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Summary
This article is focused on the research of kinship in alternative family forms that
deviate from the standard nuclear family structure (husband, and wife who are legally
married, with children) that has been the model of original family for centuries. The
nuclear family is defined as a heterosexual married couple with children in the same
household. This article is the second of two which will research explorations and the
changes over the past hundred years of history of kinship practices in the family
system of Western societies with industrialized economies. This article, according to
some, scholars discuss how kinship is construed and enacted in diverse forms of the
family that are now part of the culturally pluralistic family system of Western
societies (Furstenberg, Harris, Pesando, and Reed, 2020). It has also been found that
kinship relations in the nuclear family in the West was found to be the normative
family form.
The Rise of Alternative Family Forms
This article shows that the Western family has been changing continually for
decades as economic, demographic, social and cultural standards shift. The nuclear
family was considered normal, and the cultural ideal did not take hold until the end of
the 19th century. There were households that became more complex and included
what is called extended kin, and boarders, or multiple generations living in one
household which continued to lead to change in the latter part of the 20th century.
Family forms began to change again and people legally divorced quicker and
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remarried. Since then, the nuclear family was not the only stage for the model family,
the alternative family form began to emerge in the United States and in most other
western nations with industrialized economies. This article also discussed how
family scholars began extensively examining causes and consequences of changes in
the institution of marriage of the nuclear family as it lessens in the increasing
tolerance for diversity of living systems that involves other non-nuclear families.
Although there has emerged diversity of family forms, the nuclear family still remains
the preferred family form for many Western countries.
Family Formation Processes Leading to alternative Family Forms
This article reviewed how kinship of the alternative family forms were created
based off literature on industrialized nations and the timeframe spans a half century
ago. There were three processes discussed that had some type of impact on the
departure of the nuclear family model. The first alternative family form comes
through variations of formal marriage or its absence (P1), including sequential
marriages, plural marriages, consensual unions, single parenthood, and same-sex
marriages and partnerships (Furstenberg, Harris, Pesando, and Reed, 2020).
Sequential marriage describes people who have been married, then divorced and
remarried, which has been increasing since the end of the 19th century and now
recognized to be common. Cohabitation is another formation of unions that produces
children and is a more common form of sequential marriage. When this happens
successfully, and children are present this becomes a family unit with kinship
affiliation which likely occurs resulting in extended family-like household.
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Moreover, not all cohabitations include children. Another alternative kinship formed
and has gained lots of attention in recent years is the union between same-sex
individuals. Their children may also be through artificial reproductive technology, or
a result of past heterosexual relationships however, they form a kinship. The second
is a result of alterations in the reproduction process (P2); it’s through what is called
assisted reproductive technology (ART), this is when babies are not the result of
sexual intercourse between parents. The alterations according to this process include
adoptive families, foster care, families formed by ART all have something in common
as being seen as kinship practices. The third process is from the formation of
voluntary bonds, (P3), which is kinship-like where the affiliation is not biological or
through legal term (Furstenberg, Harris, Pesando, and Reed, 2020). Families created
by choice were found to be “family-like” relating to those who are not related by
blood or through legal terms (Furstenberg, Harris, Pesando, and Reed, 2020).
Moreover, researchers argue that there are terms such as “fictive kinship” or
voluntary kin exist and even the authors have criticized the terms which argues that
they are “racialized” pointing to other minority races (Furstenberg, Harris, Pesando,
and Reed, 2020). Each of the three alternative mechanisms has their own family
formation which gives an identity for being qualified as kin so that they may choose
whom they want to fit in as kin relative or not. Studies have found that fictive kin
often pointed towards the African American, LGBT community, immigrants, the
elderly and that more of the focus is geared toward the marginalized and poor groups.
What is interesting is the terms of voluntary kin have emerged from certain settings
such as street life, institutional settings such as jails, prisons, schools, or group homes.
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Conclusion
This article is focused on the research of kinship in alternative family
forms that deviate from the standard nuclear family structure (husband, and wife who
are legally married, with children) that has been the model of original family for
centuries. Its main points discussed how the family system of the nuclear form in
Western societies changed through industrialized economies and how the new
alternative family forms were more geared towards the variations of union formation
such as divorce, and remarriage, cohabitation, same-sex and methods of reproductive
processes, and voluntary kin that are unrelated by law or marriage. All of the
processes were involved in alternative families that can coexist and increase diversity
in the structure and family functioning in Western societies.
