acts as head of the household and holds power and authority over the women and children, as well as over other males. A  matriarchal family  is a family structure in which authority is held by the eldest female (usually the mother). In this case the female authority figure acts as head of the household. Although there has been a great deal of discussion about matriarchal families, scholars have found no historical evidence to indicate that true matriarchies ever existed.

The most prevalent pattern of power and authority in families is patriarchy. Across cultures, men are the primary (and often sole) decision makers regarding domestic, economic, and social concerns facing the family. The existence of patriarchy may give men a sense of power over their own lives, but it can also create an atmosphere in which some men feel greater freedom to abuse women and children.

An  egalitarian family  is a family structure in which both partners share power and authority equally. Recently, a trend toward more-egalitarian relationships has been evident in a number of countries as women have sought changes in their legal status and increased educational and employment opportunities. Some degree of economic independence makes it possible for women to delay marriage or to terminate a problematic marriage. Recent cross-national studies have found that larger increases in the proportion of women who have higher levels of education, who hold jobs with higher wages, who have more commitment to careers outside the family, and who have greater interest in gender equality all contribute to the support of egalitarian gender values in the larger society as these ideas eventually spread to others.

15-1eResidential Patterns

Residential patterns are interrelated with the authority structure and the method of tracing descent in families.  Patrilocal residence  refers to the custom of a married couple living in the same household (or community) as the husband’s parents. Across cultures, patrilocal residency is the most common pattern. Patrilocal residency can be found in countries where it is to the distinct advantage of young men to remain close to their parents’ household.

Few societies have residential patterns known as  matrilocal —the custom of a married couple living in the same household (or community) as the wife’s parents. In industrialized nations such as the United States, most couples hope to live in a  neolocal residence —the custom of a married couple living in their own residence apart from both the husband’s and the wife’s parents.

Up to this point, we have examined a variety of marriage and family patterns found around the world. Even with the diversity of these patterns, most people’s behavior is shaped by cultural rules pertaining to endogamy and exogamy.  Endogamy  is the practice of marrying within one’s own group. In the United States, for example, most people practice endogamy: They marry people who come from the same social class, racial–ethnic group, religious affiliation, and other categories considered important within their own social group.  Exogamy  is the practice of marrying outside one’s own group. Depending on the circumstances, exogamy may not be noticed at all, or it may result in a person being ridiculed or ostracized by other members of the “in” group. The three most important sources of positive or negative sanctions for intermarriage are the family, the church, and the state. Participants in these social institutions may look unfavorably on the marriage of an in-group member to an “outsider” because of the belief that it diminishes social cohesion in the group. However, educational attainment is also a strong indicator of marital choice. Higher education emphasizes individual achievement, and college-educated people may be less likely than others to identify themselves with their social or cultural roots and thus more willing to marry outside their own social group or category if their potential partner shares a similar level of educational attainment.

15-2Theoretical Perspectives on Family

LO 4

Compare functionalist, conflict/feminist, symbolic interactionist, and postmodernist perspectives on the family as a social institution.

The  sociology of family  is the subdiscipline of sociology that attempts to describe and explain patterns of family life and variations in family structure. Functionalist perspectives emphasize the functions that families perform at the macrolevel of society, whereas conflict and feminist perspectives focus on families as a primary source of social inequality. Symbolic interactionists examine microlevel interactions that are integral to the roles of different family members. Postmodern analysts view families as being permeable, capable of being diffused or invaded so that their original purpose is modified.

15-2aFunctionalist Perspectives

Functionalists emphasize the importance of the family in maintaining the stability of society and the well-being of individuals. According to Emile Durkheim, marriage is a microcosmic replica of the larger society; both marriage and society involve a mental and moral fusion of physically distinct individuals. Durkheim also believed that a division of labor contributes to greater efficiency in all areas of life—including marriages and families—even though he acknowledged that this division imposes significant limitations on some people.

In the United States, Talcott Parsons was a key figure in developing a functionalist model of the family. According to Parsons (1955), the husband/father fulfills the instrumental role (meeting the family’s economic needs, making important decisions, and providing leadership), whereas the wife/mother fulfills the expressive role (running the household, caring for children, and meeting the emotional needs of family members).

Contemporary functionalist perspectives on families derive their foundation from Durkheim. Division of labor makes it possible for families to fulfill a number of functions that no other institution can perform as effectively. In advanced industrial societies, families serve four key functions:

1. Sexual regulation. Families are expected to regulate the sexual activity of their members and thus control reproduction so that it occurs within specific boundaries. At the macrolevel, incest taboos prohibit sexual contact or marriage between certain relatives. For example, virtually all societies prohibit sexual relations between parents and their children and between brothers and sisters.

2. Socialization. Parents and other relatives are responsible for teaching children the necessary knowledge and skills to survive. The smallness and intimacy of families make them best suited for providing children with the initial learning experiences they need.

3. Economic and psychological support. Families are responsible for providing economic and psychological support for members. In preindustrial societies, families are economic production units; in industrial societies, the economic security of families is tied to the workplace and to macrolevel economic systems. In recent years, psychological support and emotional security have been increasingly important functions of the family.

4. Provision of social status. Families confer social status and reputation on their members. These statuses include the ascribed statuses with which individuals are born, such as race/ethnicity, nationality, social class, and sometimes religious affiliation.

One of the most significant and compelling forms of social placement is the family’s class position and the opportunities (or lack thereof) resulting from that position. Examples of class-related opportunities are access to quality health care, higher education, and a safe place to live.

15-2bConflict and Feminist Perspectives

Conflict and feminist analysts view functionalist perspectives on the role of the family in society as idealized and inadequate. Rather than operating harmoniously and for the benefit of all members, families are sources of social inequality and conflict over values, goals, and access to resources and power (Figure 15.4).

Figure 15.4

Functionalist theorists believe that families serve a variety of functions that no other social institution can adequately fulfill. In contrast, conflict and feminist theorists believe that families may be a source of conflict over values, goals, and access to resources and power. Children in upper-class families have many advantages and opportunities that are not available to other children.

Monkey Business Images/ Shutterstock.com

According to some classical conflict theorists, families in capitalist economies are similar to the work environment of a factory: Men in the home dominate women in the same manner that capitalists and managers in factories dominate their workers (Engels, 1970/1884). Although childbearing and care for family members in the home contribute to capitalism, these activities also reinforce the subordination of women through unpaid (and often devalued) labor. Other conflict analysts are concerned with the effect that class conflict has on the family. The exploitation of the lower classes by the upper classes contributes to family problems such as high rates of divorce and overall family instability.

Some feminist perspectives on inequality in families focus on patriarchy rather than class. From this viewpoint, men’s domination over women existed long before capitalism and private ownership of property. Women’s subordination is rooted in patriarchy and men’s control over women’s labor power. According to one scholar, “Male power in our society is expressed in economic terms even if it does not originate in property relations; women’s activities in the home have been undervalued at the same time as their labor has been controlled by men” (Mann, 1994: 42). In addition, men have benefited from the privileges they derive from their status as family breadwinners.

15-2cSymbolic Interactionist Perspectives

Early symbolic interactionists such as Charles Horton Cooley and George Herbert Mead provided key insights on the roles that we play as family members and how we modify or adapt our roles to the expectations of others—especially significant others such as parents, grandparents, siblings, and other relatives. How does the family influence the individual’s self-concept and identity? In order to answer questions such as this one, contemporary symbolic interactionists examine the roles of husbands, wives, and children as they act out their own parts and react to the actions of others. From such a perspective, what people think, as well as what they say and do, is very important in understanding family dynamics.

Some symbolic interactionist theorists focus on how interaction between marital partners contributes to a shared reality (Berger and Kellner, 1964). Although newlyweds bring separate identities to a marriage, over time they construct a shared reality as a couple. In the process, the partners redefine their past identities to be consistent with new realities. Development of a shared reality is a continuous process, taking place not only in the family but in any group in which the couple participates together. Divorce is the reverse of this process; couples may start with a shared reality and, in the process of uncoupling, gradually develop separate realities (Figure 15.5).

Figure 15.5

Marriage is a complicated process involving rituals and shared moments of happiness. When marriage is followed by divorce, couples must abandon a shared reality and then reestablish individual ones.

Corbis Super RF/Alamy; Pixland/Getty Images Plus/Getty Images

Symbolic interactionists explain family relationships in terms of the subjective meanings and everyday interpretations that people give to their lives. As the sociologist Jessie Bernard (1982/1973) pointed out, women and men experience marriage differently. Although the husband may see his marriage very positively, the wife may feel less positive about her marriage, or vice versa. Researchers have found that husbands and wives may give very different accounts of the same event and that their “two realities” frequently do not coincide.

15-2dPostmodernist Perspectives

According to postmodern theories, we have experienced a significant decline in the influence of the family and other social institutions. As people have pursued individual freedom, they have been less inclined to accept the structural constraints imposed on them by institutions. Given this assumption, how might a postmodern perspective view contemporary family life? For example, how might this approach answer the question “How is family life different in the digital age where many of us are surrounded by our technological gadgets?”

The postmodern family has been described as permeable—a more fluid and pliable form of the nuclear family that is characterized by larger variations in family structures. These variations are generated by divorce, remarriage, cohabitation, single-parent family structures, and families in which one or more grandchildren live with their grandparents. In the postmodern family, traditional gender roles are much more flexible. Younger people are much less constrained by the hierarchy and power relations of more-traditional families, sometimes to the displeasure of parents and other adult caregivers. In the postmodern era, the nuclear family is now only one of many family forms. Similarly, the idea of romantic love has given way to the idea of consensual love: Some individuals agree to have sexual relations with others whom they have no intention of marrying or, if they marry, do not necessarily see the marriage as having permanence. Maternal love has also been transformed into shared parenting, which includes not only mothers and fathers but also caregivers who may either be relatives or nonrelatives.

Urbanity is another characteristic of the postmodern family. The boundaries between the public sphere (the workplace) and the private sphere (the home) are becoming much more open and flexible. In fact, family life may be negatively affected by the decreasing distinction between what is work time and what is family time. As more people are becoming connected “24/7” (twenty-four hours per day, seven days per week), the boss who in the past would not call at 11:30 p.m. may send a text or e-mail asking for an immediate response to some question that has arisen while the person is away from the workplace

The Concept Quick Review summarizes sociological perspectives on the family. Taken together, these perspectives on the social institution of families reflect various ways in which familial relationships may be viewed in contemporary societies. Now we shift our focus to love, marriage, intimate relationships, and family issues in the United States.

Concept Quick Review

Theoretical Perspectives on Families

	Focus	Key Points	Perspective on Family Problems
Functionalist	Role of families in maintaining stability of society and individuals’ well-being	In modern societies, families serve the functions of sexual regulation, socialization, economic and psychological support, and provision of social status.	Family problems are related to changes in social institutions such as the economy, religion, education, and law/government.
Conflict/Feminist	Families as sources of conflict and social inequality	Families both mirror and help perpetuate social inequalities based on class and gender.	Family problems reflect social patterns of dominance and subordination.
Symbolic Interactionist	Family dynamics, including communication patterns and the subjective meanings that people assign to events	Interactions within families create a shared reality.	How family problems are perceived and defined depends on patterns of communication, the meanings that people give to roles and events, and individuals’ interpretations of family interactions.
Postmodernist	Permeability of families	In postmodern societies, families are diverse and fragmented. Boundaries between workplace and home are blurred.	Family problems are related to cyberspace, consumerism, and the hyperreal in an age increasingly characterized by high-tech “haves” and “have-nots.”

15-3Developing Intimate Relationships and Establishing Families

LO 5

Discuss issues that many contemporary couples face when thinking of developing intimate relationships and establishing families.

The United States has been described as a “nation of lovers”; it has been said that we are “in love with love.” Why is this so? Perhaps the answer lies in the fact that our ideal culture emphasizes romantic love, which refers to a deep emotion, the satisfaction of significant needs, a caring for and acceptance of the person we love, and involvement in an intimate relationship (Lamanna, Riedmann, and Stewart, 2015) (Figure 15.6). In the United States the notion of romantic love is deeply intertwined with our beliefs about how and why people develop intimate relationships and establish families. Not all societies share this concern with romantic love. However, in this country the number of opportunities for romance is sometimes increased by online matching services, such as FarmersOnly.com, which caters to farmers and people who love nature.

Figure 15.6

FarmersOnly.com is one of many online matchmaking services that cater to individuals of various ages, occupations, interests, and geographic locations. What might be gained by using an online dating service? What limitations may be caused by this approach?

Farmersonly.com

15-3aLove and Intimacy

In the late nineteenth century, during the Industrial Revolution, people came to view work and home as separate spheres in which different feelings and emotions were appropriate. The public sphere of work—men’s sphere—emphasized self-reliance and independence. By contrast, the private sphere of the home—women’s sphere—emphasized the giving of services, the exchange of gifts, and love. Accordingly, love and emotions became the domain of women, and work and rationality became the domain of men (Lamanna, Riedmann, and Stewart, 2015). Although the roles of women and men have changed dramatically over the past one hundred years, women and men may still not share the same perceptions about romantic love today, and women may express their feelings verbally, whereas men may express their love through nonverbal actions; however, in other cases, the situation may be just the opposite.

Love and intimacy are closely intertwined. Intimacy may be psychic (“the sharing of minds”), sexual, or both. Although sexuality is an integral part of many intimate relationships, perceptions about sexual activities vary from one culture to the next and from one time period to another. For example, kissing has traditionally been found primarily in Western cultures; many African and Asian cultures have viewed kissing negatively, although some change has occurred among younger people in recent years.

For decades, the work of the biologist Alfred C. Kinsey was considered to be the definitive research on human sexuality, even though some of his methodology had serious limitations. However, in the 1990s the work of Kinsey and his associates was superseded by the National Health and Social Life Survey conducted by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago (see Laumann et al., 1994; Michael et al., 1994). Based on interviews with more than 3,400 men and women ages 18 to 59, this random survey tended to reaffirm the significance of the dominant sexual ideologies. Most respondents reported that they engaged in heterosexual relationships, although 9 percent of the men said they had had at least one homosexual encounter resulting in orgasm. Although 6.2 percent of men and 4.4 percent of women said that they were at least somewhat attracted to others of the same gender, only 2.8 percent of men and 1.4 percent of women identified themselves as gay or lesbian. According to the study, persons who engaged in extramarital sex found their activities to be more thrilling than those with a marital partner, but they also felt more guilt. Persons in sustained relationships such as marriage or cohabitation found sexual activity to be the most satisfying emotionally and physically.

Today, research on human sexuality continues at numerous universities and other research facilities. Some studies are funded by corporations, such as condom manufacturers or pharmaceutical companies, which might benefit from the research findings. If you wish to look at findings from one such study, the National Survey of Sexual Health and Behavior (NSSHB), conducted by researchers from the Center for Sexual Health Promotion at Indiana University’s School of Health, Physical Education and Recreation, is available online. An area of investigation in this study is the effects of condom use because it is believed that more information will not only be beneficial for individuals but also that it will assist medical and public health professionals who address issues such as HIV, sexually transmitted infections, and unintended pregnancy. A few key findings from this research are as follows (National Survey of Sexual Health and Behavior, 2015):

· Enormous variability exists in the sexual behavior of U.S. adults, with more than 40 combinations of sexual activity reported by respondents in the study.

· Many older adults have active, pleasurable sex lives and engage in a range of behaviors and partner types.

· Although 85 percent of men in the study reported that their partner had an orgasm at their most recent sexual event, only 64 percent of women reported having an orgasm at their most recent sexual event.

· About 7 percent of adult women and 8 percent of men identified as gay, lesbian, or bisexual; however, the proportion of individuals in the United States who reported that they had had same-gender sexual interactions at some point in their lives was much higher.

· Despite popular media representations, most adolescents in the study did not report that they were engaged in partnered sexual behavior.

15-3bCohabitation and Domestic Partnerships

Attitudes about cohabitation have changed dramatically over the past five decades.  Cohabitation  refers to two people who live together, and think of themselves as a couple, without being legally married. The U.S. Census Bureau uses the terms unmarried partner, cohabiting partner, and cohabiter interchangeably when referring to individuals who cohabit (Vespa, Lewis, and Kreider, 2013). The number of unmarried opposite-sex partners living together has increased from about 2.9 million in 1996 to 7.9 million in 2014 (see Figure 15.7). About 3.1 million cohabiting couples (unmarried) had one or more children younger than age 18 residing in their household in 2014, an increase from approximately 1.2 million cohabitating partners with children under 18 in the late 1990s (Child Trends Data Bank, 2015b).

Figure 15.7

Estimated Number of Opposite-Sex Couples Cohabiting in the United States in Selected Years, 1996–2014

Source: National Vital Statistics Reports, 2015.

As compared with children who reside with married parents, cohabiting couples with children are typically younger, have fewer years of formal education, hold lower-income positions, and have less secure sources of employment. Often this contributes to economic disadvantages for the couples and their children. Those who are statistically most likely to cohabit are younger individuals (typically under age 45), people who have been married before, or older persons who do not want to lose retirement benefits that are contingent upon not remarrying.

How common is cohabitation among women? A study by the National Center for Health Statistics found that nearly one-half (48 percent) of all U.S. women between the ages of 15 and 44 had cohabited before marriage. Between 1995 and 2010, the percentage of women who cohabited as a first union increased to 57 percent of Hispanic (Latina) women, 43 percent of white (non-Hispanic) women, and 39 percent of African American (black) women (Copen, Daniels, and Mosher, 2013). According to researchers in this study, 40 percent of first premarital cohabitations among women transitioned to marriage within 3 years, about 33 percent of these cohabitating relationships continued, and 27 percent dissolved (Copen, Daniels, and Mosher, 2013). This study looked only at first premarital cohabitation, so it did not include those women who had cohabited with other partners.

To what extent do cohabiting couples have children together? Over the past decade, childbearing has become more frequent among cohabiting couples. Among all U.S. women ages 15–44, about 23 percent of births occurred within cohabiting relationships, up from 14 percent in 2002. According to research participants, about 50 percent of these births were unintended (Copen, Daniels, and Mosher, 2013).

Does cohabitation serve as a step toward marriage, or is it an alternative to marriage? Research shows that cohabitation is more likely to serve as a transition into marriage among women with higher levels of education and income than for cohabiting women with lower levels (Copen, Daniels, and Mosher, 2013).

Among heterosexual couples, many reasons continue to exist for cohabitation; for LGBTQ couples, however, no alternatives to cohabitation existed for many years until the 2015 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges legalized same-sex marriage (see Chapter 11). For that reason, many lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and transgender persons often sought recognition of their civil unions or created  domestic partnerships —household partnerships in which an unmarried couple lives together in a committed, sexually intimate relationship and is granted some of the same rights and benefits as those accorded to married heterosexual couples. Civil unions—which have been available in some states to both same-sex and opposite-sex couples—provide legal recognition of the couple’s relationship and afford legal rights to the partners similar to those accorded to spouses in marriage. It should be noted that domestic partnerships vary from state to state and that they remain in a period of fluctuation following the Supreme Court’s decision that legal same-sex marriages provide the same rights and benefits to partners as legal marriages entered into by heterosexual couples. Rights typically granted to those domestic partners who meet state requirements include the following: hospital visitation rights, child custody and visitation rights, health insurance coverage if it is provided for heterosexual spouses by the partner’s employer, and similar family-related rights that are granted to opposite-sex families. State and federal laws are in a period of transition regarding civil unions and domestic partnerships. Interesting questions have also arisen for same-sex partners currently in domestic partnerships or civil unions: Do we now choose to enter into a legally binding same-sex marriage? Some of the many issues involved include laws related to inheritance rights, tax-related benefits and liabilities, and provisions of divorce laws in various states.

15-3cMarriage

Why do people get married? Couples get married for a variety of reasons. Some do so because they are “in love,” desire companionship and sex, want to have children, feel social pressure, are attempting to escape from a bad situation in their parents’ home, or believe that they will have more money or other resources if they get married. These factors notwithstanding, the selection of a marital partner is actually fairly predictable. As previously discussed, most people in the United States tend to choose marriage partners who are similar to themselves.  Homogamy  refers to the pattern of individuals marrying those who have similar characteristics, such as race/ethnicity, religious background, age, education, or social class. However, homogamy provides only the general framework within which people select their partners; people are also influenced by other factors. For example, some researchers claim that people want partners whose personalities match their own in significant ways. Thus, people who are outgoing and friendly may be attracted to other people with those same traits. However, other researchers claim that people look for partners whose personality traits differ from but complement their own.

The number of married households in the United States has been in a downward trend since the 1970s, when married couples made up 71 percent of all households, to 2014, when less than half of all U.S. households were composed of married couples. The median age at first marriage continued to increase over the past four decades. The median age at first marriage in 2014 was 29.3 for men and 27 for women, as compared to 23.2 for men and 20.8 for women in 1970 (U.S. Census Bureau Marital Status Data, 2015).

15-3dSame-Sex Marriages

As discussed in Chapter 11, controversy continues over the legal status of gay and lesbian couples, particularly those who seek to make their relationship a legally binding commitment through marriage (Figure 15.8). Let’s take a brief look at the history of how same-sex marriage law evolved in the U.S. Supreme Court prior to the 2015 decision in Obergefell v. Hodges. One case regarding same-sex marriage, United States v. Windsor, challenged Section 3 of the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which explicitly defined marriage for all purposes under federal law as the legal union of one man and one woman as husband and wife. The issue before the Court was whether DOMA deprives same-sex couples, who are lawfully married in states that permit it, of the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. In 2011 President Obama declared this act to be unconstitutional and ordered the U.S. Justice Department to stop defending the law in court. His highly controversial decision was applauded by gay and lesbian rights advocates but was sharply denounced by conservative political leaders. The case moved through various courts until it reached the highest court in the nation.

Figure 15.8

The issue of same-sex marriage has been in the headlines because of two major legal challenges before the U.S. Supreme Court and wider public awareness of the importance of various civil rights issues involved.

David Butow/Redux; Robyn Beck/Afp/Getty Images

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that DOMA is unconstitutional because it amounts to a deprivation of the equal liberty of persons that is protected by the Fifth Amendment. This ruling struck down the central provisions of DOMA that denied federal benefits to same-sex couples who were married in jurisdictions that permit same-sex unions. However, this decision did not address the larger issue of whether there was a nationwide right of all same-sex couples to marry regardless of where they live.

In the second Supreme Court case, Hollingsworth v. Perry, the Court examined the issue of whether the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment prohibited the state of California from enforcing Proposition 8, a voter-approved measure defining marriage as the union of a man and woman and banning same-sex marriage. Prior to passage of this proposition, in a five-month period in 2008 same-sex marriages were legally performed in California. Ultimately, the Supreme Court ruled that the proponents who intervened to defend Proposition 8 did not have legal standing based on the U.S. Constitution and that their appeal should be dismissed. The Court’s decision cleared the way for same-sex marriages to resume in California. It also meant that same-sex couples married in jurisdictions that permit such unions could not be denied federal benefits.

Although legal, political, and social support for same-sex marriage continued to increase over the past decade, many questions remained unanswered, including

· (1)

how state-by-state laws would be applied in various situations,

· (2)

what happens when a same-sex couple legally married in one state moved across state lines to another state where same-sex marriage was not recognized,

· (3)

how the patchwork of state laws affected divorce, and many other issues that the Supreme Court did not address when it reached decisions in these two cases.

The 2015 Supreme Court decision, issued in a 5–4 ruling by the Justices, served to settle at least some of the disputes that existed regarding same-sex marriage and to acknowledge that marriage and equal dignity in the eyes of the law are a Constitutional right in the United States. Although some of the Supreme Court Justices strongly disagreed with the Court’s decision and wrote scathing dissents, the nation’s marriage laws were changed as the United States became the twenty-first country to legalize same-sex marriage nationwide. Married same-sex couples now have the same legal rights and obligations as married heterosexual couples and to be recognized on birth and death certificates.

This decision is in keeping with surveys by the Pew Research Center that indicate 57 percent of persons responding to a 2015 survey supported same-sex marriage while only 39 percent opposed it. (Pew Research Center, 2015). Some researchers attribute this change in attitude to the Millennial generation (born after 1980), which is made up of young adults who are more open to gay rights than previous generations. The most frequently cited reason for changing attitudes on same-sex marriage is having friends, family members, or acquaintances who are lesbian or gay (Pew Research Center, 2015).

Some people assume that there would be uniform acceptance by all LGBTQ Americans of same-sex marriage, but Pew Research Center studies show that additional factors—such as political preference, age, and religion—are involved in how individuals view this issue. According to Pew Research Center findings, support for same-sex marriage among LGBTQ adults differs slightly along political party lines, with 45 percent of those who identified as Republicans stating they “strongly favor” same-sex marriage as compared with 81 percent among Democrats. Younger LGBTQ individuals also were more likely to “strongly favor” same-sex marriage (82 percent) than persons age 30 or older (71 percent). Religious affiliation is another factor: Sixty-seven percent of the religiously affiliated strongly favored same-sex marriage, as compared with 82 percent of the religiously unaffiliated. Overall, even with differences in political party, age, and/or religion, at least nine in ten LGBTQ adults “strongly favor” or “favor” same-sex marriage in this Pew Research Center (2015) survey.

15-3eHousework and Child-Care Responsibilities

Taking care of housework, child-care responsibilities, and paid employment is a continuing challenge for families (Figure 15.9). In 2015, among the 34.4 million families with children in the United States, 89.3 percent of these families had at least one employed parent. In families with children maintained by a woman with no spouse present, the mother was employed in 70.8 percent of the households. But in families with children maintained by a man with no spouse present, 82.1 percent of the fathers were employed. And in married-couple heterosexual families with children, 96.6 percent of the households had at least one employed parent. Both parents work in 60.2 percent of all heterosexual married-couple families where children under age 18 reside (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2016). What this means is that many marriages in the United States are  dual-earner marriages —marriages in which both spouses are in the labor force. Today, even when their children are infants, 57.1 percent of mothers are employed in the labor force. For children under age 6, 64.2 percent of mothers are employed. For youths between the ages of 6 and 17, 74.7 percent of mothers are employed in the paid labor force (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2015).

Figure 15.9

Juggling housework, child care, and a job in the paid workforce is all part of the average day for many women. Why does sociologist Arlie Hochschild believe that many women work a “second shift”?

Ariel Skelley/The Image Bank/Getty Images

So, as we can see, many mothers are working all or part of the day in paid employment and then returning to their household, where additional work awaits them. Sociological research shows that many women, after leaving their paid employment at the end of the day, go home to perform hours of housework and child care. Sociologist Arlie Hochschild (2012) refers to this as the  second shift —the domestic work that employed women perform at home after they complete their workday on the job. Thus, many married women contribute to the economic well-being of their families and also meet many of the domestic needs of family members by cooking, cleaning, shopping, taking care of children, and managing household routines. According to Hochschild, the unpaid housework that women do on the second shift amounts to an extra month of work each year. For fathers with children and no spouse present, a similar second shift may also exist.

But haven’t things changed? Aren’t men doing much more around the household these days? In recent years, married and cohabiting couples with more-egalitarian ideas about women’s and men’s roles have tended to share more equally in food preparation, housework, and child-care responsibilities (Lachance-Grzela and Bouchard, 2010). Although some studies show that when husbands share household responsibilities, they spend less time in these activities than do their wives, other studies shown that the higher a woman’s educational resources and earnings potential, the more help from her partner that she actually gets with child care and housework (Sullivan, 2011). However, certain kinds of activities, such as night duty with young children, appear to be unevenly distributed. More mothers report sustained sleep deprivation: The American Time Use Survey shows that women in dual-earner couples are still three times more likely than men to report interrupted sleep patterns if they are the parent of a child under the age of one. Even more telling, stay-at-home mothers are six times more likely to get night duty where they are up with their children as are stay-at-home fathers (Senior, 2014).

In marriages with same-sex partners, negotiations about child-rearing tasks are also prevalent. If one partner is employed full time outside the household while the other is a stay-at-home parent or is employed part time, child-rearing duties and school-related meetings and tasks are often the responsibility of the one who fulfills the “daytime” parenting duties. However, when both partners are employed full-time, particularly in professional occupations, each parent may have variable family duties depending on external scheduling demands and priorities.

In the United States, millions of parents rely on outside child care so that they can work. Relatives (father, grandparent, sibling, or other relative) take care of almost half of all children between birth and four years of age who have full-time employed mothers. Another 25 percent of children with full-time employed mothers spend most of their time away from home in a center-based arrangement, such as day care, nursery school, preschool, or Head Start. An additional 13 percent are primarily cared for by a nonrelative, such as a babysitter, nanny, au pair, or family day-care provider, in a home-based environment (Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics, 2016). Research is very limited on how same-sex partners deal with outside child care or the extent to which they employ in-house day or evening care for their children. The cost of child-care programs often makes it difficult for families to find a high-quality environment for their children. Church-sponsored programs, such as “Mothers’ Day Out,” have become increasingly popular with young working mothers who use these facilities for one or more days per week as a form of relatively inexpensive day care for their children while they are at work. In the future, some of these programs may be referred to as “Parents’ Day Out” instead.

Although organized after-school programs have become more numerous, the percentage of children staying home alone has remained steady in recent years. About 25 percent of school-age children stay alone after the school day ends until a parent returns home from work. Child-care specialists are concerned about this because children need productive and safe activities to engage in while their parents are working, but many home-alone children spend time eating junk food, watching television, talking on their cell phone, or playing computer and video games. Many of these children are under the supervision of an older brother or sister who may not be particularly interested in taking care of them. Older children are more likely than younger ones to care for themselves: Thirty-three percent of children ages 12–14 are regularly in self-care situations, as compared to 10 percent of children ages 9–11 and 2 percent of children ages 5–8 (Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics, 2016).

Sociology in Global Perspective

Wombs-for-Rent: Commercial Surrogacy in India

I wanted to be a surrogate mother because I wanted to deposit money into an account for my children for their future. I also wanted to help parents who cannot have children. I am proud to have given birth to a beautiful baby.… I feel like part of the family.

— Thapa, a 31-year-old Indian woman who became a surrogate for an Australian couple, explains why, in addition to her own children, she is willing to help other people become parents (qtd. in AFP, 2013). Thapa works with a New Delhi, India, surrogacy center, where she and other surrogate mothers earn about $6,000 for carrying a child for a foreign couple.

Why do some infertile couples in the United States, Britain, and elsewhere want to “hire” a woman in India to have their child? Most couples who engage in this practice have made numerous attempts to have a child through in vitro fertilization and other assisted reproductive technologies.

A surrogate mother (left) has delivered a baby for Karen Kim (center), with the help of infertility specialist Dr. Nayna Patel (right). This practice, sometimes called “rent-a-womb,” remains controversial.

AP Images/Ajit Solanki

If they have been unsuccessful in their efforts, the couple may first attempt to find a surrogate in the United States, but they quickly learn that a U.S. gestational surrogate costs more than $50,000—far more than they would pay for a surrogate in India (Kohl, 2007; United Press International, 2007). According to infertility specialist Dr. Nayna Patel, earning money through surrogacy helps uplift Indian women: It provides money for their household and makes them more independent. For example, the typical woman might earn more for one surrogate pregnancy than she would earn in 15 years from other kinds of employment (CBS News, 2007).

Are there any problems with global “rent-a-womb”? If there is an agreement between a surrogate mother and a couple who badly wants a child, some analysts believe that “offer and acceptance” is nothing more than capitalism at work—where there is a demand (for infants by infertile couples), there will be a supply (from low-income surrogate mothers). However, some ethicists raise troubling questions about the practice of commercial surrogacy: A mother should give birth to her child because it is hers and she loves it, not because she is being paid to give birth to someone else’s baby. Other social critics are concerned about the potential mistreatment of low-income women who may be exploited or may suffer long-term emotional damage from functioning as a surrogate (Dunbar, 2007). For the time being, in clinics such as the one in India, hopeful parents just provide the egg, the sperm, and the money, and all the rest is done for them by the clinic and the surrogates, who live in a spacious house where they are taken care of by maids, cooks, and doctors.

Reflect & Analyze

1. What are your thoughts on surrogacy? Is there any difference between surrogacy when it occurs in high-income nations such as the United States and Britain as compared to situations in which the parents live in a high-income nation and the surrogate mother lives in a lower-income nation? How might we relate the specific issue of outsourced surrogacy to some larger concerns about families and intimate relationships that we have discussed in this chapter?

15-4Child-Related Family Issues and Parenting

LO 6

Describe child-related family issues that are of concern to many people in the twenty-first century.

Not all couples become parents. Those who decide not to have children often consider themselves to be “child-free,” whereas those who do not produce children through no choice of their own may consider themselves “childless.”

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15-4aDeciding to Have Children

Cultural attitudes about having children and about the ideal family size began to change in the late 1950s and have continued to decline in the decades following in the United States. In 2013, the latest year for which comprehensive data are available, the birth rate continued to decline slightly for white (non-Hispanic) and Hispanic women. However, no appreciable change was recorded for African American (black/non-Hispanic) women (National Vital Statistics Reports, 2015).

Age is a factor in deciding to have children. Birth rates for teenagers between the ages of 15 and 19 decreased by 8 percent between 2016 and 2014, with 22.3 births per 1,000 teenagers in that age category. This was a historical low for the United States and included teenagers in nearly all racial and Hispanic-origin groups. Birth rates declined to record lows for women in their twenties. Birth rates rose for women in their thirties and late forties but remained relatively unchanged for women in their early forties. So this means that birth rates declined for all women under age thirty and rose for women ages 30–39 and 45–49. The mean (average) age of “mother at first birth” rose to 26.3 years in 2014, up from 25.8 years in 2012 (National Vital Statistics Reports, 2016a).

Today, the percentage of births to unmarried women is 40.2 percent of all births, a number unchanged from 2014 (National Vital Statistics Reports, 2016a).

Advances in birth control techniques over the past four decades—including the birth control pill and contraceptive patches and shots—now make it possible for people to decide whether they want to have children, how many they wish to have, and to determine (at least somewhat) the spacing of the children’s births. However, sociologists suggest that fertility is linked not only to reproductive technologies but also to women’s beliefs that they do or do not have other opportunities in society that are viable alternatives to childbearing (Lamanna, Riedmann, and Stewart, 2015).

Today, the concept of reproductive freedom includes both the desire to have or not to have one or more children. According to some sociologists, many U.S. women spend up to one-half of their life attempting to control reproduction while other women and men choose to be child-free. Among U.S. women ages 15 to 44, 6 percent are voluntarily childless. The percentage of women who are voluntarily childless (and have never given birth) is higher among women who hold professional degrees (a master’s or equivalent and higher). One in four women with a master’s degree and nearly that many women with doctorates have no biological children by the time the women reach the ages of 40 to 44. Of course, some of these women may have children through adoption, by marriage to a partner who already had one or more children, or other factors (Wade, 2012). When some people decide not to have children, their wishes come into conflict with our society’s pronatalist bias, which assumes that having children is the norm and can be taken for granted, whereas those who choose not to have children believe they must justify their decision to others (Lamanna, Riedmann, and Stewart, 2015).

Some couples experience the condition of involuntary infertility, whereby they want to have a child but find that they are physically unable to do so. Infertility is defined as an inability to conceive after a year of unprotected sexual relations. Women who are able to get pregnant but who are not able to stay pregnant may also be defined as infertile. Research suggests that fertility problems originate in females in approximately one-third of the cases, with males in about one-third of the cases, and with both the male and female in about one-third of the cases (Mayo Clinic, 2011). Leading causes of male infertility are abnormal sperm production or function, sexual problems, general health and lifestyle issues, overexposure to certain environmental factors (such as pesticides and other chemicals or heat), and age. The most common causes of female infertility include fallopian tube damage or blockage, endometriosis, ovulation disorders, early menopause, and other health-related disorders (Mayo Clinic, 2011). It is estimated that about half of infertile couples who seek treatments such as medication, behavioral approaches, fertility drugs, artificial insemination, and surgery can be helped; however, some are unable to overcome infertility despite expensive treatments such as assisted reproductive technology (ART), which includes medical procedures such as in vitro fertilization, whereby medical professionals help infertile couples achieve pregnancy (Mayo Clinic, 2011). Some people who are involuntarily childless may choose surrogacy or adoption as an alternate way to become a parent (see “Sociology in Global Perspective”).

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15-4bAdoption

Adoption is a legal process through which the rights and duties of parenting are transferred from a child’s biological and/or legal parents to a new legal parent or parents. This procedure gives the adopted child all the rights of a biological child. In most adoptions a new birth certificate is issued, and the child has no future contact with the biological parents; however, some states have “right-to-know” laws under which adoptive parents must grant the biological parents visitation rights. In 2014 approximately 67 percent of all adoptive households were made up of married couples, followed by single women at 27 percent, single men at 3 percent, and unmarried couples at 3 percent (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2015).

Matching children who are available for adoption with prospective adoptive parents can be difficult. The available children have specific needs, and the prospective parents often set specifications on the type of child they want to adopt. Some adoptions are by relatives of the child; others are by infertile couples (although many fertile couples also adopt). Increasing numbers of LGBTQ persons and individuals who are single are adopting children. Some prospective parents seek out children in nations such as China, Ethiopia, Ukraine, Haiti, Uganda, and Russia (U.S. Department of Homeland Security, 2014).

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15-4cTeenage Childbearing

Teenage childbearing is a popular topic in the media and political discourse, and U.S. teen pregnancy rates are among the highest of all Western industrialized nations. However, as shown in Figure 15.10, the U.S. teen birth rate (between the ages of 15 and 19) has generally been in a decline from 1960 to 2013, briefly increased in periods such as 2005–2007, and then resumed its long-term downward trend. In 2015 the birth rate for teenagers between the ages of 15 and 19 dropped 46 percent (to 22.3 births per 1,000 teenagers ages 15–19), as compared with 2007. This was the lowest rate ever reported in the United States. Rates were also down for ages 15 through 19 and for nearly all races and Hispanic-origin groups (National Vital Statistics Reports, 2016a). Although teen pregnancy rates have continued to decline, concern remains about the number of younger teenagers (ages 15–17) who are producing children. But the good news is nonmarital birth rates for this age category declined 9 percent in 2015 resulting in 9.9 births per 1,000 women (National Vital Statistics Reports, 2016a).

Figure 15.10Birth Rates for Teenagers Ages 15–19 Years, by Age, United States, 1960–2016

Source: National Vital Statistics, 2016.

What are the primary reasons for teenage pregnancy? At the microlevel, several issues are most important:

· (1)

many sexually active teenagers do not use contraceptives;

· (2)

teenagers—especially those from low-income families and/or subordinate racial and ethnic groups—may receive little accurate information about the use of, and problems associated with, contraception;

· (3)

some teenage males (because of a double standard based on the myth that sexual promiscuity is acceptable among males but not females) believe that females should be responsible for contraception; and

· (4)

some teenagers view pregnancy as a sign of male prowess or as a way to gain adult status (Figure 15.11).

Figure 15.11

Although the rates of teen pregnancy have been declining in the United States, the number of pregnant teens in this country remains high. Among high-income nations of the world, the United States has one of the highest rates of teen pregnancy and teen parenthood. What are the effects of teen pregnancy and parenthood on the lives of young mothers and fathers?

Creativa Images/ Shutterstock.com

At the macrolevel, structural factors also contribute to teenage pregnancy rates. Lack of education and employment opportunities may discourage young people’s thoughts of upward mobility. Likewise, religious and political opposition has resulted in issues relating to reproductive responsibility not being dealt with as openly in the United States as in some other nations. Finally, advertising, films, television programming, magazines, music, and other forms of media often flaunt the idea of being sexually active without showing the possible consequences of such behavior.

Teen pregnancies are of concern to analysts who argue that teenage mothers and their children experience strong socioeconomic disadvantages (Mollborn and Dennis, 2011). Studies show that teen mothers may be less skilled at parenting, are less likely to complete high school than their counterparts without children, and possess few economic and social supports other than their relatives. In addition, these births may have negative long-term consequences for these mothers and their children, who may also have limited educational and employment opportunities and a high likelihood of living in poverty.

Teenage fathers have largely been left out of the picture in most studies of teen pregnancy and parenting. How does having a teen father affect a child’s health and development? One study found that the father–child relationship does not differ significantly between having a teen or adult father when factors such as marital status and economic disadvantage are held constant. For example, in families where the father, regardless of his age, is nonresidential (lives elsewhere) or cohabits occasionally, children are placed at a social disadvantage when compared to children whose father is married to the teen mother and resides in a more permanent family arrangement (Mollborn and Lovegrove, 2010). What about the effects of teen parenting on the father? According to a study on the effects of teenage fatherhood, teen pregnancy led to a decrease in the number of years of schooling among teen fathers who sought early full-time employment, enrolled in the military, or acquired high school equivalency diplomas once they became fathers (ScienceDaily, 2011)

15-4dSingle-Parent Households

Since 1970, there has been a significant increase in single-parent or one-parent households with children under age 18 because of divorce and births outside of marriage. In 2014, 24 percent of children lived in mother-only families, and 4 percent lived in father-only families, for a total of 28 percent of children in single-parent households. Seven percent of all children lived in the home of their grandparents, and in two-thirds of those families, one or both parents were also present (Child Trends Data Bank, 2015b). As shown in Figure 15.12, the percentage of mother-only family groups continues to rise while the percentage of father-only family groups with children under age 18 remains consistently much lower.

Figure 15.12Living Arrangements of Children Under 18 Years Old for Selected Years, 1970–2014

Source: U.S. Census Bureau, 2015.

Does living in a single-parent family put children at risk? Single-parent households tend to have much lower incomes than two-parent families. Cohabiting families fall in between those two. Income is only one factor, however. Health, educational attainment, behavior problems, and psychological well-being are also factors that some researchers associate with living outside of a married, two-parent family.

According to some researchers, the increase in the proportion of single-parent households tends to place children in situations where they experience a lower standard of living, receive less-effective parenting, experience less cooperative co-parenting, are less emotionally close to both parents, and are subjected to more stressful events and circumstances than children who grow up in stable, two-parent families. Why does this occur? Because of factors such as economic hardships that force single-parent families to do without books, without computers, and without homes in better neighborhoods and school districts. When this problem is coupled with the lack of time for parenting while the single parent struggles to make ends meet, and the fact that many children lose contact with their fathers after separation or divorce, the quality of parenting is often less than that found in supportive, co-parenting relationships. Even for a person with a stable income and a network of friends and family to help with child care, raising a child alone can be an emotional and financial burden.

Because of the nature of marriage laws in some states, LGBTQ partners are counted in some studies as single parents even when they share parenting responsibilities with their partner. More research has been conducted in recent years on parenting by lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer couples, and the results are generally favorable; living in these families appears in some respects to be better for children than living in heterosexual families. One of the areas that appears to be better is the division of parenting and household labor, which has a distinct pattern of equality and sharing among LGBTQ couples as compared with heterosexual parents. It also appears that lesbian and gay parents tend to be more responsive to their children and more child-oriented in their outlook.

15-4eTwo-Parent Households

Between 1970 and 2014, the share of all U.S. households comprising married couples with children under age 18 halved from 40 percent to slightly less than 20 percent. During that time period, the percentage of children living in two-parent households dropped from 85.2 percent to 64.4 percent, while the percentage living with a single parent increased. In computing these statistics for “parents,” the U.S. Census Bureau includes not only biological parents but also stepparents who adopt their children. However, foster parents are considered nonrelatives.

For families in which a couple truly shares parenting, children have two primary caregivers. Some parents share parenting responsibilities by choice; others share out of necessity because both hold full-time jobs. Some studies have found that men’s taking an active part in raising the children is beneficial not only for mothers (who then have a little more time for other activities) but also for the men and the children. The men benefit through increased access to children and greater opportunity to be nurturing parents (Coltrane, 2010).

15-4fRemaining Single

Some never-married people remain single by choice. Reasons include opportunities for a career (especially for women), the availability of sexual partners without marriage, the belief that the single lifestyle is full of excitement, and the desire for self-sufficiency and freedom to change and experiment. Some scholars have concluded that individuals who prefer to remain single hold more-individualistic values and are less family-oriented than those who choose to marry. Friends and personal growth tend to be valued more highly than marriage and children.

Other never-married individuals remain single because they have not found what they consider to be a desirable marriage partner; still others remain single out of necessity. Being single is an economic necessity for those who cannot afford to marry and set up their own household. Structural changes in the economy have limited the options of many young, working-class people. Even some college graduates have found that they cannot earn enough money to set up a household separate from that of their parents.

The proportion of singles varies significantly by racial and ethnic group, as shown in Figure 15.13. Among persons ages 18 and over in 2014, nearly 44 percent of African Americans had never married, compared with 35.9 percent of Latinos/as, nearly 27 percent of Asian and Pacific Islander Americans, and slightly more than 25 percent of non-Hispanic whites (ProQuest Statistical Abstract of the U.S. 2015 Online Edition, 2015).

Figure 15.13Marital Status of U.S. Population Ages 18 and Over by Race/Ethnicity

Source: Proquest 2015.

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15-5Transitions and Problems in Families

LO 7

Identify some of the key stressors that contribute to family violence and to the need for foster care for children.

Families go through many transitions and experience a wide variety of problems, ranging from high rates of divorce and teen pregnancy to domestic abuse and family violence. These all-too-common experiences highlight two important facts about families:

· (1)

for good or ill, families are central to our existence, and

· (2)

the reality of family life is far more complicated than the idealized image of families found in the media and in many political discussions.

Moreover, as people grow older, transitions inevitably occur in family life.

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15-5aFamily Violence

Family violence refers to various forms of abuse that take place among family members, including child abuse, spousal abuse, and elder abuse. We will primarily focus on domestic violence—also referred to as spousal abuse or intimate-partner violence—and elder abuse. Domestic violence refers to any intentional act or series of acts—whether physical, emotional, or sexual—by one or both partners in an intimate relationship that causes injury to either person. An intimate relationship might include marriage or cohabitation, as well as people who are separated or living apart from a former partner or spouse. Domestic violence is a way in which some individuals seek to establish power and control over others through the use of fear and intimidation. This type of intimate-partner violence often includes the threat or use of violence, relationship abuse, and various kinds of bullying and battering.

There are numerous causes of domestic violence, and many factors are interrelated. Factors contributing to unequal power relations in families include economic inequality, legal and political sanctions that deny girls and women equal rights, and cultural sanctions that dictate appropriate sex roles and reinforce the belief that males are inherently superior to females. Cultural factors that perpetuate domestic violence include gender-specific socialization that establishes dominant–subordinate sex roles. Economic factors include poverty or limited financial resources within families that contribute to tension and sometimes to violence. Economic factors are intertwined with women’s limited access to education, employment, and sufficient income so that they can take care of themselves and their children. Regardless of the factors that contribute to domestic violence, control is central to all forms of abuse: Gaining and maintaining control over the victim is the key factor in abuse. As a result, family violence often involves a cycle of abuse that goes on for extended periods of time.

How much do we really know about family violence? Women, as compared with men, are more likely to be the victims of violence perpetrated by intimate partners. Recent statistics indicate that one in four women, or more than 25 million women in the United States, will experience domestic violence at some time during their lives. It is estimated that men are the victims of nearly 3 million physical assaults in the household. However, we cannot know the true extent of family violence because much of it is not reported to police. More than 60 percent of all domestic violence incidents occur at home. Consequently, it is estimated that only about one-half of the intimate-partner violence against women is reported. The reasons that many victims of family violence do not report the violence to police include

· (1)

belief that such violence is a private or personal matter,

· (2)

fear of retaliation,

· (3)

view of the violence as a “minor” crime,

· (4)

desire to protect the offender, and

· (5)

belief that the police will not help or will be ineffective.

Although everyone in a household where family violence occurs is harmed psychologically, whether or not they are the victims of violence, children are especially affected by household violence. It is estimated that between 3 million and 10 million children witness some form of domestic violence in their homes each year, and there is evidence to suggest that domestic violence and child maltreatment often take place in the same household.

In some situations, family violence can be reduced or eliminated through counseling, the removal of one parent from the household, or other steps that are taken either by the family or by social service or law enforcement officials. However, children who witness violence in the home may display certain emotional and behavioral problems that adversely affect their school life and communication with other people. In some families the problems of family violence are great enough that the children are removed from the household and placed in foster care.

15-5bChildren in Foster Care

A special problem in families is when children must be placed in foster care either voluntarily or involuntarily. Many foster children have been in dysfunctional homes where parents or other relatives lack the ability to meet the children’s daily needs. Foster care refers to institutional settings or residences where adults other than a child’s own parents or biological relatives serve as caregivers. States provide financial aid to foster parents, and the intent of such programs is that the children will either return to their own families or be adopted by other families. However, this is often not the case for “difficult to place” children, particularly those who are over ten years of age, have illnesses or disabilities, or are perceived as suffering from “behavioral problems.” More than 402,000 children are in foster care at any given time. This number had been declining each year since 2005 but took an upswing in 2013. More than one-half of all children in foster care are in just nine states: California, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Texas. Forty-five percent or more of all children in foster care in one-fourth of the states and the District of Columbia are African American, and in twenty-one states the percentage of African American children in foster care is more than twice their proportion in the general child population. About one-third of children in foster care are age five or younger, one-third are between the ages of six and thirteen, and one-third are age fourteen or older. Those who enter foster care at a younger age tend to remain in the system for a longer period of time (Children’s Defense Fund, 2013).

Problems in the family contribute to the large numbers of children who are in foster care. Such factors include parents’ illness, unemployment, or death; violence or abuse in the family; and high rates of divorce.

15-5cDivorce

LO 8

Discuss divorce and how it affects remarriage patterns and blended families in the United States.

Divorce is the legal process of dissolving a marriage that allows former spouses to remarry if they so choose. Most divorces today are granted on the grounds of irreconcilable differences, meaning that there has been a breakdown of the marital relationship for which neither partner is specifically blamed. Prior to the passage of more-lenient divorce laws, many states required that the partner seeking the divorce prove misconduct on the part of the other spouse. Under no-fault divorce laws, however, proof of “blameworthiness” is generally no longer necessary.

Over the past 100 years, the U.S. divorce rate (number of divorces per 1,000 population) has varied from a low of 0.7 in 1900 to an all-time high of 5.3 in 1981; by 2012, it had decreased to 3.4 percent (ProQuest Statistical Abstract of the U.S. 2015 Online Edition, 2015). Divorce statistics may vary based on the source because some organizations include annulments in their count, and a number of states no longer provide divorce statistics to national reporting agencies. Figure 15.14 shows the latest available U.S. divorce rates for each state so that you can see how your state compares with others in the nation. Overall, a decrease occurred in divorce rates in a number of states between 2011 and 2015, the latest year for which comprehensive data are available at the time this is being written.

Figure 15.14U.S. Divorce Rate by State, 1990–2015

Source: National Vital Statistics, 2016b.

Although many people believe that marriage should last for a lifetime, others believe that marriage is a commitment that may change over time. Between 40 and 50 percent of new U.S. marriages will end in divorce (Cherlin, 2010). According to various studies on divorce in the United States, there are significant differences in the rates of divorce for first, second, and third marriages: The divorce rate for first marriages is between 40 and 50 percent, the rate for second marriages is from 60 to 67 percent, and the rate for third marriages is from 73 to 75 percent. Research has also found that couples with children have a slightly lower rate of divorce as compared to couples without children.

Financial stressors are a contributing factor to some divorces (National Marriage Project, 2012). During times of a national recession such as the one that the United States experienced beginning in 2007–2008, some people decide to remain married only until conditions change so that they can sell a house or have better financial stability when they part. However, others gain a deeper commitment to their marriage as they struggle through adversity (National Marriage Project, 2012).

As previously stated, we often hear that 50 percent of all marriages end in divorce. But this figure is misleading in some ways, even though it is true for the U.S. population as a whole. Although there is a 40–50 percent chance that a first marriage will end in either divorce or separation before one partner dies, divorce rates vary widely based on certain factors. There is a decrease in risk of divorce for people in the following categories:

· Making over $50,000 annually (as compared with under $25,000)

· Having graduated from college (as opposed to not completing high school)

· Having a baby 7 months or more after marriage (as opposed to before marriage)

· Marrying when partners are over 25 years of age (as opposed to younger age categories)

· Coming from an intact family of origin (as opposed to having divorced parents)

· Having a religious affiliation (as opposed to having none) (National Marriage Project, 2012)

Consequences of Divorce

In some families, divorce may have a dramatic economic and emotional impact on family members. In others, the effect may be more marginal. Overall, in families where one or more children are present, the children remain with their mothers and live in a single-parent household for a period of time. In recent years, there has been a debate over whether children who live with their same-sex parent after divorce are better off than their peers who live with an opposite-sex parent. However, virtually no evidence has been found to support the belief that children are better off living with a same-sex parent.

Although divorce decrees provide for parental joint custody of many children, this arrangement may create unique problems. Furthermore, some children experience more than one divorce during their childhood because one or both of their parents may remarry and subsequently divorce again.

But divorce does not have to be always negative. For some people, divorce may be an opportunity to terminate destructive relationships. For others, it may represent a means to achieve personal growth by managing their lives and social relationships and establishing their own social identity. Still others choose to remarry one or more times.

15-5dRemarriage

Many people who divorce or are widowed get remarried one or more times. Although 50 percent of all men and 54 percent of women ages 15 and over in 2012 had been married only once, the proportion of adults that had married only once decreased for both men (from 54 percent to 50 percent) and women (from 60 percent to 54 percent) between 1996 and 2012. In 2012 an increasing share of women ages 50 and older, and men ages 60 and older, reported that they had been married two, three, or more times (Lewis and Kreider, 2015).

Age is an important factor in remarriage. People who are older have had more time to see a marriage conclude and to remarry. The proportion of women and men who have married twice is about 20 percent higher for persons between the ages of 50 and 69. Overall, 13 percent of men and 14 percent of women reported that they had been married twice, and 4 percent reported that they had been married three or more times in the latest U.S. Census Bureau study, which incorporated the years 2008–2012.

Education levels are also a factor in both divorce and remarriage patterns. Sixty-four percent of married persons with a bachelor’s degree had been married only once, as compared to 52 percent of adults in the general population. Because there is a lower risk of divorce for those who have earned a bachelor’s degree or more, there is less possibility of them having second or third marriages. As previously discussed, lower rates of divorce among those with more years of formal education may be related to a tendency to delay marriage and later ages at first marriage, which are associated with lower rates of marital instability.

Employment status and income are important factors in remarriage. Persons who are employed are more likely to be married once and to stay married to the same partner than those who are not in the labor force. Individuals who are unemployed have a slightly higher risk of being married three or more times than those in other employment categories. Of course, unemployment often brings financial hardship, which is related to strain in marriage, higher rates of divorce, and fewer prospects of remarriage if a marriage ends. Similarly, income is related to marriage and remarriage. Adults with incomes of $100,000 and above are more likely to have married only once. At the other end of the income spectrum, persons living below the poverty line, as well as those receiving public assistance, are more likely to have never married and thus are less likely to have remarried (Lewis and Kreider, 2015).

As a result of divergent marital histories, many marriages include one or both spouses who have previously been married and/or have children and other commitments from previous marital unions. As a result of these divergent marriage patterns, complex family relationships are often created. Some people become part of stepfamilies or  blended families , which consist of a husband and wife, children from previous marriages, and children (if any) from the new marriage (Figure 15.15). At least initially, levels of family stress may be fairly high because of rivalry among the children and hostilities directed toward stepparents or babies born into the family. In spite of these problems, however, many blended families succeed. The family that results from divorce and remarriage is typically a complex, binuclear family in which children may have a biological parent and a stepparent, biological siblings and stepsiblings, and an array of other relatives, including aunts, uncles, and cousins.

Figure 15.15

Remarriage and blended families create new opportunities and challenges for parents and children alike.

Kayte Deioma/PhotoEdit

The norms governing divorce and remarriage are ambiguous. Because there are no clear-cut guidelines, people must make decisions about family life (such as whom to invite for a birthday celebration or wedding) based on their beliefs and feelings about the people involved. This adds to individuals’ insecurity and confusion about how to interact with others on social occasions and has contributed to the use of informal social networking technology to communicate rather than having face-to-face discussions about plans that must be made involving children, finances, or other shared concerns.

15-6Looking Ahead: Family Issues in the Future

As we have seen, families and intimate relationships changed dramatically as we moved into the twenty-first century. Some people believe that the family as we know it is doomed. Others believe that a return to traditional family values will save this important social institution and create greater stability in society.

Current economic conditions constitute a threat for many families in the United States and other nations. Throughout good and bad economic times, families are important to people because the family is a vital social institution in society and often serves as the major source of support for individuals. However, in periods like the 1930s depression or the recent recession, families are particularly affected by problems in the economy. Worldwide, the economies in various nations have been undergoing transformation, and in the United States alone, since the onset of the 2007 recession, there has been a net loss of 7.5 million jobs (Zuckerman, 2011). From 2011 to 2013, the rate of unemployment averaged about 9 percent, As of February 2017, the average employment rate was 4.7, demonstrating employment gains post the Great Recession, this counts only individuals who are actively seeking employment, not those who have become discouraged and have given up looking for work.

Many families experience long-term repercussions from a national or global economic crisis and the financial and emotional havoc that such crises wreak on workers and their families. For example, studies have found that individuals are feeling more tension and having more arguments with other family members because of personal fears that people have regarding unemployment, loss of housing values, mortgage foreclosures, and other personal and financial problems (Luo and Thee-Brenan, 2009). It is not surprising to sociologists that families and personal relationships are affected by financial insecurity: Individuals are forced to deal with problems of low self-esteem associated with job loss and seeking new employment, and they must also focus on how to take care of their family in tough economic times.

People in the lower tiers of the U.S. class structure are confronted with problems such as these all of the time; however, this level of anxiety is somewhat new to many individuals in the middle and upper-middle classes in this country. Family problems related to economic crises are not limited to the United States: People in many countries are affected by changes in the global economy. The present economy casts a shadow over family issues in the future. How national and global political and business leaders deal with economic issues will no doubt have an important effect on the future of families worldwide.

As previously discussed, how we view the concept of “family” is continuing to evolve in the twenty-first century. Some of these changes are already becoming evident. For example, many men are taking an active role in raising their children and helping with household chores. More individuals rely on others who are not necessarily immediate family for friendship, emotional support, and help in time of emergencies. As well, more people are cohabiting, living in domestic partnerships, or are same-sex partners who now have the benefit of legally formalized marriages. The number of gay couples with children has doubled in the past decade, and more than 100,000 same-sex couples are actively parenting children.

Regardless of problems facing families today, many people still demonstrate their faith in the future by establishing families, in both the traditional and less traditional sense of the term. It will be interesting to see what people in the future decide about family relationships. What will family life be like in 2030 or 2040? What will your own family be like?

Chapter Review Q & A

· LO1How are the following key concepts defined: families, kinship, family of orientation, family of procreation, extended family, and nuclear family?

Today, families may be defined as relationships in which people live together with commitment, form an economic unit and care for any young, and consider their identity to be significantly attached to the group. Through kinship networks, people cooperate so that they can acquire the basic necessities of life, including food and shelter. Kinship systems can also serve as a means by which property is transferred, goods are produced and distributed, and power is allocated. Although most people are related to members of their family of orientation by blood ties, those who are adopted have a legal tie that is patterned after a blood relationship. The family of orientation is the family into which a person is born; the family of procreation is the family that a person forms by having or adopting children. An extended family is a family unit composed of relatives in addition to parents and children who live in the same household. A traditional definition specifies that a nuclear family is made up of a “couple” and their dependent children; however, this definition became outdated when a significant shift occurred in the family structure.

· LO2What are the differences among the following marriage patterns—monogamy, polygamy, polygyny, and polyandry—and the differences among these patterns of descent—patrilineal, matrilineal, and bilateral?

Marriage is a legally recognized and/or socially approved arrangement between two or more individuals that carries certain rights and obligations and usually involves sexual activity. In the United States, the only legally sanctioned form of marriage is monogamy—the practice or state of being married to one person at a time. Polygamy is the concurrent marriage of a person of one sex with two or more members of the opposite sex. The most prevalent form of polygamy is polygyny—the concurrent marriage of one man with two or more women. The second type of polygamy is polyandry—the concurrent marriage of one woman with two or more men. Virtually all forms of marriage establish a system of descent so that kinship can be determined and inheritance rights established. In preindustrial societies, kinship is usually traced through one parent (unilineally). The most common pattern of unilineal descent is patrilineal descent. Matrilineal descent is the less common pattern. Kinship in industrial societies is usually traced through both parents (bilineally). The most common form of descent is bilateral.

· LO3What are the kinds of authority figures in patriarchal, matriarchal, and egalitarian families?

Forms of familial power and authority that have been identified are patriarchy, matriarchy, and egalitarianism. A patriarchal family is a family structure in which authority is held by the eldest male (usually the father). A matriarchal family is a family structure in which authority is held by the eldest female (usually the mother). An egalitarian family is a family structure in which both partners share power and authority equally.

· LO4What are the primary sociological perspectives on the family as a social institution?

Functionalists emphasize the importance of the family in maintaining the stability of society and the well-being of individuals. Conflict and feminist perspectives view the family as a source of social inequality and an arena for conflict. Symbolic interactionists explain family relationships in terms of the subjective meanings and everyday interpretations that people give to their lives. Postmodern analysts view families as being permeable, capable of being diffused or invaded so that their original purpose is modified.

· LO5What issues do many contemporary couples face when thinking of developing intimate relationships and establishing families?

Families are changing dramatically in the United States. Cohabitation has increased significantly in the past three decades. Among heterosexual couples, many reasons exist for cohabitation; for gay and lesbian couples, however, no alternatives to cohabitation existed in many U.S. states before the 2015 U.S. Supreme Court decision legalizing same-sex marriage. For that reason, many lesbian and gay couples sought recognition of their domestic partnerships—household partnerships in which an unmarried couple lives together in a committed, sexually intimate relationship and is granted some of the same rights and benefits as those accorded to married heterosexual couples. With the increase in dual-earner marriages, women have become larger contributors to the financial well-being of their families, but some have become increasingly burdened by the second shift—the domestic work that employed women perform at home after they complete their workday on the job.

· LO6What child-related family issues are of concern to many people in the twenty-first century?

Cultural attitudes about having children and about the ideal family size have changed dramatically in the United States. Today, the concept of reproductive freedom includes both the desire to have or not to have one or more children. Issues of concern include teenage childbearing. Many single-parent families also exist today.

· LO7What are some of the key stressors that contribute to family violence and the need for foster care for children?

Factors contributing to unequal power relations in families include economic factors, legal and political sanctions that deny girls and women equal rights, and cultural factors that perpetuate domestic violence. Regardless of the factors that contribute to domestic violence, control is central to all forms of abuse. Women and children are most strongly affected by family violence, although domestic violence is also perpetrated against men. However, everyone in a household where family violence occurs is harmed psychologically, and children are especially harmed. Foster care is often used as a safe place for children who have been in dysfunctional families, some of which are the sites of family violence, others of which are not.

· LO8What is divorce, and how does it affect remarriage patterns and blended families in the United States?

Divorce is the legal process of dissolving a marriage. At the macrolevel, changes in social institutions may contribute to an increase in divorce rates; at the microlevel, factors contributing to divorce include age at marriage, length of acquaintanceship, economic resources, education level, and parental marital happiness.

Unit 6.2: Education

16-1An Overview of Education

LO 1

Define education and trace how the social institution of education has changed throughout history.

Education  is the social institution responsible for the systematic transmission of knowledge, skills, and cultural values within a formally organized structure. As a social institution, education imparts values, beliefs, and knowledge considered essential to the social reproduction of individual personalities and entire cultures. Education grapples with issues of societal stability and social change, reflecting society even as it attempts to shape it. Education serves an important purpose in all societies. At the microlevel, people must acquire the basic knowledge and skills they need to survive in society. At the macrolevel, the social institution of education is an essential component in maintaining and perpetuating the culture of a society across generations.  Cultural transmission —the process by which children and recent immigrants become acquainted with the dominant cultural beliefs, values, norms, and accumulated knowledge of a society—occurs through informal and formal education. However, the process of cultural transmission differs in preliterate, preindustrial, and industrial nations.

The earliest education in preliterate societies, which existed before the invention of reading and writing, was informal in nature. People acquired knowledge and skills through  informal education —learning that occurs in a spontaneous, unplanned way—from parents and other group members who provided information on survival skills such as how to gather food, find shelter, make weapons and tools, and get along with others. Formal education for elites first came into being in preindustrial societies, where few people knew how to read and write.  Formal education  is learning that takes place within an academic setting such as a school, which has a planned instructional process and teachers who convey specific knowledge, skills, and thinking processes to students.

Perhaps the earliest formal education occurred in ancient Greece and Rome, where philosophers such as Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle taught elite males the skills required to become thinkers and orators who could engage in the art of persuasion (Ballantine and Hammack, 2012). During the Middle Ages the first colleges and universities were developed under the auspices of the Catholic church. In the Renaissance the focus of education shifted to the importance of developing well-rounded and liberally educated people. With the rapid growth of industrial capitalism and factories during the Industrial Revolution, it became necessary for workers to have basic skills in reading, writing, and arithmetic, and pressure to provide formal education for the masses increased significantly. In the United States, Horace Mann started the free public school movement in 1848 when he declared that education should be the “great equalizer.” By the mid-1850s, the process of mass education had begun in the United States as all states established free, tax-supported elementary schools that were readily available to children throughout the country (Figure 16.1).  Mass education  refers to providing free, public schooling for wide segments of a nation’s population. As industrialization and bureaucratization intensified, managers and business owners demanded that schools educate students beyond the third or fourth grade so that well-qualified workers would be available for rapidly emerging “white-collar” jobs in management and clerical work.

Figure 16.1

Some early forms of mass education took place in one-room schoolhouses such as the one shown here, where children in various grades were all taught by the same teacher. How do changes in the larger society bring about changes in education?

Kayte Deloma/Photo Edit

Today, schools attempt to meet the needs of industrial and postindustrial society by teaching a wide diversity of students a myriad of topics, including history and science, computer skills, how to balance a checkbook, and how to avoid contracting AIDS. According to sociologists, many functions performed by other social institutions in the past are now under the auspices of the public schools.

16-2Sociological Perspectives on Education

LO 2

Identify the key assumptions of functionalist, conflict, symbolic interactionist, and postmodernist perspectives on education.

Sociologists have divergent perspectives on education in contemporary society. Here, we examine functionalist, conflict, symbolic interactionist, and postmodernist approaches to analyzing schooling.

16-2aFunctionalist Perspectives

Functionalists view education as one of the most important components of society. According to Emile Durkheim, education is crucial for promoting social solidarity and stability in society: Education is the “influence exercised by adult generations on those that are not yet ready for social life” (Durkheim, 1956: 28). Durkheim asserted that moral values are the foundation of a cohesive social order and that schools are responsible for teaching a commitment to the common morality. In analyzing the values and functions of education, sociologists using a functionalist framework distinguish between manifest functions and latent functions, which are compared in Figure 16.2.

Figure 16.2Manifest and Latent Functions of Education

Manifest Functions of Education

Some functions of education are manifest functions—previously defined as open, stated, and intended goals or consequences of activities within an organization or institution. Education serves six major manifest functions in society:

1. Socialization. From kindergarten through college, schools teach students the student role, specific academic subjects, and political socialization.

2. Transmission of culture. Schools transmit cultural norms and values to each new generation and play an active part in the process of assimilation of recent immigrants.

3. Multicultural education. Schools promote awareness of and appreciation for cultural differences so that students can work and compete successfully in a diverse society and a global economy.

4. Social control. Schools teach values such as discipline, respect, obedience, punctuality, and perseverance. Schools teach conformity by encouraging young people to be good students, conscientious future workers, and law-abiding citizens.

5. Social placement. Schools identify the most-qualified people to fill the positions available in society. As a result, students are channeled into programs based on individual ability and academic achievement. Graduates receive the appropriate credentials to enter the paid labor force.

6. Change and innovation. Schools are a source of change and innovation to meet societal needs. Faculty members are responsible for engaging in research and passing on their findings to students, colleagues, and the general public.

Latent Functions of Education

Education serves at least three latent functions, which we have previously defined as hidden, unstated, and sometimes unintended consequences of activities within an organization or institution:

1. Restricting some activities. States have mandatory education laws that require children to attend school until they reach a specified age (usually age sixteen) or complete a minimum level of formal education (generally the eighth grade). Out of these laws grew one latent function of education: keeping students off the streets and out of the full-time job market until they are older.

2. Matchmaking and production of social networks. Because schools bring together people of similar ages, social class, and race/ethnicity, young people often meet future marriage partners and develop lasting social networks.

3. Creation of a generation gap. Students learn information and develop technological skills that may create a generation gap between them and their parents, particularly as the students come to embrace a newly acquired perspective.

Dysfunctions of Education

Functionalists acknowledge that education has certain dysfunctions. Some analysts argue that U.S. education is not promoting the high-level skills in reading, writing, science, and mathematics that are needed in the workplace and the global economy. For example, mathematics and science education in the United States does not compare favorably with that found in many other industrialized countries. Are U.S. schools dysfunctional as a result of lower test scores? Analysts do not agree on what the exam score differentials mean. For many functionalist thinkers, lagging test scores are a sign that dysfunctions exist in the nation’s educational system. According to this approach, improvements will occur only when more-stringent academic requirements are implemented for students and when teachers receive sufficient training. Overall, functionalists typically advocate the importance of establishing a more rigorous academic environment in which students are required to learn the basics that will make them competitive in school and job markets.

16-2bConflict Perspectives

Conflict theorists emphasize that schools solidify the privileged position of some groups at the expense of others by perpetuating class, racial–ethnic, and gender inequalities (Ballantine and Hammack, 2012). Contemporary conflict theorists also focus on how politics and corporate interests dominate schools, particularly higher education.

Cultural Capital and Class Reproduction

Although many factors—including intelligence, motivation, and previous accomplishments—are important in determining how much education a person will attain, conflict theorists argue that access to quality education is closely related to social class. From this approach, education is a vehicle for reproducing existing class relationships. According to the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, the school legitimates and reinforces the social elites by engaging in specific practices that uphold the patterns of behavior and the attitudes of the dominant class. Bourdieu asserts that students from diverse class backgrounds come to school with different amounts of  cultural capital —social assets that include values, beliefs, attitudes, and competencies in language and culture (Bourdieu and Passeron, 1990). Cultural capital involves “proper” attitudes toward education, socially approved dress and manners, and knowledge about books, art, music, and other forms of high and popular culture (Figure 16.3). Middle-and upper-income parents endow their children with more cultural capital than do working-class and poverty-level parents. Because cultural capital is essential for acquiring an education, children with less cultural capital have fewer opportunities to succeed in school. For example, standardized tests that are used to group students by ability and to assign them to classes often measure students’ cultural capital rather than their “natural” intelligence or aptitude. Thus, a circular effect occurs: Students with dominant cultural values are more highly rewarded by the educational system. In turn, the educational system teaches and reinforces values that sustain the elite’s position in society.

Figure 16.3

Children who are able to visit museums, libraries, and musical events may gain cultural capital that other children do not possess. What is cultural capital? Why is it important in the process of class reproduction?

Cleve Bryant/PhotoEdit

Tracking and Detracking

Closely linked to the issue of cultural capital is how tracking in schools is related to social inequality.  Tracking  refers to the practice of assigning students to specific curriculum groups and courses on the basis of their test scores, previous grades, or other criteria. Conflict theorists believe that tracking seriously affects many students’ educational performance and their overall academic accomplishments. Tracking first came into practice in the early twentieth century, when a large influx of immigrant children entered U.S. schools for the first time and were sorted by ability and past performance. In elementary schools, tracking is often referred to ability grouping and is based on the assumption that it is easier to teach a group of students who have similar abilities. However, class-based factors also affect which children are most likely to be placed in “high,” “middle,” or “low” groups, often referred to by such innocuous terms as “Blue Birds,” “Red Birds,” and “Yellow Birds.” This practice is described by the well-known journalist Ruben Navarrette Jr. (1997: 274–275), who tells us about his own childhood experience with tracking:

One fateful day, in the second grade, my teacher decided to teach her class more efficiently by dividing it into six groups of five students each. Each group was assigned a geometric symbol to differentiate it from the others. There were the Circles. There were the Squares. There were the Triangles and Rectangles.

I remember being a Hexagon…. The Hexagons were the smartest kids in the class. These distinctions are not lost on a child of seven…. And on the day on which we were assigned our respective shapes, we knew that our teacher knew, too. As Hexagons, we would wait for her to call on us, then answer by hurrying to her with books and pencils in hand. We sat around a table in our “reading group,” chattering excitedly to one another and basking in the intoxication of positive learning. We did not notice, did not care to notice, over our shoulders, the frustrated looks on the faces of Circles and Squares and Triangles who sat quietly at their desks, doodling on scratch paper or mumbling to one another. We knew also that, along with our geometric shapes, our books were different and that each group had different amounts of work to do…. The Circles had the easiest books and were assigned to read only a few pages at a time…. Not surprisingly, the Hexagons had the most difficult books of all, those with the biggest words and the fewest pictures, and we were expected to read the most pages.

The result of all of this education by separation was exactly what the teacher had imagined that it would be: Students could, and did, learn at their own pace without being encumbered by one another. Some learned faster than others. Some, I realized only [later], did not learn at all.

As Navarrette suggests, tracking does make it possible for students to work together based on their perceived abilities and at their own pace; however, it also takes a toll on students who are labeled as “underachievers” or “slow learners.” Today, Navarrette is a nationally recognized journalist and blogger who writes about many important issues facing our nation and the world. However, as he points out in his discussion of tracking, race, class, language, gender, and many other social categories may determine the placement of children in elementary tracking systems as much as or more than their actual academic abilities and interests.

The practice of tracking continues in middle school/junior high and high school. Although schools in some communities bring together students from diverse economic and racial–ethnic backgrounds, the students do not necessarily take the same courses or move on the same academic career paths, or have the same opportunities even when they attend the same school (Gilbert, 2014). Overall, many scholars have documented in their research that tracking does not improve student achievement but does intensify educational inequality, particularly along racial–ethnic and class-based lines.

The detracking movement—which emphasizes that students should be deliberately placed in classes of mixed ability to improve their academic performance and test scores—has influenced a growing number of educators. Detracking is based on the assumption that intensifying the secondary school curricula may help close the achievement gap among students, particularly those dimensions that are based on class or race/ethnicity. For example, a growing proportion of U.S. students are being enrolled in higher-level academic math courses than in the past so that they will be exposed to more-complex course content and be influenced by students who perform at a higher level in such courses.

Detracking is a major concern for parents of high-achieving students: They often believe their children are losing out because lower-achieving students are in their courses. According to their perspective, high-achieving students should have classes that maximize their potential rather than hold them back with less able or less talented students. According to the sociologist Maureen Hallinan (2005), who has extensively studied detracking, tracking is not the answer: Schools should provide more-engaging lessons for all students, alter teachers’ assumptions about students, and raise students’ performance requirements (Figure 16.4).

Figure 16.4

As Ruben Navarrette Jr. so powerfully describes, school is extremely tedious for underachieving students, who may find themselves “tracked” in such a way as to deny them upward mobility in the future.

iStockphoto.com/Svetlana Braun

The Hidden Curriculum

According to conflict theorists, the  hidden curriculum  is the transmission of cultural values and attitudes, such as conformity and obedience to authority, through implied demands found in the rules, routines, and regulations of schools. In other words, through the experience of being in school, students pick up on subtle messages about attitudes, beliefs, values, and behavior that are either “appropriate” or “inappropriate” from teachers and other school personnel. These messages are not part of the official curriculum or the school’s mission to educate students for the future.

Although all students are subjected to the hidden curriculum, students who are from low-income families and/or are African American or Hispanic (Latino/a) may be affected the most adversely by educational settings that have been established on the basis of upper- and middle-class white (non-Hispanic) values, attitudes, and behavior (AAUW, 2008). When teachers from middle- and upper-middle-class backgrounds instruct students from lower-income families, the teachers often establish a more structured classroom and a more controlling environment for students (Figure 16.5). These teachers may also have lower expectations for students’ academic achievements. Schools with many students from low-income families often emphasize procedures and rote memorization without focusing on decision making and choice, or on providing explanations of why something is done a particular way. Schools for middle-class students stress the processes (such as figuring and decision making) involved in getting the right answer. Schools for affluent students focus on creative activities in which students express their own ideas and apply them to the subject under consideration, as well as building students’ analytical and critical-thinking skills.

Figure 16.5

Signs such as this found in elementary classrooms list the rules, and sometimes the rewards and consequences, of different types of student behavior. According to conflict theorists, schools impose rules on working-class and poverty-level students so that they will learn to follow orders and to be good employees in the workplace.

richard mittleman/Alamy

Over time, low-income students become frustrated with the educational system and drop out or become very marginal students, making it even more difficult for them to attend college and gain the appropriate credentials for gaining better-paying jobs. Educational credentials are extremely important in a nation such as ours that emphasizes  credentialism —a process of social selection in which class advantage and social status are linked to the possession of academic qualifications. Credentialism is closely related to meritocracy, a social system in which status is assumed to be acquired through individual ability and effort. Persons who acquire the appropriate credentials for a job are assumed to have gained the position through what they know, not who they are or whom they know. According to conflict theorists, the hidden curriculum determines in advance that the most valued credentials will primarily stay in the hands of the middle and upper classes, so the United States is not actually as meritocratic as some might claim.

The hidden curriculum is also related to gender bias. For many years the focus in education was on how gender bias harmed girls and women: Reading materials, classroom activities, and treatment by teachers and peers contributed to a feeling among many girls and young women that they were less important than male students. The accepted wisdom was that, over time, differential treatment undermines females’ self-esteem and discourages them from taking certain courses, such as math and science, that have been dominated by male teachers and students. In the 1990s the American Association of University Women issued The AAUW Report: How Schools Shortchange Girls, which highlighted inequalities in women’s education and started a national debate on gender equity (AAUW, 1995). Over the past twenty years, improvements have occurred in girls’ educational achievement, as females have attended and graduated from high school and college at a higher rate than their male peers. More females have enrolled in advanced-placement or honors courses and in academic areas, such as math and science, where they had previously lagged. However, some traditional gender differences persist at some grade levels, with boys generally outscoring girls on standardized math tests by a small margin and girls outscoring boys on standardized reading tests by a small margin.

Ironically, after many years of discussion about how the hidden curriculum and other problems in schools served to disadvantage female students, the emphasis has now shifted to the question of whether girls’ increasing accomplishments from elementary school to college and beyond have come at the expense of boys and young men. But this is not true, according to research by the AAUW (2008: 2): “Educational achievement is not a zero-sum game, in which a gain for one group results in a corresponding loss for the other. If girls’ success comes at the expense of boys, one would expect to see boys’ scores decline as girls’ scores rise, but this has not been the case.”

Regardless of gender, large differences remain in scores on academic tests among students by race/ethnicity (Figure 16.6). Studies have shown that white children are more likely to graduate from high school and college than are their African American and Hispanic peers. Likewise, children from higher-income families are more likely to graduate from high school than are children from lower-income families, who are also less likely to attend college (AAUW, 2008).

Figure 16.6

According to some conflict theorists, a persistent problem in education is the large racial–ethnic discrepancy in test scores from the early grades through high school and college. How might issues of racism, unequal funding of schools, and similar concerns contribute to this problem?

Hasan Shaheed/ Shutterstock.com

The conflict theorists’ focus on the hidden curriculum calls our attention to the fact that students learn far more—both positively and negatively—than just the subject matter being taught in the classroom. Students are exposed to a wide range of beliefs, values, attitudes, and behavioral expectations that are not directly related to specific subject matter.

16-2cSymbolic Interactionist Perspectives

Unlike functionalist analysts, who focus on the functions and dysfunctions of education, and conflict theorists, who focus on the relationship between education and inequality, symbolic interactionists focus on classroom communication patterns and educational practices, such as labeling, which affect students’ self-concept and aspirations.

Labeling and the Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

According to symbolic interactionists, the process of labeling is directly related to the power and status of those persons who do the labeling and those who are being labeled. Chapter 7 explains that labeling is the process whereby others identify a person as possessing a specific characteristic or exhibiting a certain pattern of behavior (such as being deviant). In schools, teachers and administrators are empowered to label children in various ways, including grades, written comments on classroom behavior, and placement in classes. For some students, labeling amounts to a self-fulfilling prophecy—an unsubstantiated belief or prediction resulting in behavior that makes the originally false belief come true (first defined by Merton, 1968).

A classic form of labeling and the self-fulfilling prophecy has occurred for many years through the use of various IQ (intelligence quotient) tests, which claim to measure a person’s inherent intelligence, apart from any family or school influences on the individual. Schools have used IQ tests as one criterion in determining student placement in classes and ability groups (see Figure 16.7). The way in which IQ test scores may become a self-fulfilling prophecy was revealed in the 1960s when two social scientists conducted an experiment in an elementary school during which they intentionally misinformed teachers that some of the students had extremely high IQ test scores whereas others had average to below-average scores. As the researchers observed, the teachers began to teach “exceptional” students in a different manner from other students. In turn, the “exceptional” students began to outperform their “average” peers and to excel in their classwork. This study called attention to the labeling effect of IQ scores.

Figure 16.7

IQ Test Sample Question

IQ tests containing items such as this are often used to place students in ability groups. Such placement can set the course of a person’s entire education.

1. Question 2: Consider the following two statements: all farmers who are also ranchers cannot come near town; and most of the ranchers who are also farmers cannot surf. Which of the following statements MUST be true?

Answer

· Most of the farmers who cannot come near town can surf

· Only some farmers who ranch can surf near town

· A surfer who ranches and farms cannot surf near town

· Some ranchers who farm can come to town to learn to surf

· Any farmer who cannot surf also ranches

Today, so-called IQ fundamentalists continue to label students and others on the basis of IQ tests, claiming that these tests measure some identifiable trait that predicts the quality of people’s thinking and their ability to perform. Critics of IQ tests continue to argue that these exams measure a number of factors—including motivation, home environment, type of socialization at home, and the quality of schooling—not intelligence alone (Yong, 2011).

Postmodernist Perspectives

How might a postmodern approach describe higher education? One of the major postmodern theorists is Jean-Francois Lyotard (1984), who described how knowledge has become a commodity that is exchanged between producers and consumers. “Knowledge” is now an automated database, and teaching and learning are primarily about data presentation, stripped of their former humanistic and spiritual associations.

In the postmodern era an emphasis in higher education is on how to make colleges and universities more efficient and how to bring these institutions into the service of business and industry. A major objective is looking for the best way to transform these schools into corporate entities such as the “McUniversity,” which refers to a means of educational consumption that allows students to consume educational services, to eventually obtain “goods” such as degrees and credentials, and to think of themselves and their parents as consumers. The rapidly increasing cost of higher education has contributed to the perception of “McUniversity” and to the idea of students as consumers.

Savvy college and university administrators are aware of the permeability of higher education and the “students-as-consumers” model. To attract new students and enhance current students’ opportunities for consumption, most campuses have amenities such as spacious food courts with many franchise choices, ATMs, video games on gigantic HDTV screens, Olympic-sized swimming pools, and massive rock-climbing walls (Figure 16.8). Wi-Fi–enabled campuses are also a major attraction for student consumers, and virtual classrooms make it possible for some students to earn college credit without having to look for a parking place at the traditional brick-and-mortar campus.

Figure 16.8

To attract new students, some college campuses have amenities such as rock-climbing walls.

AP Images/Newspaper Member/Laramie Daily Boomerang/Jeremy Martin

Based on a postmodern approach, what do you believe will be the dominant means by which future students will consume educational services and goods at your college or university? For many in the second decade of the twenty-first century, the answer becomes that the digital age will continue to rapidly transform what we think of as knowledge and the social institution of education in which people consume new information. College students and many other tech-savvy persons find information on the Web by searching in a purposeful but somewhat random and sporadic manner because of the way in which hyperlinked sources send users nomadically searching from site to site. This postmodern approach to learning has been referred to as the “rhizomatic model of learning,” which refers to a rhizomatic plant: a plant that has no center or defined boundaries but instead has a number of semi-independent nodes that are capable of growing and spreading individually within the boundaries of a specific habitat (Cormier, 2008). Based on this analogy, knowledge is increasingly nonhierarchical, is open ended, and involves the “wisdom of the crowds,” in which large communities of Web users find meaning and identify what is important to learn from what initially might appear to be random searching in cyberspace.

If this approach to knowledge and the process of education becomes the norm, a specific curriculum determined by experts becomes irrelevant, and people begin to identify and legitimatize for themselves what is important to know and the significance of the work they are doing. As one analyst stated, “The community, then, has the power to create knowledge within a given context and leave that knowledge as a new node connected to the rest of the network” (Cormier, 2008). Do you think that this postmodern approach is more useful in analyzing how education in the future may be in traditional fields of study with long-accepted knowledge and accepted “experts” or in looking at new and developing fields that are now emerging in the digital age?

The Concept Quick Review summarizes the major theoretical perspectives on education.

Concept Quick Review

Sociological Perspectives on Education

	Key Points
Functionalist Perspectives	Education is one of the most important components of society: Schools teach students not only content but also to put group needs ahead of the individual’s.
Conflict Perspectives	Schools perpetuate class, racial–ethnic, and gender inequalities through what they teach to whom.
Symbolic Interactionist Perspectives	Labeling and the self-fulfilling prophecy are an example of how students and teachers affect each other as they interpret their interactions.
Postmodernist Perspectives	Knowledge has become a commodity, and students and their parents are consumers of education in the twenty-first century.

16-3Problems in Elementary and Secondary Schools

LO 3

Describe major problems in elementary and secondary schools, such as unequal funding of schools, high dropout rates, and problems of inequality based on race or disability.

Education in kindergarten through high school is a microcosm of many of the concerns facing the United States. The problems we examine in this section include unequal funding of public schools, dropout rates, racial segregation and resegregation, equalizing opportunities for students with disabilities, and competition for public schools in the form of school choice, charter schools, and homeschooling.

16-3aUnequal Funding of Public Schools

Why does unequal funding exist in public schools? Most educational funds come from state legislative appropriations and local property taxes (see Figure 16.9). Some legislatures provide far fewer funds for schools in their state because they have fewer resources or because they have other political priorities. The same is true for local communities. Some cities have properties that are more expensive than others. Other cities have large amounts of land that is under the control of various levels of the government and thus not subject to school taxation. All of this adds up to unequal funding for public schools. As shown in Figure 16.9, in the 2015–2016 school year, state sources contributed 46.4 percent of public elementary–secondary school system revenue, 44.4 percent came from local sources, and 9.2 percent came from federal sources (National Education Association, 2016). Much of the money from federal sources is earmarked for special programs for students who are disadvantaged (e.g., the Head Start program) or who have a disability. Expenditures per pupil for public and secondary public schools vary from state to state, with the U.S. average being $11,709. Per-pupil expenditures were predicted to range from a high of $23,149 in Vermont to a low of $8,518 in North Dakota (National Education Association, 2016).

Figure 16.9Percentage Distribution of Total Public Elementary–Secondary School System Revenue, 2015–2016

Source: National Education Association, 2016.

16-3bSchool Dropouts

High dropout rates are a major problem facing contemporary schools. Dropout rates are computed in various ways, but one of the most telling is the status dropout rate—the percentage of people in a specific age range who are not currently enrolled in high school and who do not have a high school degree or its equivalent. In recent years, slightly more than three million 16- to 24-year-olds were not enrolled in high school and had not earned a high school diploma or its equivalent.

Status dropout rates vary by gender, race/ethnicity, and region of the country (see Figure 16.10). Males (7.0 percent) have a higher status dropout rate than females (6.0 percent). Status dropout rates also vary by race/ethnicity: Hispanics/Latinos/as (12.0 percent), American Indian/Alaska natives (13.0 percent), and blacks/African Americans (7.0 percent have higher status dropout rates than whites (5.0 percent), Asian/Pacific Islanders (3.0 percent), and persons reporting two or more races (6.0 percent) (National Center for Educational Statistics, 2015b). Finally, region is also an issue in status dropout rates: The Northeastern United States has the lowest status dropout rates, while the South and West have the highest.

Figure 16.10Status Dropout Rates for 16- to 24-Year-Olds, by Race/Ethnicity, Gender, and Region

Source: National Center for Educational Statistics, 2015b.

Using a second approach to determine dropout rates, the event dropout rate—which estimates the percentage of both public and private high school students who left high school between the beginning of one school year and the beginning of the next without earning a high school diploma or an alternative credential such as a GED—we find that every school day, at least 7,000 U.S. students (on average) leave high school and never return. What this means is that, on average, 3.4 percent of students who were enrolled in public or private high schools in October 2011 left school before October 2012 without completing a high school program. (These data are the latest available at the time of this writing, but the trends have remained relatively constant in the 2000s.) Perhaps the most telling statistic when using the event dropout rate is that students living in low-income families are about four-and-one-half times more likely to drop out in any given year than students living in high-income families (National Center for Educational Statistics, 2015b).

Dropping out of school produces serious economic and social consequences for individuals and nations. There is substantial evidence that education levels are related to earnings. Young people without a high school education not only have a difficult time finding work that will pay a living wage, but when they are employed, they make far less than individuals with at least a high school diploma. The median weekly earnings of full-time workers ages 25 and over who had not completed high school (in 2016) was $504, as compared to earnings of $692 for persons with a high school diploma, GED, or equivalent (no college) and $1,156 for those holding a bachelor’s degree (U.S. Department of Labor, 2017).

A higher percentage of dropouts (ages 25 and over) are also unemployed or holding temporary or part-time jobs while seeking full-time work. Cities and states suffer because tax revenues are lower when many people are unemployed, and the societal costs for public assistance, crime control, and health care are higher.

Why do students drop out of school? Some students believe that their classes are boring; others are skeptical about the value of schooling and think that completing high school will not increase their job opportunities. Upon leaving school, many dropouts have high hopes of making money and enjoying newfound freedom; however, many find that few jobs are available and that they do not have the minimum education required for any “good” jobs that exist.

16-3cRacial Segregation and Resegregation

Although some people believe that the issue of racial segregation has long been solved in America’s schools, in many areas of the United States schools remain racially segregated or have become resegregated. In 1954 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled (in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas) that “separate but equal” segregated schools are unconstitutional because they are inherently unequal. Today, racial segregation remains a fact of life in education: Efforts to bring about desegregation—the abolition of legally sanctioned racial–ethnic segregation—or integration—the implementation of specific action to change the racial–ethnic and/or class composition of the student body—have failed in many districts. Some school systems have bused students across town to achieve racial integration. Others have changed school attendance boundaries or introduced magnet schools with specialized programs such as science or the fine arts to change the racial–ethnic composition of schools. But school segregation does not exist in isolation: Racially segregated housing patterns contribute to high rates of school segregation.

Resegregation is also an issue because some school districts have abandoned programs that had produced greater racial integration in local schools. Raleigh, North Carolina, is a case in point: A local school board decided to end consideration of race and socioeconomic status in determining school assignments and stopped the district’s busing-for-diversity program. Those who opposed this return to the “neighborhood school” concept argued that resegregation would quickly occur throughout the district (Mooney, 2011).

How segregated are U.S. schools? Here are a few facts: More than half of all African American public school students in Illinois, Michigan, and New York state attend predominantly black schools. For example, half of all African American students in the Chicago metro area and one-third of all African American students in New York attend “apartheid schools,” where white Americans make up 0 to 1 percent of the total enrollment (Orfield, Kucsera, and Siegel-Hawley, 2012). In Maryland, Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, Georgia, and Texas, approximately 30 percent of African American public school students attend schools that have at least a 95 percent black/African American population (Figure 16.11). Children of color now constitute more than half of public school students in a number of states because white (non-Hispanic) children are more often enrolled in charter schools, suburban school districts, or private schools with a high percentage of white students (Mack, 2010).

Figure 16.11

Although many people believe that the United States is a racially integrated nation, a look at schools throughout the country reveals that many of them remain segregated or have become largely resegregated in recent decades.

David Grossman/Alamy

According to one recent study by the Civil Rights Project at the University of California, approximately 40 percent of African American and Latino/a students are enrolled in U.S. public schools where less than 10 percent of their classmates are white (non-Hispanic) Americans. As these statistics show, despite declining residential segregation for African Americans and extensive movement to the suburbs, school segregation remains very high for African American students. The problem involves double segregation by both race and poverty: The typical African American or Latina/o student attends a school with almost twice as many low-income students as a school attended by the typical white American or Asian American student (Orfield, Kucsera, and Siegel-Hawley, 2012).

16-3dEqualizing Opportunities for Students with Disabilities

Another concern in education has been how to provide better educational opportunities for students with a disability—any physical and/or mental condition that limits students’ access to, or full involvement in, school life (Figure 16.12). The U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP) collects information on students with disabilities as part of the implementation of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) and uses categories of disabilities that include autism, deafness/blindness, developmental delay, emotional disturbance, hearing impairment, intellectual disability, multiple disabilities, orthopedic impairment, other health impairment, specific learning disabilities, speech or language impairments, traumatic brain injury, visual impairments, and preschool disability.

Figure 16.12

What steps can schools take to provide better educational opportunities for students with a disability?

Angela Hampton/Bubbles Photolibrary/Alamy

Along with other provisions, the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 requires schools to make their facilities, services, activities, and programs accessible to people with disabilities. Many schools have attempted to mainstream children with disabilities by providing inclusion programs, under which the special education curriculum is integrated with the regular education program and each child receives an individualized education plan that provides annual educational goals. Inclusion means that children with disabilities work with a wide variety of people; over the course of a day, a child may interact with his or her regular education teacher, the special education teacher, a speech therapist, an occupational therapist, a physical therapist, and a resource teacher, depending on the child’s individual needs. Although much remains to be done, measures to enhance education for children with disabilities have increased the inclusion of many young people who were formerly excluded or marginalized in the educational system. Among these is IDEA (the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act), a 1975 law enacted by Congress to ensure that children with disabilities have the opportunity to receive a free appropriate public education like other children. The law has been revised numerous times, and in September 2011 it was widened to include babies and toddlers until the third birthday.

Traditional public schools have the highest rate (34 percent) of enrollment for students with disabilities, as compared to 23 percent in charter schools. Some analysts believe that this difference remains persistent because public schools may have more resources to assist students with learning disabilities; however, some critics of charter schools argue that some of these schools have discouraged enrollment of special-needs students or have indicated their inability to continue serving such students after the school year started (Resmovits, 2012). Among the students served by public schools, specific learning disabilities are the most common concern (about 35 percent), followed by speech or language impairments (nearly 21 percent), other health impairments (12 percent), and intellectual disability (7 percent) (National Center for Education Statistics, 2015a). Only about 15 percent of students with disabilities (who are enrolled in regular school settings) spend more than 60 percent of their school time outside the general (“mainstream”) classrooms: Nearly 60 percent of students with disabilities (who are enrolled in regular school settings) spend at least 80 percent of their school time in regular classrooms. About 3 percent of all public school students with disabilities attend a separate school for students with disabilities. Top categories served in these schools are students with multiple disabilities, deafness/blindness, and emotional disturbances (National Center for Education Statistics, 2015a).

16-3eCompetition for Public Schools

LO 4

Explain how options such as school vouchers, charter schools, and homeschooling differ from traditional educational approaches, and identify strengths and weaknesses of each approach.

Public schools do not have a monopoly on K–12 education. Today, parents have more choices of where to send their children than in the past.

School Choice and School Vouchers

School choice is a persistent issue in education. Much of the discussion about school choice focuses on school voucher programs in which public funds (tax dollars) are provided to parents so that they can pay their child’s tuition at a private school of their choice. Many parents praise the voucher system because it provides them with options for schooling their children. Some political leaders applaud vouchers and other school-choice policies for improving public school performance. However, voucher programs are controversial: Some critics believe that giving taxpayer money to parents so that they can spend it at private (often religious) schools violates constitutional requirements for the separation of church and state. However, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Zelman v. Simmons-Harris, a case involving a Cleveland, Ohio, school district, that voucher policies are constitutional because parents have a choice and are not required to send their children to church-affiliated schools. Other critics claim that voucher programs are less effective in educating children than public schools. According to studies in the District of Columbia, Milwaukee, and Cleveland, public school students outperformed voucher students in both reading and math on state proficiency tests; however, neither group reached state proficiency requirements (Ott, 2011). In sum, advocates like the choice factor in voucher programs, while critics believe that vouchers undermine public education, lack accountability, and may contribute to the collapse of the public school system.

Charter Schools

Charter schools (or “schools of choice”) are primary or secondary schools that receive public money but are free from some of the day-to-day bureaucracy of a larger school district that may limit classroom performance. These schools operate under a charter contract negotiated by the school’s organizers (often parents or teachers) and a sponsor (usually a local school board, a state board of education, or a university) that oversees the provisions of the contract. Some school districts “contract out” by hiring for-profit companies on a contract basis to manage charter schools, but the schools themselves are nonprofit. Among the largest educational management organizations are Imagine Schools, National Heritage Academies, the Leona Group, Edison Learning, White Hat Management, and Mosaica Education.

In 2016, more than 300 charter schools opened, totaling over 6,900 charter schools across the country serving over 3 million students. Advocates for charter schools suggest that these figures show that there is both demand for charter schools and evidence that schools that do not meet the needs of their students will be closed (National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, 2016).

What are the unique claims for charter schools? Charter schools are supposed to provide more autonomy for individual students and teachers, and to provide a large number of minority students with a higher-quality education than they would receive in the public schools in their area. Public charter schools enroll a greater percentage of low-income students (46 percent as compared to 41 percent in traditional public schools), African American students (28 percent versus 15 percent), Hispanic/Latino/a students (29 percent versus 24 percent), and students with lower standardized assessments before their transfer to charters schools (National Education Statistics, 2016). Charter schools attempt to maintain an organizational culture that motivates students and encourages achievement rather than having a negative school environment where minority students are ridiculed for “acting white” or making good grades. Some charter schools offer college-preparatory curriculums and help students of color achieve their goal of enrolling in the college or university of their choice.

However, charter schools have numerous challenges. Some schools have high turnover rates, perhaps partly because of family instability, students’ socioeconomic status, or other factors not under the direct control of the schools. A number of charter-school officials have been accused of misappropriating school funds or other financial irregularities, but many analysts believe that the positives seem to outweigh the negatives when it comes to charter schools addressing the academic gap among minority students.

Homeschooling

Another alternative, homeschooling, has been chosen by some parents who hope to avoid the problems of public schools while providing a quality education for their children (Figure 16.13). It is estimated that about 1.5 million children are homeschooled in grades K through 12 (Kerkman, 2011). This is a significant increase from the estimated 1.1 million students who were homeschooled in 2003. The primary reasons that parents indicated for preferring to homeschool their children are

· (1)

concern about the school environment,

· (2)

the desire to provide religious or moral instruction, and

· (3)

dissatisfaction with the academic instruction available at traditional schools.

Typically, the parents of homeschoolers are better educated, on average, than other parents; however, their income is about the same. Researchers have found that boys and girls are equally likely to be homeschooled.

Figure 16.13

Homeschooling has grown in popularity in recent decades as parents have sought to have more control over their children’s education. Although some homeschool settings may resemble a regular classroom, other children learn in more-informal settings, such as the family kitchen.

AP Images/Don Ryan

Parents who educate their children at home believe that their children are receiving a better education at home because instruction can be individualized to the needs and interests of their children. Some parents also indicate religious reasons for their decision to homeschool their children. An association of homeschoolers now provides communication links for parents and children, and technological advances in computers and the Internet have made it possible for homeschoolers to gain information and communicate with one another. In some states, parents organize athletic leagues, proms, and other social events so that their children will have an active social life without being part of a highly structured school setting. According to advocates, homeschooled students typically have high academic achievements and high rates of employment.

Critics of homeschooling question how much parents know about school curricula and how competent they are to educate their own children at home, particularly in rapidly changing subjects such as science and computer technology. Some states have passed accountability laws that must be met by parents who teach their children at home.

Main content

16-4School Safety and Violence at All Levels

Today, officials in schools from the elementary level to two-year colleges and four-year universities are focusing on how to reduce or eliminate violence. In many schools, teachers and counselors are instructed in anger management and peer mediation, and they are encouraged to develop classroom instruction that teaches values such as respect and responsibility. Some schools create partnerships with local law enforcement agencies and social service organizations to link issues of school safety to larger concerns about safety in the community and the nation.

In fact, 85 percent of all public schools, grades K through 12, recorded one or more incidents of violence, theft, or other crimes, amounting to nearly 2 million crimes each year. The most frequent incidents reported are physical attack or fight with a weapon, threat of physical attack without a weapon, vandalism, theft/larceny, possession of a knife or other sharp object, and distribution, possession, or use of illegal drugs (National Center for Education Statistics, 2014). However, statistics related to school safety continue to show that U.S. schools are among the safest places in the world for young people. According to “Indicators of School Crime and Safety,” jointly released by the National Center for Education Statistics and the U.S. Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Statistics, young people are more likely to be victims of violent crime at or near their home, on the streets, at commercial establishments, or at parks than they are at school (National Center for Educational Statistics, 2014). However, these statistics do not keep many people from believing that schools are becoming more dangerous with each passing year and that all schools should have high-tech surveillance equipment and police officers in every school to help maintain a safe environment.

Even with safety measures in place, violence and fear of violence continue to be pressing problems in schools throughout the United States. This concern extends from kindergarten through grade 12 because violent acts have resulted in deaths in a number of communities throughout the United States. The Newtown, Connecticut, school massacre occurred on December 14, 2012, when Adam Lanza fatally shot twenty children and six adult staff members at an elementary school before committing suicide (Figure 16.14). Considered the second deadliest mass murder at an elementary school in U.S. history (following the 1927 Bath School bombings in Michigan), this violent attack prompted extensive debate about gun control and whether school officials should be armed to prevent future occurrences of this kind or whether police officers should be stationed in every school.

Figure 16.14

In the aftermath of the 2012 mass school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, many people sought more-stringent gun laws to prevent future occurrences of similar horrendous events. Do you believe the impetus remains to bring about stronger gun-control legislation in the United States?

Gina Jacobs/ Shutterstock.com

So far, the evidence is unclear on the effect of placing police officers in every school. Do they deter crime or provide safety if an armed person seeks to harm students and school personnel? Advocates say that the answer is an unequivocal “yes.” However, critics note that the recent increase in police officers and armed guards in schools has also brought about an increase in the number of students who are arrested for minor behavior problems, thus pushing children, whose detrimental behavior might best be handled by the school’s discipline system, into the criminal courts for relatively minor offenses (Eckholm, 2013).

Like public elementary and secondary schools, college and university campuses are not immune to violence, as deranged individuals have engaged in acts of personal terrorism at the expense of students, professors, and other victims. In the aftermath of tragedies such as the one that occurred at Virginia Tech in 2007, in which thirty-two people were killed by a student, there was a massive outpouring of public sympathy and calls for greater campus security. As usual, gun-control advocates called for greater control over the licensing and ownership of firearms and for heightened police security on college campuses, whereas pro-gun advocates argued that people should be allowed to carry firearms on campus for their own protection. Lawmakers in a number of states introduced measures seeking to relax concealed-weapons restrictions on college and university campuses. In 2016, Texas became one of eight states to pass a "campus carry" law, which legalizes carrying concealed handguns into classrooms, dorms, and buildings of public colleges and universities. The only exception this law allows is for limited “gun-free campus zones” where school administrators can justify reasons why guns should not be allowed, such as facilities where biohazardous materials are stored. The law exempts private universities from “concealed carry” because legislators have assumed that the state does not have a right to tell private property owners how to handle their property. Most college and university professors and administrators are strongly opposed to this legislation.

16-5Opportunities and Challenges in Higher Education

LO 5

Discuss the educational opportunities and challenges found in community colleges in the twenty-first century.

Who attends college? What sort of college or university do they attend? We will explore these and other questions in this section.

16-5aCommunity Colleges

One of the fastest-growing areas of U.S. higher education today is the community college; however, the history of two-year colleges goes back more than a century, with the establishment of Joliet Junior College in Illinois (Figure 16.15). Later, following World War II, the G.I. Bill of Rights provided the opportunity for more people to attend college, and in 1948 a presidential commission report called for the establishment of a network of public community colleges that would charge little or no tuition, serve as cultural centers, be comprehensive in their program offerings, and serve the area in which they were located.

Figure 16.15

Joliet Junior College (Illinois) is the oldest two-year college in the United States, having opened its doors in 1901. The bottom photo shows a scene from graduation day at the nation’s largest two-year school, Miami Dade College (Florida), which recently expanded into offering four-year degrees, part of a national trend among two-year colleges. Today, Joliet, Miami Dade, and other schools like them fulfill many needs in the competitive world of higher education.

Joliet Junior College; Phil Roche/Miami Dade College

Hundreds of community colleges were opened across the nation during the 1960s, and the number of such institutions has steadily increased since that time as community colleges have responded to the needs of their students and local communities. Community colleges offer a variety of courses, some of which are referred to as “transfer courses” in which students earn credits that are fully transferable to a four-year college or university. Other courses are in technical/occupational programs, which provide formal instruction in fields such as nursing, emergency medical technology, plumbing, carpentry, and computer information technology. Many community colleges are now also offering four-year degrees, sometimes in conjunction with four-year colleges located in the same state.

Community colleges educate about half of the nation’s undergraduates. According to the American Association of Community Colleges (2016), the 1,108 community colleges (including public, private, and tribal colleges) in the United States enroll about 12.3 million students in credit and noncredit courses. Community college enrollment accounts for 45 percent of all U.S. undergraduate students. Women make up more than half (57 percent) of community college students, and for working women and mothers of young children, these schools provide a unique opportunity to attend classes on a part-time basis as their schedule permits. Men also benefit from flexible scheduling because they can work part time or full time while enrolled in school. About 62 percent of all community college students are enrolled part time, while 38 percent are full-time students (taking 12 or more credit hours each semester). Community colleges are also important for underrepresented minority student enrollment: sixty-two percent of all Native American college students attend a community college, as do 57 percent of all Hispanic students, 52 percent of African American students, and 43 percent of Asian American/Pacific Islanders (American Association of Community Colleges, 2016).

One of the greatest challenges facing community colleges today is money. Across the nation, state and local governments struggling to balance their budgets have slashed funding for community colleges. In a number of regions, these cuts have been so severe that schools have been seriously limited in their ability to meet the needs of their students. In some cases, colleges have terminated programs, slashed course offerings, reduced the number of faculty, and eliminated essential student services. Many people were hopeful that President Obama’s “American Graduation Initiative” of 2009 would strengthen community colleges, offer greater financial support for students, and increase a high college graduation rate for the nation by 2020. However, the $12 billion that President Obama called for to launch this initiative was not realized because of a tradeoff to get the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 passed (see Chapter 18). Instead, $2 billion was pledged for a job training and workforce development program in community colleges, administered by the U.S. Department of Labor, to help economically dislocated workers who are changing careers.

By September 2012, $1 billion of this money had been distributed in grants to community colleges and universities around the country for the development and expansion of innovative training programs. The grants are part of the Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College and Career Training initiative, which promotes skills development and employment opportunities in fields such as advanced manufacturing, transportation, and health care, as well as science, technology, engineering, and math careers, through partnerships between training providers and local employers (U.S. Department of Labor, 2012). Although the community college grants are not as large as the Obama administration had originally intended, they may help many students who otherwise might not have had an opportunity to develop life and workplace skills, acquire additional years of schooling, and gain employment opportunities that will give them a stronger place in the community and a better future.

16-5bFour-Year Colleges and Universities

LO 6

Describe the economic problems facing many four-year colleges and universities, and discuss how these fit into larger patterns of state funding.

About 19.9 million undergraduate and graduate students attend public or private degree-granting colleges or universities in the United States (Chronicle of Higher Education, 2014). Four-year schools typically offer a general education curriculum that gives students exposure to multiple disciplines and ways of knowing, along with more in-depth study (known as a “major”) in at least one area of concentration. However, many challenges are faced by four-year institutions, ranging from the cost of higher education to racial and ethnic differences in enrollment and lack of faculty diversity.

The High Cost of a College Education

What does a college education cost? According to the College Board (2016), the average published tuition and fee prices for full-time students living on campus and paying in-state tuition was $24,610 at public four-year schools and $49,320 at private nonprofit institutions in the 2016–2017 academic year. The published rate for out-of-state students at four-year public institutions was $38,890. At for-profit postsecondary schools the published rate averaged about $16,000. The lowest total costs were for students at public two-year institutions ($3,520) (College Board, 2016). Although public institutions such as community colleges and state colleges and universities typically have lower tuition and overall costs—because they are funded primarily by tax dollars—than private colleges have, the cost of attending public institutions has increased significantly over the past two decades (Figure 16.16).

Figure 16.16

Soaring costs of both public and private institutions of higher education are a pressing problem for today’s college students and their parents. What factors have contributed to the higher overall costs of obtaining a college degree?

Brain Snyder/Reuters/Landov

According to some social analysts, a college education is a bargain and a means of upward mobility. However, other analysts believe that the high cost of a college education reproduces the existing class system: Students who lack money may be denied access to higher education, and those who are able to attend college receive different types of education based on their ability to pay. For example, a community college student who receives an associate’s degree or completes a certificate program may be prepared for a position in the middle of the occupational status range, such as a dental assistant, computer programmer, or welder. In contrast, university graduates with four-year degrees are more likely to find initial employment with firms where they stand a chance of being promoted to high-level management and executive positions.

Given the necessity of getting a college education in the twenty-first century, is any financial assistance available? The Obama administration passed a 2010 student-loan bill to aid colleges and students. The legislation was designed to “cut out the middle person” by ending the bank-based system of distributing federally subsidized student loans and instead have the Department of Education give loan money directly to colleges and their students. With the savings from this approach, more money was to be put into the Pell Grant program. Unlike a loan, a federal Pell Grant does not have to be repaid. The maximum award for the 2015–2016 academic year is $5,775, but the average amount awarded is $3,541.

Many questions remain about student loans and the possible long-term effects of high student debt on individuals after they complete their college education. More than $1.4 trillion is owed on student loans in the United States today, up from $509 billion in 2006. The problem with the ratio of student borrowing to overall debt really began in the 1980s, when four-year college tuition began to rise faster than incomes. The booming of for-profit schools in the 1990s further contributed to the problem of excessive student loan debt because many students took out larger loans than they could repay with the types of jobs available to them based on the education they received. Between 2001 and 2015, state and local financing per student for higher education declined by more than 25 percent nationwide, while tuition and fees at many public state colleges and universities increased by 75 percent. Among those most harmed by spiraling college costs, rising student debt, and less availability of grant money that does not have to be repaid are lower- and middle-income students of all racial–ethnic categories.

Slashed Budgets at State Colleges and Universities

The problem of increasing costs of higher education for students is compounded by slashed funding for public higher education as states have encountered budget shortfalls and contentious debates over competing priorities for public funds. Declining state and federal support has become a major concern for colleges and universities that must find new sources of revenue, sharply reduce current operating expenses, and rework their budgetary priorities. Recent studies have found that spending per student (adjusted for inflation) decreased by 20 percent (approximately $1,805) in 47 out of 50 states between the economic downturn beginning in 2007–2008 and fiscal year 2015. During that same period, students’ tuition rose about 29 percent, or an average of $2,068 (Chokshi, 2015).

Why do states cut funding for higher education when it appears that more years of formal education would be worthwhile not only for students but also for the economy of the states? One answer involves the kinds of problems that states faced when the recession of late 2007 and early 2008 occurred, because states’ tax revenues declined rapidly, leaving many states with steep budget shortfalls. To reduce the problem, many political leaders slashed budgets and cut funding wherever possible: Funding for higher education was an obvious target. Since the Great Recession, politicians in many states have been unwilling, or unable, to implement the necessary tax hikes and spending cuts that would be required to provide sufficient funding for higher education (Chokshi, 2015). Members of the Boards of Regents and school administrators at many public college and universities have been left to scramble for funds, including looking increasingly toward private contributors and other revenue sources to fund their institutions.

16-5cRacial and Ethnic Differences in Enrollment

LO 7

Identify problems in racial and ethnic diversity in higher education, including student enrollment issues, lack of faculty diversity, and continuing controversy over affirmative action policies and laws.

How does college enrollment differ by race and ethnicity? People of color (who are more likely than the average white student to be from lower-income families) are underrepresented in higher education. White Americans make up nearly 55 percent of all college students at both two-year and four-year public and private institutions, as compared to African American enrollment at 13.1 percent, Hispanic/Latina/o enrollment at 13.6 percent, Asian American and Pacific Islander enrollment at 5.8 percent, and American Indian (Native American)/Alaska Native at 0.8 percent. Students who reported two or more races accounted for 2.3 percent of students, persons whose race was unknown made up 6.1 percent, and nonresident students constituted 3.8 percent (Chronicle of Higher Education, 2014).

Although gaps in college enrollment rates by race and ethnicity have been reduced in recent years and greater access has occurred for some African American and Hispanic American students, distinct differences exist in the kinds of schools that students attend, producing increasing stratification by race and ethnicity (Lipka, 2014). More-selective institutions, such as public or private research universities, are more likely to enroll white Americans (60 percent). African American students are more highly represented (28.2 percent) at two-year private nonprofit institutions than at other types of institutions. Hispanic American students are primarily enrolled (22.3 percent) at two-year, for-profit institutions (Chronicle of Higher Education, 2014).

Native American/Alaska Native enrollment rates have remained stagnant at less than 1.0 percent for more than a decade. However, tribal colleges have experienced growth in student enrollment. Founded to overcome racism experienced by Native American students in traditional colleges and to shrink the high dropout rate among Native American college students, thirty-seven tribal colleges are now chartered and run by the Native American nations. Tribal colleges receive no funding from state and local governments and, as a result, are often short of funds to fulfill their academic mission. Various organizations seek to raise funds for academic endeavors and scholarships for students.

The proportionately low number of people of color enrolled in colleges and universities in the past is reflected in the educational achievement of people ages 25 and over in 2014, as shown in Figure 16.17. If we focus on persons who receive advanced degrees (such as the master’s, doctoral, and professional degrees), the underrepresentation of persons of color is even more striking. According to the Chronicle of Higher Education (2014), of the 51,008 doctoral degrees conferred in 2012, African Americans earned 6.3 percent, Hispanics earned 6.5 percent, and American Indian or Alaska Natives earned 0.3 percent. By contrast, whites (non-Hispanic) earned 73.5 percent of the total number of degrees awarded, and Asian Americans earned 9.1 percent. Temporary visa holders in the United States earned 29 percent of all doctoral degrees, with more than half of them in engineering.

Figure 16.17Educational Achievement of Persons Ages 25 and Over

Source: Author’s compilation of U.S. Census Bureau Educational Attainment Table 3, 2014.

Underrepresentation is not the only problem faced by students of color: Problems of prejudice and discrimination continue on some college campuses, as discussed in previous chapters. Some problems are overt and highly visible; others are more covert and hidden from public view. Examples of overt racism include mocking Black History Month or a Latino celebration on campuses, referring to individuals by derogatory names, tying nooses on doorknobs of dorm rooms or faculty offices, and having “parties” where guests dress in outfits that ridicule people from different cultures or nations. A study by the sociologists Leslie Houts Picca and Joe R. Feagin (2007) found that many blatantly racist events, ranging from private jokes and conversations to violent incidents, occurred in the presence of 600 white students at 28 colleges and universities across the country who were asked to keep diaries and record any racist events that they observed. In addition to overt patterns of discrimination, other signs of racism included numerous conversations that took place “backstage” (in whites-only spaces where no person of color was present) and involved derogatory comments, skits, or jokes about persons of color. According to Picca and Feagin, most of the racial events were directed at African Americans, but Latinos/as and Asian Americans were also objects of some negative comments.

E-mail and social networking sites offer additional avenues for college students and others to engage in backstage racism. However, racist statements made by white persons in “private” digital communications are sometimes made public and shared in the front stage by individuals who do not share their views. As a result, cyber racism brings embarrassment not only to the perpetrators but also to persons of color who experience emotional distress as a result of the behavior of others (Daniels, 2009, 2010).

16-5dThe Lack of Faculty Diversity and Equity

Despite the widely held assumption that there has been a significant increase in the number of minority professors, the latest comprehensive data available indicate that white Americans make up nearly 74 percent of all full-time faculty members, as compared with African Americans at slightly less than 7 percent, Asian Americans at 6.2 percent, Hispanics (Latinos/as) at 4.3 percent, and American Indians/Alaska Natives at 0.5 percent (Chronicle of Higher Education, 2014).

Gender is also a factor in faculty diversity. Across all racial and ethnic categories, women are underrepresented at the level of full professor and overrepresented at the lower, assistant professor and instructor levels. At the full-professor level at doctoral universities, for example, there is one woman for every three men, and the women, on average, earn 90 cents per dollar paid to their male counterparts (Chronicle of Higher Education, 2014). By contrast, women make up more than half of all full-time faculty members at two-year-colleges. In regard to underrepresentation of women in certain academic fields, the problem is greatest among STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) faculty. For example, the percentage of tenured and tenure-track faculty who are women in engineering increased to 15.7 percent. The percentage of women who are full professors in engineering reached an all-time high of 10.5 percent in 2015 (Yoder, 2016). Law schools and business schools have similar patterns of underrepresentation of women and people of color, particularly in tenure-track and tenured faculty positions.

Faculty diversity along lines of race/ethnicity and gender is an important issue, and it is linked to another problem in higher education: Colleges and universities are experiencing a long-term trend toward more contingent faculty appointments. Data from 2014 indicate that part-time faculty and graduate-student employees make up more than 75 percent of the total instructional staff in higher education and that nearly half of undergraduate courses are taught by nontenure-track instructors or graduate students. The growth in full-time nontenure-track and part-time faculty positions continues to outstrip the increase in tenure-line positions (Chronicle of Higher Education, 2014).

16-5eAffirmative Action

Affirmative action has been a controversial issue for many years. Why does affirmative action generate such a controversy among people? And what is affirmative action anyway?  Affirmative action  is a term that describes policies or procedures that are intended to promote equal opportunity for categories of people deemed to have been previously excluded from equality in education, employment, and other fields on the basis of characteristics such as race or ethnicity.

Education was one of the earliest targets of social policy pertaining to civil rights in the United States. Increased educational opportunity has been a goal of many subordinate-group members because of the widely held belief that education is the key to economic and social advancement. Beginning in the 1970s, most public and private colleges developed guidelines for admissions, financial aid, scholarships, and faculty hiring that took race, ethnicity, and gender into account. These affirmative action policies were challenged in a number of lawsuits, especially when the policies involved public colleges. Critics of affirmative action often assert that these policies amount to reverse discrimination, a term that describes a situation in which a person who is better qualified is denied enrollment in an educational program or employment in a specific position as a result of another person receiving preferential treatment as a result of affirmative action.

In 2003 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Grutter v. Bollinger (involving the admissions policies of the University of Michigan’s law school) and Gratz v. Bollinger (involving the undergraduate admissions policies of the same university) that race can be a factor for universities in shaping their admissions programs, but only within carefully defined limits. Following the Grutter decision, many colleges and universities have used race and ethnicity as one of a number of factors in determining admissions. This case led to significantly more African American and Hispanic (Latina/o) students being admitted to selective colleges and universities than would have occurred if decisions had been made strictly on the basis of test scores and high school grade point average (GPA).

A more recent case regarding affirmative action is Fisher v. University of Texas, brought by Abigail Fisher, a white student who claimed that the University of Texas denied her admission because of her race. Fisher’s attorneys argued that the university’s use of race in admissions decisions violated her right to equal protection under the Fourteenth Amendment. The attorneys further stated that diversity should be eliminated as a factor that can be used to justify any use of race in decisions regarding college admission. The Supreme Court heard the case but sent it back to the Fifth Circuit for review regarding the specific techniques that the school used to accomplish its goal of diversity. The university needed to prove, for example, that it could not accomplish its goal of diversity without having race-based preferences. The Fifth Circuit ruled in favor of UT and in 2014 declined to rehear the case. Fisher’s attorneys then asked the Supreme Court to review the case again, and that request was granted in June 2015. In a 4-3 decision, the Court decided in favor of the University of Texas upholding the Fifth Circuit's decision, finding the program lawful under the Equal Protection Clause (College Board Education Counsel, 2016).

No matter the final outcome of this case, one thing remains clear: Discussions regarding affirmative action and access to higher education—particularly regarding the way that access is influenced by income, race/ethnicity, gender, nationality, and other characteristics and attributes—are far from over as our country grows increasingly diverse in its population.

16-6Looking Ahead: Future Trends in Education

LO 8

Discuss future trends in education and explain why education will remain an important social institution in the future.

What will the future of education be in the United States? The answer to this question depends on how successful that elected officials are in getting their agendas through state legislatures or the U.S. Congress. In regard to public elementary and secondary schools, provisions of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act—or No Child Left Behind Act—implemented in 2001 by the Bush administration remain in effect as of this writing. The Obama administration subsequently outlined in 2011 how states might get relief from some of its provisions by implementing state-led efforts to close academic achievement gaps. Overall, however, the effects of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) are still being felt in the nation’s schools.

A primary purpose of NCLB was to close the achievement gap between rich and poor students by holding schools accountable for students’ learning. The law required states to test every student’s progress toward meeting established standards. School districts were required to report students’ results to demonstrate they were making progress toward meeting these standards. Schools that closed the education gap received additional federal dollars, but schools that did not show adequate progress lost funding and pupils: In some school districts, parents were able to move their children from lower- to higher-performing schools.

During the NCLB era, improvements occurred in fourth- and eighth-grade reading and math scores nationwide, particularly among African American and Hispanic students. However, critics believed that NCLB did not accurately define the main problem facing U.S. education: What the schools really needed was more money and incentives for teaching and learning, not more testing. As testing became the focal point in schools and pressure increased on teachers and schools to improve test scores, investigations in a number of states uncovered scandals in which educators had tampered with children’s standardized tests in an effort to improve both scores and their own performance reviews. Although scandals such as these have been rare overall, they pointed to the kind of pressure that the federal No Child Left Behind law put on students, teachers, and school administrators as performance requirements moved higher annually and students and schools were penalized if they were unable to reach the level of educational attainment that was expected.

Efforts continue to implement educational reform for the future. One federal government initiative is known as “Race to the Top,” which offers incentives to states that implement systemic reform to improve teaching and learning in schools. Among the goals of this reform are to raise standards and align policies and structures to the goals of college and career readiness. As of 2015, more than $4 billion has been given to nineteen states to create plans that address four key areas of K–12 educational reform:

· (1)

development of rigorous standards and better assessments;

· (2)

adoption of better data systems to provide schools, teachers, and parents with information about student progress;

· (3)

support for teachers and school leaders to become more effective; and

· (4)

increased emphasis and resources for the rigorous interventions needed to turn around the lowest-performing schools (Whitehouse.gov, 2015).

Other issues addressed by this measure include attracting outstanding teachers, creating conditions in schools that support effective teaching and learning, and modernizing outdated schools. However, some critics point out that such initiatives reward a few schools but leave many without the necessary resources to improve. Other critics argue that many plans have been drawn up for education but that without the necessary financial backing at local, state, and federal levels, it is unlikely that many of the idealistic goals of plans such as Race to the Top will be fully implemented.

Other future areas for reform include improving STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) education to help students become more competitive in the global marketplace. Encouraging innovation and ensuring opportunity for all are also priorities at the federal level. Having a top-tier educational system and providing high-quality job-training opportunities will provide people with the ability to be innovative and will offer greater opportunities that will help narrow the achievement gap. Improving the quality of underperforming schools and strengthening the teaching profession are other goals for the future.

Looking ahead to higher education, the United States has been outpaced internationally, and federal officials believe that it is important for our nation to regain its position as the first in the world in four-year-degree attainment among 25- to 34-year-olds. Today, the United States ranks twelfth, after being number one in 1990 (Whitehouse.gov, 2015). A goal for the future is increasing participation of students from all levels of family income in higher education. Although most students from wealthy families attend college, slightly over half of high school graduates from families in the bottom 25th percentile of families in income attend college, and the completion rate for those who do attend is about 25 percent (Whitehouse.gov, 2015). So one major concern is how to help middle- and lower-income families afford college, and the federal administration has made suggestions such as free college tuition for community college students. However, it remains to be seen if funding will follow goals such as this.

In the meanwhile, colleges and universities continue to expand their focus while, at the same time, undergoing strenuous budget cuts coupled with increasing demands to meet the needs of diverse student populations. The tightening of financial resources available to colleges and universities will lead to even more schools seeking alternative ways to fund their operations. Some will further raise tuition; others will seek different sources of funding. Some will move beyond the United States to find ways to expand their base of operation. For example, some U.S. universities are expanding their educational operations to emerging nations where demand is high for certain kinds of curricula, such as advanced business and petroleum engineering courses in Qatar and other Middle Eastern countries. Experts suggest that “university globalization” is here to stay, with both the export of students from countries such as India and China to other countries to study and the development of top-tier research universities in countries, including China, Singapore, and Saudi Arabia, where students may study without living abroad (Figure 16.18). Increasing numbers of U.S. students may go to school in these countries if their institutions offer opportunities, possibly at a lower cost, than do schools in the United States.

Figure 16.18

The term “university globalization” refers to the export of students from countries such as India and China to other nations where they study and immerse themselves in another culture. How does this process affect higher education in the United States and other countries?

Ted Pink/Alamy

Sociology & Social Policy

Cultural Lag and Social Policy: Should We “Control” MOOCs?

If you are a student, can you imagine what it would be like to be in a class of 10,000 or more students? If you are a professor, can you imagine what it would be like to teach 10,000 or more students at the same time?

These are questions facing faculty and students at some universities where MOOCs, or massive open online courses, are either currently being offered or are in the planning stage for implementation in the near future. Indeed, MOOCs are trending now, particularly after professors at prestigious universities such as Stanford, Harvard, and MIT have drawn hundreds of thousands of students to their online courses in computer science and similar fields.

Originally, practically all learning in established colleges and universities took place in brick-and-mortar buildings with live professors and students engaged in the teaching–learning process. With the advent of television and cable TV channels, instructional television became a means by which students could take courses without physically attending them. The introduction of the Internet and the dawning of the digital age opened up higher education to many more people who had access to a computer and an Internet connection. In the future, some analysts believe that the process of moving teaching out of the classroom will go one step further with wider use of MOOCs, allowing for large-scale participation of students and open access via the Web. The interactive user forums available with MOOCs make it possible for students to engage not only with the material but also with other students and professors in a manner that does not require them to have face-to-face meetings in real time. Although MOOCs are similar to an older teaching method known as distance learning or distance education, today’s MOOCs are unique in that many are taught by well-known professors in elite universities that are currently allowing open access to the courses.

Some analysts believe that MOOCs, or massive open online courses, will forever change the nature of higher education. Other analysts believe that the role of MOOCs in higher education will be much more limited. What effect do you believe MOOCs will have on more traditional brick-and-mortar colleges in the future?

Christian Science Monitor/Getty Images

From a social policy perspective, many questions remain about the role of MOOCs in the future of higher education. What should be the role of virtual teaching in higher education? Who should fund MOOCs? Should anyone regulate MOOCs? What state or federal agency will control how credit is granted to students who successfully complete MOOCs? How will students receive academic credit from universities where they are not officially enrolled, and can they use those credits toward graduation at another institution? From a practical standpoint, there are also questions about how well students learn in MOOCs. Can students concentrate on video lectures for extended periods of time? Are these courses set up for the interactive aspects of engaging with the materials and other students, or are they primarily digitized versions of the older distance-learning courses?

At least for now, it appears that MOOCs are moving forward. It has been reported that there are more than 3,800 institutions offering MOOCs worldwide and that this number grew 201 percent in 2014 alone. MOOCs have gained momentum because they take what has always been the noncommercial realm of teaching at public and nonprofit private institutions and make this realm accessible to twenty-first-century entrepreneurs. Venture capitalists and start-ups view MOOCs as cash cows that will help them build company value, and if, in the process, they help educate students, this too is a good thing.

Reflect & Analyze

1. Should state higher education coordinating boards and other entities that regulate colleges and universities be designing and implementing policies pertaining to MOOCs, or should professors and/or institutions that wish to offer such course listings be able to do whatever they wish as long as the market supports their endeavors? What do you think?

As discussed throughout this chapter, one of the major issues—present and future—is the part that education will play in reducing or maintaining and perpetuating social inequality. Education is an important social institution that must be sustained and enhanced because we know that simply having new initiatives and arguing over spending larger sums of money on education does not guarantee that the problems facing our schools will be resolved.

· LO1What is education, and how has the social institution of education changed throughout history?

Education is the social institution responsible for the systematic transmission of knowledge, skills, and cultural values within a formally organized structure. Perhaps the earliest formal education occurred in ancient Greece and Rome, where philosophers taught elite males the skills required to become thinkers and orators. By the mid-1850s, the process of mass education had begun in the United States as all states established free, tax-supported elementary schools that were readily available to children throughout the country. Today, schools attempt to meet the needs of society by teaching a wide diversity of students a myriad of topics.

· LO2What are the key assumptions of functionalist, conflict, symbolic interactionist, and postmodernist perspectives on education?

According to functionalists, education has both manifest functions (socialization, transmission of culture, multicultural education, social control, social placement, and change and innovation) and latent functions (keeping young people off the streets and out of the job market, matchmaking and producing social networks, and creating a generation gap). From a conflict perspective, education is used to perpetuate class, racial–ethnic, and gender inequalities through tracking, ability grouping, and a hidden curriculum that teaches subordinate groups conformity and obedience. Symbolic interactionists examine classroom dynamics and study ways in which practices such as labeling may become a self-fulfilling prophecy for some students. Some postmodernists suggest that in a consumer culture, education has become a commodity that is bought by students and their parents.

· LO3What are some major problems in elementary and secondary schools?

Most educational funds come from state legislative appropriations and local property taxes. In difficult economic times, this means that schools must do without the necessary funds to provide students with teachers, supplies, and the best educational environment for learning. High dropout rates, racial segregation and resegregation, and how to equalize educational opportunities for students are also among the many pressing issues facing U.S. public education today.

· LO4How do options such as school vouchers, charter schools, and homeschooling differ from traditional educational approaches?

In the voucher program, tax dollars are provided to parents so that they can pay their child’s tuition at a private school of their choice. Charter schools are schools that operate under a charter contract negotiated by the school’s organizers and a sponsor that oversees the provisions of the contract. Homeschooling has been chosen by some parents who hope to avoid the problems of public schools while providing a quality education for their children.

· LO5What are the educational opportunities and challenges found in community colleges in the twenty-first century?

One of the fastest-growing areas of U.S. higher education today is the community college. Community colleges educate about half of the nation’s undergraduates and offer a variety of courses. One of the greatest challenges facing community colleges today is money. Across the nation, state and local governments struggling to balance their budgets have slashed funding for community colleges.

· LO6What are the economic problems facing many four-year colleges and universities?

The problem of increasing costs of higher education for students is compounded by state budget shortfalls, which have caused funding for public higher education to be slashed. Declining state and federal support has become a major concern for colleges and universities because as enrollments drop, along with financial support, these institutions will have to find new sources of revenue, sharply reduce expenses, and rework administrative costs.

· LO7What problems exist in higher education related to racial and ethnic diversity?

Among the most pressing problems are the underrepresentation of minorities as students, a lack of faculty diversity, and continuing controversy over affirmative action policies and laws. People of color (who are more likely than the average white student to be from lower-income families) are underrepresented in higher education. Underrepresentation is not the only problem faced by students of color: Problems of prejudice and discrimination continue on some college campuses. Despite the widely held assumption that there has been a significant increase in the number of minority professors, the latest figures indicate that this is not the case. Gender is also a factor in faculty diversity. In all ranks and racial and ethnic categories, men make up nearly 60 percent of the full-time faculty, while women account for roughly 40 percent.

· LO8What may the future hold with regards to education?

The future of education will depend in part on how successful that elected officials are in getting their agendas through state legislatures or the U.S. Congress. The tightening of financial resources available to colleges and universities will lead to even more schools seeking alternative ways to fund their operations. Another issue facing higher education in the future is how academic instruction will take place.