Traditional or Nontraditional Family Structures Essay
What is a definition of family that encompasses the different family structures prevalent today? Discuss the importance of acknowledging nontraditional family structures. Explain how family systems theory can be used to better understand the interactions of a modern family (traditional or nontraditional).Traditional or Nontraditional Family Structures Essay
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A family helps mold each person into who they eventually will become. The family is a guide for the success of a child’s future. The stability of family creates a building block for how the child will progress throughout life. When parents divorce, the children are left with no stability causing them to lose basic concepts of childhood that may carry with them throughout life. Children of divorced parents have less success and happiness creating less productive citizens in our nation. Watching parents take a home from a traditional family lifestyle to a “broken” home by getting a divorce is very devastating to a child’s mental well-being. As Judith Seltzer notes, “Recent reviews summarize evidence that children are emotionally…show more content…
The actual separation of my parents was not the exact reason I became depressed, the actual reason being that everything else changed as well as my family situation. I had to adapt to a new lifestyle, both socially and economically. Many experts on divorce and the effects on children agree that the actual separation of parents may not be the leading factor in depression. Robert Aseltine explains, “Divorce is seen as setting off a chain of negative events and transitions that are causally related to youths’ psychological distress and may be more potent stressors than the physical separation of parents” (134). My personal experience has shown that money does not last as long when only one income supports the same number of children as two incomes previously supported. Aseltine concurs by stating, “Economic hardship is…thought to play a prominent role in explaining children’s distress…Disrupted families generally experience dramatic declines in standard of living…” (134).Traditional or Nontraditional Family Structures Essay
This dissertation analyzes the antecedents of variation in family dynamics.
Three separate studies examine different sources of variation in partnering,
fertility and union dissolution in Sweden. The studies use intergenerational
administrative register data and household and fertility histories drawn from
longitudinal survey material.
Family processes such as partnering and childbirth are structured across the
life course in conjunction with relatively standardized institutions such as educational enrolment and labor market establishment. Individuals adjust to
these sequences, which regulate the age at transition to parenthood. The first
essay connects research on how educational expansion increases ages at first
birth to the literature on the role of technological innovation for family and
demographic behavior. The study uses register data to compare first parity
transitions among non-student women, women enrolled in tertiary online distance education, and women enrolled in campus education. The results show
that first parity transition is far more common among online distance students
than among campus students. The results are discussed in relation to the rapid
expansion of online education and its potential to reshape the way higher education structures fertility transition in the life course.Traditional or Nontraditional Family Structures Essay
Decisions and expectations about family organization are usually normative. The second essay builds on research about the interrelationship between
attitudes toward family-demographic behavior and actual family-demographic behavior. Data from the Young Adult Panel Study (YAPS) are used
to analyze how individuals’ attitudes towards divorce change over time as they
are themselves exposed to experiences of family formation, parenthood and
union dissolution. Results indicate that women, but not men, change their predispositions and become more tolerant towards divorce after experiencing divorce themselves. The findings are juxtaposed with research on gendered experiences of family dynamics.
Individuals tend to partner with others of similar characteristics. This is a
rather universal pattern and one of the most salient ways in which family dynamics impact on societies. The third essay builds on the research about the
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preferential causes of educational homogamy among childbearing and romantic couples. The study tests the hypothesis that people are attracted by similarities in taste and worldviews that are produced by the formative aspects of
education. Using register data, it tracks the fertility and partnerships of vocational preparatory students with and without exposure to a theoretical tertiarypreparatory curriculum. An added theoretical curriculum had no effect on the
likelihood of having one’s first child with a partner with university education.
The findings are used to problematize assumptions about which aspects of
education drive educational homogamy.Traditional or Nontraditional Family Structures Essay
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Sammanfattning
I den här avhandlingen undersöks förklaringar till familjedemografiskt beteende i Sverige. Det empiriska bidraget utgörs av tre separata artiklar som bygger på longitudinella data från administrativa register samt familje- och fertilitetshistorier från en longitudinell enkätundersökning.
Avslutad utbildning och etablering på arbetsmarknaden anses i många hänseenden vara viktiga förutsättningar för familjebildning. Även om stor variation existerar, styr individers hänsyn till dessa faktorer i mångt och mycket
åldern för inträde i föräldraskap. Den första uppsatsen i den här avhandlingen
länkar samman forskning som argumenterar att expansionen av högre utbildning drivit upp åldern för förstafödande med teorier om den teknologiska utvecklingens roll för familjebildning. I studien används registerdata för att jämföra fertiliteten hos icke-studerande kvinnor, kvinnor som bedriver studier via
digitalt baserad distansutbildning och kvinnor som bedriver platsbundna studier på campus. Resultaten visar att sannolikheten att föda ett första barn parallellt med universitetsstudier är betydligt högre om dessa bedrivs på distans
snarare än på campus. Resultaten diskuteras i relation till distansutbildningens
snabba expansion och dess potential att förändra hur utbildningsystemet påverkar barnafödande under livsloppet.
Handling och resonerande kring familj och partnerfrågor antas ofta ha en
normativ komponent. Avhandlingens andra uppsats bygger på forskning kring
sambandet mellan attityder till familje-demografiskt och faktiskt familje-demografiskt beteende. Data från enkätundersökningen Young Adult Panel
Study (YAPS) används för att analysera huruvida individers attityder till skilsmässa förändras av att individen själv genomgår partnerskap, föräldraskap och
separation. Resultaten tyder på att kvinnor, men inte män, skiftar mot ett mer
tolerant förhållningssätt gentemot skilsmässa efter att själva ha genomgått en
sådan. Resultaten kopplas till forskning om mäns och kvinnors skilda erfarenheter av familjebildning.
Att individer bildar hushåll och reproducerar sig med partners med liknande karaktärsdrag som de själva är ett nära nog universellt mönster. Den
tredje uppsatsen i avhandlingen undersöker underliggande orsaker till att föräldrapar tenderar att ha samma utbildningsnivå i högre utsträckning än vad
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som är förväntat av slumpen allena. Studien testar en hypotes som gör gällande att individer attraheras av överstämmelse i smak och världsåskådning,
som en följd av det formativa innehållet i studier. Genom analyser av registerdata undersöks partnerskapsutfall bland individer som har genomgått yrkesförberedande gymnasieutbildningar med och utan högskoleförberedande,
eller formativt, innehåll. Resultaten visar att graden av högskoleförberedande
teoretiskt utbildningsinnehåll som tillgodogörs under gymnasieåren inte påverkar sannolikheten att få sitt första barn med en universitetsutbildad partner.
Baserat på dessa rön diskuteras antaganden om vilka aspekter av utbildning
som driven tendensen till likformigheten i utbildningsnivå mellan makar och
föräldrapar.Traditional or Nontraditional Family Structures Essay
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Introduction1
All societies have systems that structure relationships of care, reproduction
and householding. Individuals linked by such ties are sometimes considered
members of a family. Whereas marriage, affinity and consanguine relationships have been of manifest importance throughout history in some shape or
form, family organization is both surprisingly diverse and subject to rapid
change (Kaplan, Hooper & Gurven 2009; Therborn 2004). The premise for
studying family dynamics within the social sciences is that they both impact
on and reflect fundamental societal structures. For example, family dynamics
provide the micro foundations that influence when and how many children are
born per woman, which in turn account for the decline or growth and age composition of entire populations (Rosenzweig & Stark 1997). Typologies of kinship and the composition of family units are intertwined with entitlements and
wealth (Foster 2001; Goody & Goody 1976, Hann 2008). Beliefs about the
role and the desired role of families are fundamental to governance in such a
way that states channel resources to either individuals or heads of households
(Esping-Andersen et al. 2002; Orloff 2009). In short, important societal phenomena are interwoven with the commonplace actions of individuals, such as
when and how they go about choosing partners, how they form and dissolve
households, and how they reproduce. Therefore, seeking to understand the
causes of change and variability in such family dynamics is key to the study
of modern society.Traditional or Nontraditional Family Structures Essay
This dissertation analyzes antecedents to fertility, partnering and union dissolution in Sweden. I build on ongoing research concerned with broad questions such as: How does technological innovation structure whether and when
reproduction occurs? Are there latent preferences that guide partner choice?
What is the link between demographic behavior and attitudes towards demographic behavior? The empirical contribution of this dissertation is presented
in three separate studies. Study I illustrates how changing opportunities and
1 Valuable comments and suggestions on this introduction were provided by Michael Gähler,
Juho Härkönen, Frida Rudolphi and Martin Kolk.
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constraints – introduced by technological change in the form of online distance education – may alter fertility timing. Study II is concerned with cultural
values and demographic behavior, looking at whether and how attitudes towards family behavior respond to the experiences of marriage, childbearing
and divorce. Study III tries to distinguish between different types of incentive/preference-driven mechanisms leading to educational assortative mating.Traditional or Nontraditional Family Structures Essay
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This dissertation presents quantitative analyses of the interrelationship between events at the individual level as they occur across chronological age.
Data include, for example, the timing of first birth, the occurrence of divorce
and exposure to specific types of education. Data driven and increasingly applied in research, this longitudinal, individual level approach can be positioned
in relation to other viable alternatives. One such alternative would involve
studying populations, or aggregate data, as the unit of analysis. This line of
research has been very successful, as is illustrated by e.g., the Princeton European Fertility Project, which has improved our understanding of the rapid
shift from high to low fertility by comparing overall rates across time and
space (Coale & Watkins 1986). Comparing cohort trends across historical periods and contexts opens up for the interpretation of broad changes in family
dynamics (Ryder 1965) on a macro level. It is possible to study family dynamics through experiences, by soliciting people’s thoughts and narratives (e.g.,
Brinton et al. 2018; Swidler 2001) or to try to understand family dynamics
across time and space via cultural expressions of kin, family courtship,
parenthood and so on (Illouz 2013). The longitudinal, individual level approach is ultimately motivated by a desire to shift away from a birds-eye view
and deep anecdotal accounts, and to instead produce empirical studies that link
observed individual demographic behavior to theory about how individuals
act within a given social structure across the life course (Billari 2004, 2005).
This agenda and general line of research has proven fruitful, but also incredibly difficult to pursue.Traditional or Nontraditional Family Structures Essay
Certainly, a great deal is known about individual family dynamics in the
form of descriptions of family structure and events, mainly from individual
level household histories and reproductive histories (Andersson & Philipov
2002; Andersson, Thomson & Duntava 2017; Cherlin 2010; Heuveline, Timberlake & Furstenberg 2003), including how these patterns vary across regions
(e.g. Andersson & Philipov 2002; Gałęzewska, Perelli-Harris & Barrington
2017; Thomson 2014) and salient groupings based on factors such as gender
(e.g. Andersson, Thomson & Duntava 2017; Sobotka & Toulemon 2008) and
social strata (; Härkönen & Dronkers 2006; Kalmijn 2013; McLanahan 2004;
Perelli-Harris et al. 2010, Wood, Neels & Kil 2014) as well as descriptions of
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entire trajectories of family related events (Elzinga & Liefbroer 2007; Van
Winkle 2018). However, the answers to many basic questions, which cannot
be answered by means of life tables and time series focused on family structures alone, continue to elude researchers (Billari 2009; Sweeney 2010). Some
unresolved questions that are of significance to the present thesis include:
How are dispositions towards family behavior shaped across the life course?
Why do individuals form unions with others of equal social standing, education, cultural background and interest? How does fertility behavior respond to
new technologies that change the conditions for work, parenting, householding and more? In fact, in contrast to popular beliefs about scientific progress,
the issue of the role of ideational influences, agency and material pressures on
family structure and fertility has not been resolved, but is still very much open
to empirical investigation (Reher et al. 2017; Van Bavel & Reher 2013). The
fact that we cannot account for such important phenomena with reasonable
certainty is exciting in its own right. This is the main motivation for this dissertation and constitutes the overarching research project that the dissertation
aspires to be a part of.Traditional or Nontraditional Family Structures Essay
This introductory chapter situates the dissertation’s empirical studies
within this broader research project. The purpose is to facilitate the reader’s
critical assessment and appreciation of the three studies, as I make a case for
their relevance and contribution to existing research. Some additional weight
is given to literature that makes use of longitudinal individual level data. The
two first sections are divided on the basis of common heuristics regarding
constraints and ideational factors. I will begin by discussing technological innovation as an important variable feature in relation to constraints on family
dynamics. I present empirical research on related topics and discuss how
Study I in this dissertation contributes to this literature. I will then turn to the
main lines of thought presented by population scholars regarding the ways in
which ideational factors operate on demographic behavior. I close the section
by locating Studies II and III within this branch of research and by making a
case for their relevance and their contribution to the field. Thereafter I discuss
data, methods, and research designs. I describe the data, the reasons for using
them and briefly discuss similarities and differences in the general strategies
employed in the three studies. This section also includes a discussion of the
choice of Sweden as the setting for all three studies, and of the limitations and
possibilities associated with research conducted using a single country research design. I close by summarizing the studies’ main findings and contributions.
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Structural factors, technology and demographic
behavior
Changing constraints to family dynamics
In pastoral and agricultural societies, household structures adapted to the constraints of the soil and to the technologies of production that it afforded. In
pre-industrial Northern Europe, grain output could not be increased without
acquiring additional land. To do so, young adults moved out to work as farmhands in adjacent households and returned with capital and skills which, together with inter vivos and inheritance, formed the basis for establishing an
independent household. This life course facilitated late marriage and fertility
within neo-local households (Tsuya et al. 2010). Early population theories did
not view technology as a variable but rather as a given, and considered latemarriage nuclear family systems primarily as a preventive check on population growth (Malthus 1798/1826). Boserup (1976) criticized the Malthusian Traditional or Nontraditional Family Structures Essay
model, suggesting instead that the pressure of population growth provides the
necessary incentives for technological development. At an early stage, the
needs of an ever-growing population may be met by expanding existing technologies. A larger population simply means more laborers that may, for example, increase the extent of forest-fallow cultivation. But once everything is
burnt to the ground it becomes crucial to make more out of less, and to develop
more intensive modes of production that increase production per unit of land.
Regardless of the causes of the agricultural and industrial revolutions, by
the 1950s, people were entering marriage and reproducing relatively early.
Some scholars have interpreted the baby boom, the post-war increase in nuptiality and fertility, as a result of the removal of constraints afforded by affluence in a culture in which resources and marriage were closely associated sequentially (Livi-Bacci 2017a; Van Bavel 2010). This argument holds technological innovation as the explanation, equating it with development in general.
Other theories argue that specific innovations changed family structures.
Greenwood and colleagues (2005) saw the early-marriage, high-fertility
breadwinner regime as having been enabled by the spread of home appliances
such as dishwashers and vacuum cleaners, which drastically reduced the
amount of (household) labor per child.
Taking a rapid leap to the present day, demographic behavior is not balanced against subsistence needs such as food and shelter, but against higher
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order needs.Traditional or Nontraditional Family Structures Essay
2 One widely spread depiction of constraints to fertility and the
structure of family units in the twenty-first century focuses on the gendered
conflict between labor market engagement and child-rearing (Esping-Andersen & Billari 2015; Goldscheider, Bernhardt & Lappegård 2015; Stanfors &
Goldscheider 2017). Women have joined men on a purportedly equal footing
in the paid labor force, while men provide little additional labor in the household (Evertsson & Nermo 2004). At the same time, the level of expected investment in children is constant or increasing (Neilson & Stanfors 2018;
Sayer, Bianchi & Robinson 2004). In most contexts, many women respond to
the dual roles of care-taker and earner by avoiding or postponing parenthood
(Goldin 2006). This conflict is believed to constitute an actual population level
constraint that leads to below replacement level fertility rates, an aging society
and ultimately, shrinking populations (Billari & Kohler 2004; McDonald
2000). It also impacts on family organization. Throughout the twentieth century, the household remained a central consumption unit, particularly for families that included dependent children, but providing for oneself also became
a viable alternative for many (Sandström 2011). The alternative to coupledom
and the lack of equilibrium in the division of labor created a constant tension
between household formation and dissolution, setting the stage for unstable
unions (Cherlin 2016). The structural shift towards less predictable employment further increased the risks of union commitment (Mills & Blossfeld
2006). Interacting with these factors, the diffusion of effective contraception
from the 1960s and onwards has shifted the control of reproductive timing to
whoever has the mandate to make this decision (Bongaarts 1978). The drastic
reduction of unwanted pregnancies meant that career investment was less
risky. Moreover, delaying partnering in order to find an ever more appropriate
match was now possible, which contributed to an increasing stock of potential
partners among older age groups and pushed family formation to higher ages
(Goldin & Katz 2002).
Another related development which imposes constraints on fertility and
household formation in modern societies is the growth of secondary and postsecondary education (Kravdal & Rindfuss 2008). Educational enrolment and
attainment is increasingly crucial to acquiring the human capital demanded by
the labor market (Schofer & Meyer 2005) and is important to finding and becoming eligible in the eyes of an agreeable partner (Oppenheimer 1988, 1994).Traditional or Nontraditional Family Structures Essay
