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Married couples vs. Cohabitating couples
Cohabitators tend to be: younger, less educated, have less income, less likely to own their homes, more likely to be non-white and more likely to have been sexually abused
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Premarital cohabitation:
Many see cohabitation as chance to test compatibility
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The cohabiting relationship:
- Twice as likely to be interracial
- Cohabiting women tend to be several years older than married women and earning more than their partners
- Cohabiting couples tend to be more non-traditional in their roles
- Relationships tend to be short-term, less than one year. Either break up or get married in that time frame.
- Cohabitors tend to be less happy with relationships. Higher incidence of depression, more sex outside of relationship
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Cohabitation and Legal Issues:
- Domestic partners-joint residence and finances plus statement of loyalty and commitment
- Residence- are both partners on the lease?
- Joint bank accounts- either partner can withdraw all money
- Power of attorney for finances- without this, court decided who is in control of finances
- Credit cards and charge accounts- if both parties are on the account, both are responsible
- Health care decisions- power of attorney for health care
- Children-
- Co-parenting agreement that spells out rights and responsibilities of each partner
- Nomination of guardianship that adds language to a will or living trust
- A consent to medical treatment form that gives the co-parent the right to authorize medical procedure for a child
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Cohabiting Families and Children
- More than 40% of cohabiting heterosexual households contain children under the age of 18
- Study of economically disadvantaged 6 and 7 yr. olds; more problem behaviors among children in various types of unmarried families, including cohabitation.
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Same Sex Couples Relationship
- Quite similar to heterosexual relationship: need to resolve issues of division of labor, power and decision-making, sexual exclusitivity
- Same-sex partners of both genders tend to have more equality and role sharing than in heterosexual marriages
- Discrimination may add stress to their relationship
- Stress may lead to higher rates of domestic violence in same-sex relationships vs. heterosexual couples
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Same Sex Couples and Raising Children
- 2008- 565,000 same sex couples, approx. 1/2 of same sex couples have children under age 18
- In addition to raising children from a prior marriage, also become parents through adoption, foster care, sexual intercourse or artificial insemination
- For lesbian couples, one partner may give birth to a child that both partners parent
- Children are generally well-adjusted, with no noticeable different terms of behavior, cognitive abilities or emotional development
- No evidence that children of same-sex couples are confused about their gender identity or more likely to be homosexual
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Fertility Trends in the U.S.
- Lower rates of fertility due to increased employment for women outside the home
- Hispanics have highest birth rate and whites have lowest
- Higher education, better off financially, less children
- Ideal is have 2.5 children
- Stigma for large families: mothers seen as uneducated, ignorant of birth control, not attentive enough with children
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Decision to Parent or Not to Parent
Social pressures: strong norms against childlessness; have to justify not having children
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Motivations for Parenthood:
Emotional Significance
Emotional significance of parenthood has become important to personal identity and sense of meaning
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Motivations for Parenthood:
Value of Children
- Parents can have influence on children they may not have at work
- Children add liveliness to a household with fresh and novel responses to life
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Motivations for Parenthood:
Social Capital Perspective
links that parenthood provides to social networks and their resources
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Financial costs of having a child
- In a husband-wife family, 42% of expenses are attributed to children
- Average cost of raising a child born in 2007 to age 18 is $269, 040 (middle income family)
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Opportunity Costs of having a child
- Opportunities for wages and investments that parents forgo, usually mothers
- Career advancement, loss of family income
- Loss of free tie and stress as costs of leading two lives: family and career
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Impact of Children on Marital Happiness
- Young children stabilize marriage but add to stress
- Parents report lower satisfaction than non-parents; more children, lower marital satisfaction
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Early Parenthood: Pros and Cons
- Pros:
- Physical health, greater freedom later in life, more spontaneity, less of generation gap
- Cons:
- Forgo education, slower start on career ladder, lack of maturity
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Late Parenthood: Pros and Cons
- Pros:
- Patience, maturity, more money and confidence
- Cons:
- Physical limitations, sense of limited time, may not live to see grandchildren
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Impact on Children
Benefit from financial and emotional stability; may have anxiety about parents health and mortality
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Single Moms
- Increase in single moms; can support themselves and less stigma about out of wedlock births
- "single mothers by choice"- older women with education, established jobs, economic resources
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Adolescent Parents
- U.S. has highest teen pregnancy, abortion and birthrate of any industrialized nation
- Teen parents: lack of education, limited job prospects, strong chance of living in poverty
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Informal adoption-
not legally formalized
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Public adoption-
through liscensed agency
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Private adoption-
arranged, between adoptive adn biological parents, usually through an attorney
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Open adoption-
birth and adoptive parents meet or have some knowledge of each other's identity
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Issues with Adoption of Older Children
Majority of older adopted children work out well, but disruption and dissolution increases with children's age
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Disruption-
child is returned to agency before adoption is finalized
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Dissolution-
Child is returned after adoption is finalized
Child may be emotionally damaged or impaired due to drug-addicted parents, physical abuse or previous broken attachments
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Attachment disorder-
Defensively shut off willingness and ability to make future attachments
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Advantages of Parenting in Modern America
- Higher level of education for parents; likely exposed to knowledge about child development and child rearing
- Technology allows parents to keep track of children
- More fathers emotionally involved
- Internet offers information on virtually any situation
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Disadvantages of Parenting in Modern America
- Parenting role often in conflict with work roles
- Children raised in pluralistic society with diverse and conflict values: school, peers and television
- Knowing that they have major influence on their children can make parents anxious
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Difficulties for new moms and dads
- Bothered by sleep disruption, going out and sexual expression
- Moms may feel isolated and disconnected
- If dad's involvement meets mom's expectations, the earlier the transition
- If the relationship quality is high, the transition is easier
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Rossi's comparison of transition to parenthood
- the transition to parenthood is unlike other roles, such as work
- Culture pressures us to become parents, once done, can't undo it.
- Most parents have little or no previous experience in childcare, especially new fathers
- Transition is abrupt and sudden
- Requires change in adult's relationship
- Unlike other adult roles, the transition is abrupt and sudden
- Requires changes in couple's relationship
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Moms: Images and Reality
- Tradition of moms having primary responsibility
- Enjoys and intuitively knows what to do; cares for the child without ambivalence or awkwardness; self-sacrificing
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Fathers: Images and Reality
- Once expected to be breakwinners, now "good" fathers are actively involved in child care
- "Dead beat Dads"- take no responsibility, financial or otherwise
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What do Moms do?
- More "hands on" parenting
- Do most of the child raising and homemaking
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What do Dads do?
Dads as "helpers"
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Fathers as Primary Parents:
- Take care of children in much teh same way as mothers who are primary parents
- Face isolation and stereotyping
- Some are laid off and some choose to stay at home
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Parenting styles: Authoritarian
- Low on nurturing and support, high on parental direction and control
- Often use physical or harsh punishment
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Parenting style: Permissive
- Indulgent parent- high on nurturance; low on parental control
- Uninvolved parent (neglectful)- low on nurturance and control
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Parenting style: Authoritative
- High on nurturing and provide direction; considered warm, firm and fair
- Encourage child's independence; accepting of child's talents and personality
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Children of Authoritarian and Permissive parents:
- Tend to be more depressed, low in self-esteem and poorer school performance
- More likely to have behavioral problems, teen sex and pregnancy and juvenile delinquency
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Children of Authoritative parents:
- Tend to do better in school, are socially competent and have relatively high self-esteem
- Cooperative but independent personality
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Spanking:
- Research shows that spanking can lead to increased aggression, as well as low self-esteem
- Can produce immediate conformity but long-term can lead to deviance and delinquency
- Spanking is more likely to lead to aggresive behavior
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Parenting: Working Class
- Emphasize obedience and conformity
- Children tend to have poor nutrition, more illnesses and less safe schools
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Parenting: MIddle and Upper Class
- Emphasize self-direction and initiative, foster critical thinking and language development
- More options for upper middle class (schools, colleges)
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African-American Parenting
- Attitiudes, behaviors and hopes are similar to those of other parents in their social class
- Middle-class remains vulneralbe to housing and employment discrimination
- Role that parents play in teaching children about racial prejudice and how to deal with it
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Native-American Parenting
- Emphasis on personal autonomy and individual choice
- Children seen as gifts valued for their personal uniqueness
- Raised children by using examples and persuasion; shaming rather than corporal punishment
- Traditional childrearing emphasizes unity and cohesiveness with teh tribe and immediate family groups
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Hispanic Parenting
- Teach traditional values of culture of origin
- May be a generation gap of differing luency and attitudes- may extend to dress
- Hierarchial parenting- Warm support with demand for respect for authority and older family members
- Designed to instill a more collective value system
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Multi-Racial Children
- Challenge: Tension between parents and children over cultural values and attitudes
- Adolescence: child struggles to find identity and fit in socially
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Raising children in a Discriminatory Society
- Family must serve as an insulating and advocating environment
- Racial Socialization- teach pride in cultural heritage but also prepare child for discrimination
- "Balancing Act"- should be taught that there are barriers but also taught they can be overcome
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Grandparents as Parents
- More than 3.6 million children under 18 are living with g.parents.
- Abuse of alcohol and drugs combined with teen pregnancy, neglect, abandonment and incarceration lead to grandparents households
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The Wage Gap for Women
Make 88 cents for every dollar a man makes
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Motherhood Penalty
- The negative effect on lifetime earnings
- Work patterns- women have fewer years of experience, work fewer hours, less likely to work full time and leave labor force for longer periods of time
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Men and Work
- The "good provider" role: traditional, emerged in 1800's
- 80% of men, age 20-39 years, rated a work schedule with more family time as more desirable than challenging work and high income
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"Second Shift"
- occurs when women come home from work to perform unpaid family work
- Women on average spend 27 hours a week on housework and men 13 hrs.
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Fairness and the Division of Labor
- Participation is related to degree of equality in earnings
- Unequal sharing of domestic labor associated with marital dissatisfaction
- Perception of fairness correlates more with marital happiness than actual hours spent on domestic work
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2-Career Marriages
- Balancing career and family and his and her careers so both careers prosper
- "Trailing Spouse"- spouse relocates to accomodate partners careers (wives more than husbands)
- "Commuter Marriage"- spouses live apart to maintain their careers, those with frequent reunions are happier
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Impact of Child Care on Children
- At age 3, found negative relationship to maternal sensitivity and child engagement with child care (not an issue with quality care)
- Faborable outcome in terms of linguistic and language skills with quality care
- As children approach age 5, those who spend longer hours in child care had more behavior problems and conflict with adults
- Family background factors and maternal sensitivity more important to child adjustment than time spent in child care
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Factors that Impact Quality of Child Care
- Low child-to-staff ratio- 6-8 infants/2 caregivers; 6-12 one and two yr. olds/3 caregivers; 14-20 preschoolers/2 teachers
- Stable staff- Turnover doesn't exceed 25%/yr.
- Well-trained staff- Knowledge about child development
- Cultural sensitivity
- Age-Appropriate and stimulating activ.
- Discipline- How do they handle behavioral problems?
- Relationship w/ Parents- Open and welcome?
- Recommendations from other parents
- Acceditation
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Maintaining Intimacy While Negotiating Provider Roles and Second Shift
- As women share more provider role, men take greater responsibility for household work
- Adjusting to Egalitarian Roles:
- Accept conflict as a reality
- Accept ambivalence- Mixed feelings: He wants her to work but resents doing housework; she wants him to help but resents intrusion on her domain
- Empathize- Goal is for both partners to win
- Mutual Appreciation
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