Chapter 7- Family By, Nicole Cayer

Family

• Family as defined by Webster's dictionary is a group of people who are related to each other.

• When thinking of family in a communications way it’s where most of our intense interpersonal exchanges occur. ‘

• Family is a social institution organized by gender.

• “Families and gender are so intertwined that it is impossible to understand on without the reference to the other. Families are not merely influenced by gender; rather families are organized by gender” (Haddock, Zimmermain, Lyness. 2003, p.304)

• We all play certain “gender roles” in a family.

• Females are grandmothers, mothers, daughters and aunts

• Males are grandfathers, fathers, sons and uncles.

• All are sex marked as to what “roles” we play or will eventually play.

• Families are the primary place where we are taught that women and men are different.

• This teaches us that we should have different “jobs” and that we are unequal.

• From a young age we are taught what roles we are suppose to play according to the ideal family.

• Women are caretakers of the home and children.

• Men are the leaders, they make the money and don’t worry about the home besides paying.

• “Gendered social scripts are the rules that people carry around in their heads about what they ought to be like as men and women (straight, gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered) and what others ought to be like as men or women. What makes studying this so interesting is that everyone is subject to gendered social scripts, but no one ever lives up to those expectations.” (Virginia Rutter, Pepper Schwartz)

Nuclear Family “Ideal Family”

• A family made up of a mother, father, and biological children.

• The mother is the housekeeper/caretaker,

• The father is the leader/bread winner

• An ideal few families actually achieve

• A nuclear family has never been a form in which all families did or could participate (Cloud, 1998. p. 393)

Nuclear Family

• Depicted in television shows, movies, and advertisements.

• Leave it to Beaver one of

the most well known Nuclear

Families.

• Many people want to and try to achieve/mirror the ideal family, but in reality what is normal is now and has always been quite different.

• It seems like the statics of having an ideal family have drastically changed, this is according to a CDC report in 2005

• 38% of marriages now end in divorce

• 75% of divorced people remarry with a 60% chance of getting divorced again

• 30% of homes are single parent

• 30% of children will live in blended familes

How families use to run

• In preindustrial days families worked as units, everyone helped out no matter what.

• Industrial revolution, men found manliness, which they saw as being able to support their families

• Middle and Upper class White British and US women did not work, they hired less fortune women and children to take care of their household.

• Domesticity became the norm for judging a women’s worth. Victorian true womanhood was defend as pure, pious, domestic and submissive. (Welter, 1976)

• Women of color and the poor could not attain true womanhood because of their race and money stature. (Moharty, 2008)

• Thinking about how families should be is very narrow minded, even more so now with times changing and the “ideal family” truly not being what everyone thinks it should be.

• It has been said that there is a “leisure gap” just like there is a wage gap between men and women.

• Women who work outside of the home are to work a second shift when they get done and go home.

• It’s commonly thought that women are the primary caretaker of children but like everything else this to is changing.

• Homosexual couples tend to share child care and household duties more evenly then heterosexual couples.

• Mothers and fathers are more likely to push their daughters into “masculine” things, then they are to push their sons into “feminine” things.

• Again everything is defined by gender

Parent Interaction

• Parents tend to hold girls longer and closer to make them delicate, where they want their sons to be active and more independent at a younger age.

• A study should that some mothers and fathers even teach their children to fight, or to fight back when they are bullied.

Relationships

• Disney and other industries have fantasied the perfect relationship for so long that many people fall trap into wanting to find their prince charming.

• This notion has girls and guys pretending to get married at a young age.

• It also makes every little girl dream about her perfect wedding day for years.

• It’s taboo in the US for opposite sexes to be just friends.

• It seems that people don’t think a male and a female can be just friends without anything sexual.

• Like everything else dating has changed to more “hooking up” then being in a monogamist relationship

• Along with people cohabiting before marriage and even having children without being married.

• Women still spend hours trying to look their best for men and doing all the can to look better then the other girl.

• When it comes to dating the predominant expectation is still that men will initiate dates and physical intimacy and women will take primary responsibility for relationship maintenance. (Laner & Ventrone, 2000)

Marital Communication

• Bookstores and other data sources are easily teaching us that men and women are totally different and that it can cause issues.

• Communication is a key aspect to any relationship but if it’s not done properly then issues will arise.

• “When a man is not willing to share power with his partner, there is an 80% chance that his marriage will self-destruct.” (Nan Silver, 1999. p.100)

• The demand/withdrawal pattern, is when one partner demands change, and the other withdraws from the situation.

• This can happen both ways, where a women is demanding and the man withdraws or the man is demanding and the women withdraws.

• When women demand something men general withdraw because they like to fix things on their own and not talk like women.

• When men are demanding women usually (not always) withdraw because the man is being abusive either physically or verbally.

• Although relational conflict is inevitable, not all conflict is harmful to relationships, not all conflicts involve abuse, and not all conflicts end in violence. However, verbal abuse is usually a precursor to psychological and physical abuse and much of this is gendered and sexed. (Evans, 1992)

Domestic Violence

• A family is one of the most violent social interactions.

• Common couple violence is more likely to happen when a couple can’t resolve their conflicts

• Although they are safe havens they are also where serious levels of violence occur.

• Every day in the US, four children die from child abuse

• Every day in the US, four women are murdered by their husbands or boyfriends

• Women are ten times more likely to be to victims of domestic violence

• 27% of women and 16% of men report having been victimized as children

(WHO, 2005b)

• In 2000, 1,246 women and 440 men were killed by intimate partners.

• When it comes to abusive relationships women are likely to stay in them.

• They feel the caused the person to do it and it won’t happen again.

• Some women expect the relationship to be like this, making one that isn’t again rare in some people’s eyes.

What I learned

• A nuclear family now and never was the perfect family

• It’s very common for a marriage to fail

• Society is becoming more expecting of new things

• Violence is and always will be a huge factor in relationships

• Families are gendered based, but times are changing

• I have seen many of these things play out in my life. I started off in a nuclear family but now I am in a mixed family.

• I have watched someone be in a verbally abusive relationship and say it was normal.

• I have thought about the changes society has and how our generation sees things differently.

• Although we are more expecting I think it’s still common for a little girl to find her one true love or prince charming