Emerging Trends in The Social and Behavioral Sciences

Changing Family Patterns

Item

Title

Changing Family Patterns

Author

Gerson, Kathleen

Torres, Stacy

Research Area

Social Institutions

Topic

Marriage and the Family

Abstract

All societies have families, but their form varies greatly across time and space. The history of the family is thus one of changing family forms, which result from the interplay of shifting social and economic conditions, diverse and contested ideals, and the attempts of ordinary people to build their lives amid the constraints of their particular time and place. Because the family is a site of our most intimate experiences, the study of families tends to prompt heated theoretical and empirical debate. From the early anthropological charting of kinship systems to current analyses of proliferating family forms, studying the family has been a contested terrain. If the 1950s produced a short‐lived consensus on the “ideal nuclear family,” the current context of rapid family change poses a series of puzzles and paradoxes. What is a family, and why has its definition become so controversial? What are the emerging contours of adult commitment, and what is the future of marriage? How is family life linked to institutions outside the home, and how are the boundaries between public and private spheres blurring? What role does family life play in the structuring of social inequality? In addition, what are the prospects for creating social policies that meet the needs of diverse family forms? These questions draw our attention to the dislocations and contradictions of family change, but they also point to new opportunities to build more just and humane family forms. The challenge will be to find common ground for addressing the needs of diverse families and realigning both public and private institutions to better fit the circumstances of family life in the twenty‐first century.

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Changing Family Patterns
KATHLEEN GERSON and STACY TORRES

Abstract
All societies have families, but their form varies greatly across time and space. The
history of the family is thus one of changing family forms, which result from the interplay of shifting social and economic conditions, diverse and contested ideals, and the
attempts of ordinary people to build their lives amid the constraints of their particular time and place. Because the family is a site of our most intimate experiences, the
study of families tends to prompt heated theoretical and empirical debate. From the
early anthropological charting of kinship systems to current analyses of proliferating
family forms, studying the family has been a contested terrain. If the 1950s produced
a short-lived consensus on the “ideal nuclear family,” the current context of rapid
family change poses a series of puzzles and paradoxes. What is a family, and why has
its definition become so controversial? What are the emerging contours of adult commitment, and what is the future of marriage? How is family life linked to institutions
outside the home, and how are the boundaries between public and private spheres
blurring? What role does family life play in the structuring of social inequality? In
addition, what are the prospects for creating social policies that meet the needs of
diverse family forms? These questions draw our attention to the dislocations and
contradictions of family change, but they also point to new opportunities to build
more just and humane family forms. The challenge will be to find common ground
for addressing the needs of diverse families and realigning both public and private
institutions to better fit the circumstances of family life in the twenty-first century.

INTRODUCTION
The family is an institution of paradoxes. All societies have families, but their
form varies across time and space. The family is a site of our most intimate
experiences, but it is shaped by a range of impersonal forces far beyond its
boundaries. In addition, as few areas of social life are more complex, its ubiquity creates a sense of easy understanding. It is thus no surprise that the study
of families is subject to heated debate.
Understanding the family as a social institution is challenging for several
reasons. We are all connected to family life in some way, which encourages a
belief in our expertise even without wider knowledge. Personal experiences
also encourage strong, emotionally charged views about family life. The
Emerging Trends in the Social and Behavioral Sciences. Edited by Robert Scott and Stephen Kosslyn.
© 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. ISBN 978-1-118-90077-2.

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

family is so closely linked to the desire for human happiness that it invites
searches for an ideal form, even though one person’s utopian dream can
easily become another’s nightmare.
It may not be possible—or desirable—to disavow the values we bring to
understanding the family, but it is essential to distinguish the analysis of family patterns from the evaluation of family change. The study of family life
requires viewing the family from the “outside”—as a product of historically
specific social conditions and forces. The history of the family is a history of
changing patterns, which result from the interplay of shifting social conditions, contested ideals, and people’s attempts to build their lives amid the
constraints of their time and place. To paraphrase Marx, people make families, but not under conditions of their own choosing. The challenge is to decipher how, why, and with what consequences these interacting forces have
brought us to where we are today and how they shape the possibilities for
where we are likely to go.
FOUNDATIONAL RESEARCH
Research on the family reflects many of the theoretical debates in the social
sciences more generally. From early anthropological studies of kinship
systems in small scale societies to the mid-twentieth century focus on
breadwinner-homemaker households to contemporary concern with diverse
family forms, historical shifts in family patterns have inspired—and
required—new explanatory frameworks.
The first major paradigm, structural-functionalism, grew out of a search
for universal family forms and then focused on the rise of gender-divided,
nuclear households in the industrialized West. In the late twentieth century,
as the family forms in advanced industrial societies began to diversify, countervailing approaches rejected functionalism’s stress on social equilibrium
and focused instead on processes such as conflict, power, and inequality that
earlier theories ignored or downplayed. Conflict theories stressed the clash
of divergent interests within and among families, especially along the axes of
age, gender, and class. Early feminist approaches argued that gender inequality is both unnecessary and dysfunctional. More recent social-constructionist
frameworks have focused on how human actors construct diverse family
forms in response to social opportunities, constraints, and contradictions.
In this way, changing theoretical accounts of family life reflect the need to
account for new empirical developments.
THE SEARCH FOR FAMILY UNIVERSALS
The systematic study of family life began in earnest in the early nineteenth
century, when anthropologists observing daily life in premodern societies

Changing Family Patterns

3

sought to explain why some family practices existed in all societies, but took
different forms in different contexts. In New Guinea, Malinowski [1913]
(1964) found a kinship system noticeably different than the nuclear family
household common in turn-of-the-century Europe. In the Trobriand islander
“avuncular” society, biological fathers resided with their offspring, but were
not recognized by others as their father. Instead, maternal uncles provided
their sisters’ children with social status and were deemed their “social
father.” Malinowski concluded that societies may vary in who is defined as
the social father, but all societies have a “principle of legitimacy” in which a
designated father provides social placement.
Decades later, Levi-Strauss [1957] (1964) proposed another family universal, the “principle of reciprocity” to explain the incest taboo. He argued that
these taboos exist not to prevent inbreeding and tainted gene pools (as people in premodern societies are unaware of the science of genetics) but rather
to force clans and close-knit groupings to reach across kinship boundaries
to form alliances with others. By outlawing intraclan marriage, incest taboos
make society possible. The principles of legitimacy and reciprocity provided a
framework for decades of subsequent research, but they also inspired extensive revision as social scientists learned more about how family practices vary
throughout human history and among contemporary societies.
Feminist anthropologists questioned the assumption of men’s monopoly on
power—or patriarchy—that underlies these arguments. Their field studies
found thriving systems of economic exchange among women and a variety of
gender patterns. Today, the importance of legitimacy as a form of social placement has declined as modern economies have eroded the power of socially
designated fathers. The principle of reciprocity has also undergone revision.
While incest taboos remain one of the few family universals, they need not
be based on the presumption of a worldwide patriarchal system in which
women are traded among powerful men (Rubin, [1975] 2011). In the modern world, men cannot require their daughters or other women relatives to
become wives in a group ruled by another man.
INDUSTRIALISM, THE NUCLEAR FAMILY, AND THE SEX ROLES PARADIGM
Following in the footsteps of early anthropological studies, sociologists
extended the logic of structural functionalism to family practices in industrial societies. Drawing on Weber’s concept of “elective affinity,” Goode
(1963) saw a fit between the emergence of a worldwide market economy
requiring a socially and geographically mobile labor force and a family system organized around an autonomous married couple freed from parental
control and able to respond to economic opportunities. He called this the
conjugal family.

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

Functionalists such as Parsons and Bales (1954) focused on a process of
“structural differentiation” in which the family specialized in emotional support and childhood socialization as other tasks, such as the production of
goods and education of the young, moved from the home to the factory and
school. Parsons and his colleagues used a “sex roles” paradigm to argue that
breadwinner-homemaker households meet the functional requirements of
modern societies. Husbands contribute to a family’s survival by performing “instrumental” functions, such as earning income, and wives specialize
in the “expressive” functions associated with rearing children and meeting
their family’s emotional needs.
These theories provided an influential framework for analyzing family life
in industrial societies, especially following World War II, when almost 60%
of US households consisted of a married couple with a single (male) earner,
but they also sparked critical responses. Critics argued that the functionalist
framework prescribes how families should be organized rather than explaining the diverse ways that modern families are organized. Feminist historians noted that the rise of the industrial system did not predetermine gender
differentiation, detailing how the ideology of feminine domesticity rose to
justify rather than explain women’s relegation to the private sphere. Feminist economists examined how men’s efforts to secure a “family wage” left
women segregated in occupations with lower pay and less job security (Hartmann, 1976). These and other critiques rejected the argument that industrialization inevitably required a family structure based on a gender division
between paid and unpaid work, arguing instead that the model of separate
spheres and privatized nuclear families emerged from a protracted process
of political and social struggle.
POST-INDUSTRIALISM AND ACCOUNTING FOR FAMILY DIVERSITY
The predominance of the breadwinner-homemaker family as a demographic
reality and a cultural ideal proved to be short-lived. The past three decades of
the twentieth century witnessed interrelated worldwide trends—including
rapid rises in women’s employment, marital separation, cohabitation,
delayed marriage, and single parenthood—that undermined the hegemony
of the two-parent, gender differentiated household. As the twenty-first century arrived, alternative forms, such as two-income couples, single-parent
households, same-sex couples, and unmarried single adults, outnumbered
“traditional” families in the United States and most other affluent societies.
Rather than static family types, today’s families are increasingly fluid, with
most households changing their composition and organization over time.
Indeed, the image of family pathways may now provide a more useful way
to understand family life than the notion of static family types (Gerson, 2011).

Changing Family Patterns

5

Growing family diversity has prompted analysts to question the empirical accuracy of structural-functional theories. “Family decline” theorists see
traditional marriage as ideal but argue that cultural forces stressing individualism have undermined its viability and legitimacy (Popenoe, Elshtain,
& Blankenhorn, 1996). Rational choice and conflict theories emphasize the
role of self-interest in family formation and functioning. Becker (1981) pioneered a “new home economics” that sees everyone as a rational actor, but
argues that men find it rational to maximize their earnings by specializing
in market work while women find it rational to offset their market ties with
unpaid caretaking. Although the rational action framework replaces a theory
of gendered personalities with a human capital approach, it reaches similar
conclusions about gender-based allocation of family tasks.
Conflict theory, in contrast, sees the domestic sphere as a site of conflicting interests. Collins (1971) argues that historical changes in family structure
reflect shifts in how social systems organize power and allocate resources,
especially along the axes of gender and age. In this framework, advanced
market societies create conditions for more equal forms of sexual exchange
by limiting men’s ability to impose their will through physical force and by
enhancing women’s access to economic resources in the labor market.
Feminists have also focused on inequality within and between families, but
they have taken different positions about its causes and consequences. Some
approaches accept gender differences in personality, but see these differences
as unnecessary and unjust. Chodorow (1978) contends that gender asymmetry in parenting creates a circular process of gender differentiation, but equal
parenting provides a healthier psychological blueprint for everyone.
As post-industrialism has brought household diversity and fluidity, ethnographers (Stack, 1974), survey analysts (Sarkisian & Gerstel, 2012), and theorists (Collins, 1991) have charted how families defy the model of an isolated
nuclear household by constructing networks of real and fictive kin as strategies of survival, especially in poor and working-class neighborhoods. Others
have turned their attention to how social actors construct contemporary families in response to constrained options. Social-constructionists argue that the
family is a site where people “do gender” through their interactions (West
& Zimmerman, 1987). Others point to the ways that post-industrial families
exist in uneasy tension with other social institutions, creating a stalled revolution (Hochschild & Machung, 1989) in which privatized caretaking and
time-demanding workplaces conflict with the need to share and integrate
work and family life (Blair-Loy, 2003; Gerson, 2011). The emergence of new
family forms and practices has undermined earlier frameworks and raised
new questions about the future of family patterns throughout the world.

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

CUTTING-EDGE DEVELOPMENTS AND KEY ISSUES GOING FORWARD
If the 1950s produced a short-lived consensus on the “ideal nuclear family,”
the twenty-first century poses a series of puzzles about the future of family life. What is a family, and why has its definition become so contested?
What are the prospects for adult commitment and the future of marriage?
How has family change reshaped childhood and the transition to adulthood?
How are families connected to institutions outside the home, and how are
these links complicated by gender change and blurring boundaries between
public and private spheres? What role does family life play in structuring
social inequality? In addition, what social policies make sense in an era of
diverse family forms? These questions draw attention to the dislocations and
contradictions of family change, but they also point to new opportunities.
Twenty-first-century citizens have few blueprints for constructing their family lives, but they also have unprecedented options to create the families
they want.

WHAT IS A FAMILY?
From the early anthropological charting of kinship systems to current
analyses of proliferating family forms, defining “the family” has been
central to studying it. The question of what counts as a family—and who
can claim the social status and legal rights of family membership—has no
simple answer. While longstanding definitions typically refer to a group of
people who share some combination of legal and biological ties, the rise of
divorce, remarriage, same-sex relationships, new reproductive technologies,
and out-of-wedlock childbearing has complicated the classic definition.
Recent research has shown that Americans use a variety of criteria to decide
when a group of people is a family (Powell, Bolzendahl, Geist, & Steelman,
2010). Almost everyone agrees that marriage and parenthood make a family,
but significant numbers also consider unmarried couples without children
a family, and disagreement about who should be allowed to marry underlie
the heated political struggles over same-sex marriage.
Many controversies reflect disagreement between those who maintain a
traditional definition of the family as a household anchored by a married,
heterosexual couple and those who conceive of families more broadly. Examining the varying ways that individuals define “family”—and decide whom
they consider a member of their own family—is an important element of
charting the future of family life. This question turns attention to the beliefs,
norms, and values that inform multiple, and often conflicting, views of family membership and the rights and obligations of family members toward
each other and the wider society.

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THE FUTURE OF MARRIAGE AND ADULT COMMITMENT
The emergence of acceptable alternatives to traditional marriage has transformed the social context in which adults form intimate commitments. The
rise in women’s employment has reduced financial pressures to marry and
to stay married. The sexual revolution and the expansion of contraception
have eased the social sanctions on sexual activity outside of marriage and
created opportunities for partnerships, such as same-sex relationships, once
considered taboo. Increased divorce has made it easier to leave a marriage
without being faulted. In addition, the extended life span has allowed adults
to postpone marriage and even reject it altogether. Taken together, these shifts
represent what Cherlin (2009) calls the “deinstitutionalization” of marriage,
which is now one option among many rather than a prerequisite for forming
a family.
The availability of cohabitation, serial relationships, gay partnerships, and
permanent singlehood has transformed the meaning of and reasons for getting married. Marriage remains highly valued, but it has become a voluntary
bond rather than a requirement for economic survival and social acceptance. Standards for mate selection are more likely to place interpersonal
factors, such as emotional connection and mutual interests, above
gender-linked traits such as a man’s economic prospects or a woman’s
housekeeping skills. When Coontz (2005) declares that “love has conquered
marriage,” she means that marital ties have become contingent on the
vicissitudes of the human heart. As people search for partners who can
meet their emotional desires, marriage to one partner for life will likely
remain but take its place amid other types of intimate partnerships and
more changeable adult commitments.
FAMILY STRUCTURES, FAMILY PROCESSES, AND CHILDREN’S WELL-BEING
Throughout the industrialized world, the rise of divorce, out-of-wedlock parenthood, and employment among mothers has changed the experience of
childhood. Children today are more likely to grow up in a home with two
employed parents, a single parent, or a same-sex couple and to experience
a change in their family composition before leaving home. Even children
whose parents stay together and whose mothers do not hold a paid job now
grow up in environments where their friends and relatives are likely to experience these life events.
These changes have fueled longstanding debates about the effects of
employed mothers or parental breakups on children. Despite concerns
about children whose mothers hold a paid job, decades of research show no
demonstrable harm. Instead, a mother’s satisfaction with work, the quality
of child care, and the involvement of the father and other caretakers matter
more for a child’s well-being.

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

The effects of growing up in a single-parent home or experiencing a
parental breakup are more complex. Children reared consistently by two
parents appear to fare better on a variety of measures, but this difference
shrinks significantly—and, on some measures, disappears—after controlling
for financial resources and parental conflict (Amato & Booth, 1997). Scholars
trace most negative consequences of parental separation to a high level
of conflict surrounding a breakup and a loss of financial stability. The
consequences of a parental separation—whether it reduces or increases
parental conflict, involvement, and economic support—matter more than
the event itself. Indeed, diversity within family types outstrips the differences between them, and family process is more important than family form
(Acock & Demo, 1994). As children are now likely to grow up in families
that change as they grow to adulthood, the key to their well-being is having
financial security and emotional support regardless of the form a family
takes at any point or the path it follows over time (Gerson, 2011).
The process of making the transition to adulthood has also changed. Events
such as leaving home, finishing school, getting a job, and marrying are more
likely to take place at later ages (Newman, 2012). As important, the markers people use to decide who is—and is not—an adult now stress a person’s
ability to support himself or herself rather than his or her marital or parental
status (Furstenberg, Rumbaut, & Settersten, 2005). These changes have produced a new life stage that some call “emerging adulthood” (Arnett, 2000).
Yet images of youth “failing to launch” do not capture the complex experiences of this life stage. Studies show that new generations hope to find a
lifelong partner and bear children within an enduring relationship, but they
also believe they need time to develop their own identities, find the right
partner, and prepare for an uncertain future that requires more education
and training.
PARENTING, GENDER, AND WORK-FAMILY CONFLICT
Now that women are an integral part of the labor force and a critical source of
family income, the home and workplace are increasingly in conflict. Despite
the rise of dual-earner and single-parent families, an “ideal worker” ethos
continues to penalize family caretaking (Williams, 2001). In some countries,
such as the United States, parents face pressures to work long hours and juggle nonstandard schedules (Jacobs & Gerson, 2004).
Women, in particular, face contradictory pushes and pulls. At work, they
contend with a “motherhood penalty” that decreases earnings and erects barriers to advancement (Budig & England, 2001). Carework, whether paid or
unpaid, remains economically and socially undervalued. Yet, mothers also

Changing Family Patterns

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confront a norm of “intensive motherhood” that expects them to lavish time
and attention on their children (Hays, 1996).
The clash between family needs and workplace pressures has created time
crunches that stress parents and contribute to an unequal “second shift,”
where many employed mothers add domestic duties to their work schedules (Hochschild & Machung, 1989). Some evidence suggests that growing
work-family conflicts have contributed to declining birthrates, especially in
countries with few childcare supports. Women’s labor force participation
rates have leveled off in recent years, but there is little evidence that women
are “opting out” of paid work (Stone, 2007). Despite juggling family demands
with paid jobs, younger generations—both men and women—hope to share
work and domestic responsibilities (Gerson, 2011). Although fathers’ participation in childcare and housework lags behind that of mothers, the gender gap is shrinking (Sullivan & Coltrane, 2008). To lessen the work-family
conflicts that pervade much of the industrialized world, societies need to
restructure jobs and caretaking so that parents of all classes and genders can
integrate paid and domestic work.
FAMILIES, CLASS, AND SOCIAL INEQUALITY
The causes and consequences of inequality among families remain additional
contested areas. Do divergent life chances for individuals and households
reflect differences in family cultures or unequal opportunities? The cultural
perspective, recently exemplified by Annette Lareau’s study of workingand middle-class families (Lareau 2003), posits a circular link between class
cultures and the generational transmission of inequality. Lareau argues that
middle-class parents engage in “concerted cultivation,” scheduling children
in structured activities, stressing language skills, and imparting a sense of
entitlement when interacting with authorities. Working-class families, in
contrast, rear children according to “natural growth,” which involves an
unstructured approach to leisure, less attention to cognitive development,
and more deference to authority. These contrasting childrearing styles
leave working-class children at a disadvantage in negotiating middle-class
institutions.
The structural perspective focuses on how unequal opportunities shape
family outcomes. This approach points to the social and economic obstacles
facing poor and working-class families, especially when they are concentrated in disadvantaged neighborhoods with limited social and economic
resources. Still others posit an intersectional approach, which argues that
class, race, and gender intersect in complex ways that make it difficult—and
misleading—to distinguish among their separate effects (Collins, 1991).

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

In the debate about family inequality, empirical studies suggest that the
relationship between culture and structure is complex. Families in different
classes and ethnic subcultures may share many core values and practices
but still have different economic fates. A Black middle-class, for example,
has emerged amid the persistence of an African-American underclass (Wilson, 1980). Similarly, families in the same class may have different family
cultures, especially in multiracial and multiethnic societies. Moreover, intragenerational and intergenerational mobility varies across historical periods
and across countries with different social conditions and policies. Despite
the historic stress on equal opportunity in the United States, American class
mobility now lags behind much of Europe’s.
Drawing clear class boundaries has also become more complicated. Household composition tends to affect class position. Two-parent, dual income
families are more likely to enjoy economic stability, while a disproportionate
proportion of single-parent families headed by women remain poor. Yet
family composition—and its financial circumstances—can shift over time as
members marry, divorce, and change their labor force situation. The fluidity
of family life leaves many contemporary families living on a “fault line”
between maintaining their economic position and dropping below it (Rubin,
1994).
Family fluidity draws attention to how a range of factors—resources,
opportunities, and outlooks—shape the life chances of family members.
Understanding family inequality requires examining the full array of
supports and obstacles surrounding and within the household.
FAMILIES, POLITICS, AND SOCIAL POLICY
Uneven family change means that people today not only live in different
types of families but also have different outlooks on family life. Those who
support nontraditional options are more likely to favor policies, such as universal daycare, parental leave, and same-sex marriage, that ease the dilemmas facing new families. Those who disapprove are more likely to oppose
such policies. These conflicting views, and the political conflict they create,
make it difficult to assess prospects for the future. Family diversity is here to
stay, but so is the debate.
Different policy approaches exist among nations at similar levels of economic development. From Europe to Asia, post-industrial nations have experienced similar family shifts, such as women’s rising labor force participation,
the postponement of marriage, and the proliferation of nontraditional family forms. Yet the policy responses to these shared demographic trends are
diverse.
Some countries, especially in Scandinavia, have developed policies that
provide universal supports to all citizens, regardless of family situation. This

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“egalitarian” approach includes paid parental leaves, universal daycare and
healthcare, free education, and anti-discrimination workplace policies. Other
countries encourage traditional family structures through a “familistic”
approach that offers women incentives to bear and rear children. Ironically,
countries that have resisted incorporating women into the public sphere
(such as Japan) are more likely to face a birth dearth as many young adults
postpone marriage and resist parenthood.
Some national policies, including the United States, adopt an “individualistic” approach that stresses equal opportunity. Unlike familistic approaches,
there is less concern for re-creating the traditional family through “maternalism” (Gornick & Meyers, 2009); but unlike egalitarian approaches, there is
less concern for diminishing work-family conflict or providing childcare support. Individualistic policies focus more on addressing workplace discrimination and less on providing universal supports for families and caretaking.
Countries vary in the extent to which they have addressed family change
and developed effective social policies to address it. Yet all post-industrial
societies must face the dislocations posed by these new family realities.
CONCLUSION
Family life, or what Goode called the familistic package, is a multidimensional
set of private experiences and public developments that leaves no one
untouched. The family is also an institution in continuous flux. Some family
shifts, such as the incorporation of women into paid work and the rise of
alternatives to permanent, gender-divided, heterosexual marriage, are so
deeply embedded into modern economic and social structures that they are
here to stay. Yet the individual and collective responses to these inexorable
demographic trends are not predetermined.
Is the family “declining,” or does the diversification of family forms represent resilience in the face of revolutionary social forces? Is it possible to
isolate one “best” family form, or does a variety of family practices better
fit post-industrial exigencies? How do adults balance personal autonomy
and lifelong commitment, and how do parents choose between earning and
caretaking? How do children cope with growing up in changing families
and negotiating uncertain adulthoods? How do societies address growing
inequalities among family forms and growing conflicts between the home
and the workplace?
These questions point to how intertwined and reinforcing social changes
have created new opportunities, but also new insecurities, dilemmas,
and controversies. Twenty-first-century citizens face family options that
their parents and grandparents could barely imagine; the future of family
life will depend on how individual and collective actors respond to the

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

inconsistencies and contradictions of change. Family change is inescapable,
but its long-term outcomes are not preordained. The challenge will be
finding common ground for addressing the needs of diverse families and
realigning public and private institutions to better fit the new circumstances
of family life.
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Arnett, J. J. (2000). Emerging adulthood: A theory of development from the late teens
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Blair-Loy, M. (2003). Competing devotions: Career and family among women executives.
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Budig, M. J., & England, P. (2001). The wage penalty for motherhood. American Sociological Review, 66, 204–225.
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empowerment. London, England: Routledge.
Collins, R. (1971). A conflict theory of sex stratification. Social Problems, 19, 3–21.
Furstenberg, F. F., Rumbaut, R. G., & Settersten, R. A. (Eds.) (2005). On the frontier of
adulthood: Emerging themes and new directions. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago
Press.
Gerson, K. (2011). The unfinished revolution: Coming of age in a new era of gender, work,
and family. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Goode, W. J. (1963). World revolution and family patterns. New York, NY: Free Press.
Hartmann, H. (1976). Capitalism, the family, and job segregation by sex. Signs, 1(3),
137–169.
Hays, S. (1996). The cultural contradictions of motherhood. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Hochschild, A. R., & Machung, A. (1989). The second shift: Working parents and the
revolution at home. New York, NY: Viking.
Jacobs, J. A., & Gerson, K. (2004). The time divide: Work, family, and gender inequality.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Lareau, A. (2003). Unequal childhoods: Class, race, and family life. Berkeley: University
of California Press.
Levi-Strauss, C. [1957] (1964). Reciprocity, the Essence of Social Life. In R. L. Coser
(Ed.), The Family: Its Structure and Functions (pp. 3–14). New York, NY: St. Martins
Press.

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13

Malinowski, B. [1913] (1964). Parenthood, the Basis of Social Structure. In R. L. Coser
(Ed.), The Family: Its Structure and Functions (pp. 51–63). New York, NY: St. Martins
Press.
Newman, K. S. (2012). The accordion family: Boomerang kids, anxious parents, and the
private toll of global competition. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.
Parsons, T., & Bales, R. F. (1954). Family, socialization, and interaction process. Glencoe,
IL: Free Press.
Popenoe, D., Elshtain, J. B., & Blankenhorn, D. (1996). Promises to keep: Decline and
renewal of marriage in America. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
Powell, B., Bolzendahl, C., Geist, C., & Steelman, L. C. (2010). Counted out: Same-sex
relations and American’s definitions of family. New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation.
Rubin, G. S. (2011). The traffic in women: Notes on the ‘political economy’ of sex. In
Deviations: A Gayle Rubin reader (pp. 33–64). Durham, NC: Duke University Press
[1975].
Rubin, L. B. (1994). Families on the fault line. New York, NY: HarperCollins.
Stack, C. B. (1974). All our kin: Strategies for survival in a black community. New York,
NY: Harper and Row.
Stone, P. (2007). Opting out? Why women really quit careers and head home. Berkeley:
University of California Press.
Sullivan, O., & Coltrane, S. (2008). Men’s changing contribution to housework and child
care. Chicago, IL: Council on Contemporary Families Briefing Paper (April 25).
West, C., & Zimmerman, D. (1987). Doing gender. Gender and Society, 1, 125–151.
Williams, J. C. (2001). Unbending gender: Why family and work conflict and what to do
about it. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

FURTHER READING
Cherlin, A. J. (2009). The marriage-go-round: The state of marriage and the family in America today. New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf.
Coontz, S. (2005). Marriage, a history: From obedience to intimacy, or how love conquered
marriage. New York, NY: Viking.
Gornick, J. C., & Meyers, M. K. (2009). Gender equality: Transforming family divisions of
labor. New York, NY: Verso Books.
Risman, B. J. (Ed.) (2010). Families as they really are. New York, NY: W.W. Norton.
Sarkisian, N., & Gerstel, N. (2012). Nuclear family values, extended family lives: The
importance of gender, race, and class. New York: Routledge.

KATHLEEN GERSON SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Kathleen Gerson is Professor of Sociology and Collegiate Professor of Arts
and Science at New York University. Her research focuses on gender, work,
and family life, with an eye to understanding the work and family pathways
emerging in the United States and other post-industrial societies. As a

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

specialist in conducting and analyzing qualitative interviews, her research
combines the deep understandings of in-depth, life history interviews with
the rigor of systematically collected samples and carefully situated comparisons. Professor Gerson’s most recent book, The Unfinished Revolution:
Coming of Age in a New Era of Gender, Work, and Family (Oxford, 2011)
received the William J. Goode Distinguished Book Award, awarded by
the American Sociological Association. Her other books include The Time
Divide: Work, Family, and Gender Inequality (with Jerry A. Jacobs, Harvard,
2004), No Man’s Land: Men’s Changing Commitments to Work and Family
(Basic Books, 1993), and Hard Choices: How Women Decide about Work,
Career, and Motherhood (California, 1985). She is currently at work on two
books, a study of work and care in the new economy, which is based on
interviews with contemporary workers and their families, and a book on the
theory and method of in-depth interviewing.
Her website links include:
www.KathleenGerson.com;
http://sociology.fas.nyu.edu/object/kathleengerson
STACY TORRES SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Stacy Torres is a PhD candidate in sociology at New York University. Her
research focuses on community, aging, and social relationships. To understand the lived experience of aging in place, she has conducted a 4.5-year,
multisited ethnographic study following a group of older adults as they have
coped with gentrification and the closing of neighborhood establishments,
the accumulated losses of neighbors, friends, and family, health setbacks,
financial struggles, and other everyday challenges. Her writing has appeared
in The New York Times, The New York Daily News, Slate, Reuters, and Contexts, among other publications.
Her website links include:
http://sociology.fas.nyu.edu/object/soc.stacy_torres

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15

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Changing Family Patterns
KATHLEEN GERSON and STACY TORRES

Abstract
All societies have families, but their form varies greatly across time and space. The
history of the family is thus one of changing family forms, which result from the interplay of shifting social and economic conditions, diverse and contested ideals, and the
attempts of ordinary people to build their lives amid the constraints of their particular time and place. Because the family is a site of our most intimate experiences, the
study of families tends to prompt heated theoretical and empirical debate. From the
early anthropological charting of kinship systems to current analyses of proliferating
family forms, studying the family has been a contested terrain. If the 1950s produced
a short-lived consensus on the “ideal nuclear family,” the current context of rapid
family change poses a series of puzzles and paradoxes. What is a family, and why has
its definition become so controversial? What are the emerging contours of adult commitment, and what is the future of marriage? How is family life linked to institutions
outside the home, and how are the boundaries between public and private spheres
blurring? What role does family life play in the structuring of social inequality? In
addition, what are the prospects for creating social policies that meet the needs of
diverse family forms? These questions draw our attention to the dislocations and
contradictions of family change, but they also point to new opportunities to build
more just and humane family forms. The challenge will be to find common ground
for addressing the needs of diverse families and realigning both public and private
institutions to better fit the circumstances of family life in the twenty-first century.

INTRODUCTION
The family is an institution of paradoxes. All societies have families, but their
form varies across time and space. The family is a site of our most intimate
experiences, but it is shaped by a range of impersonal forces far beyond its
boundaries. In addition, as few areas of social life are more complex, its ubiquity creates a sense of easy understanding. It is thus no surprise that the study
of families is subject to heated debate.
Understanding the family as a social institution is challenging for several
reasons. We are all connected to family life in some way, which encourages a
belief in our expertise even without wider knowledge. Personal experiences
also encourage strong, emotionally charged views about family life. The
Emerging Trends in the Social and Behavioral Sciences. Edited by Robert Scott and Stephen Kosslyn.
© 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. ISBN 978-1-118-90077-2.

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

family is so closely linked to the desire for human happiness that it invites
searches for an ideal form, even though one person’s utopian dream can
easily become another’s nightmare.
It may not be possible—or desirable—to disavow the values we bring to
understanding the family, but it is essential to distinguish the analysis of family patterns from the evaluation of family change. The study of family life
requires viewing the family from the “outside”—as a product of historically
specific social conditions and forces. The history of the family is a history of
changing patterns, which result from the interplay of shifting social conditions, contested ideals, and people’s attempts to build their lives amid the
constraints of their time and place. To paraphrase Marx, people make families, but not under conditions of their own choosing. The challenge is to decipher how, why, and with what consequences these interacting forces have
brought us to where we are today and how they shape the possibilities for
where we are likely to go.
FOUNDATIONAL RESEARCH
Research on the family reflects many of the theoretical debates in the social
sciences more generally. From early anthropological studies of kinship
systems in small scale societies to the mid-twentieth century focus on
breadwinner-homemaker households to contemporary concern with diverse
family forms, historical shifts in family patterns have inspired—and
required—new explanatory frameworks.
The first major paradigm, structural-functionalism, grew out of a search
for universal family forms and then focused on the rise of gender-divided,
nuclear households in the industrialized West. In the late twentieth century,
as the family forms in advanced industrial societies began to diversify, countervailing approaches rejected functionalism’s stress on social equilibrium
and focused instead on processes such as conflict, power, and inequality that
earlier theories ignored or downplayed. Conflict theories stressed the clash
of divergent interests within and among families, especially along the axes of
age, gender, and class. Early feminist approaches argued that gender inequality is both unnecessary and dysfunctional. More recent social-constructionist
frameworks have focused on how human actors construct diverse family
forms in response to social opportunities, constraints, and contradictions.
In this way, changing theoretical accounts of family life reflect the need to
account for new empirical developments.
THE SEARCH FOR FAMILY UNIVERSALS
The systematic study of family life began in earnest in the early nineteenth
century, when anthropologists observing daily life in premodern societies

Changing Family Patterns

3

sought to explain why some family practices existed in all societies, but took
different forms in different contexts. In New Guinea, Malinowski [1913]
(1964) found a kinship system noticeably different than the nuclear family
household common in turn-of-the-century Europe. In the Trobriand islander
“avuncular” society, biological fathers resided with their offspring, but were
not recognized by others as their father. Instead, maternal uncles provided
their sisters’ children with social status and were deemed their “social
father.” Malinowski concluded that societies may vary in who is defined as
the social father, but all societies have a “principle of legitimacy” in which a
designated father provides social placement.
Decades later, Levi-Strauss [1957] (1964) proposed another family universal, the “principle of reciprocity” to explain the incest taboo. He argued that
these taboos exist not to prevent inbreeding and tainted gene pools (as people in premodern societies are unaware of the science of genetics) but rather
to force clans and close-knit groupings to reach across kinship boundaries
to form alliances with others. By outlawing intraclan marriage, incest taboos
make society possible. The principles of legitimacy and reciprocity provided a
framework for decades of subsequent research, but they also inspired extensive revision as social scientists learned more about how family practices vary
throughout human history and among contemporary societies.
Feminist anthropologists questioned the assumption of men’s monopoly on
power—or patriarchy—that underlies these arguments. Their field studies
found thriving systems of economic exchange among women and a variety of
gender patterns. Today, the importance of legitimacy as a form of social placement has declined as modern economies have eroded the power of socially
designated fathers. The principle of reciprocity has also undergone revision.
While incest taboos remain one of the few family universals, they need not
be based on the presumption of a worldwide patriarchal system in which
women are traded among powerful men (Rubin, [1975] 2011). In the modern world, men cannot require their daughters or other women relatives to
become wives in a group ruled by another man.
INDUSTRIALISM, THE NUCLEAR FAMILY, AND THE SEX ROLES PARADIGM
Following in the footsteps of early anthropological studies, sociologists
extended the logic of structural functionalism to family practices in industrial societies. Drawing on Weber’s concept of “elective affinity,” Goode
(1963) saw a fit between the emergence of a worldwide market economy
requiring a socially and geographically mobile labor force and a family system organized around an autonomous married couple freed from parental
control and able to respond to economic opportunities. He called this the
conjugal family.

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

Functionalists such as Parsons and Bales (1954) focused on a process of
“structural differentiation” in which the family specialized in emotional support and childhood socialization as other tasks, such as the production of
goods and education of the young, moved from the home to the factory and
school. Parsons and his colleagues used a “sex roles” paradigm to argue that
breadwinner-homemaker households meet the functional requirements of
modern societies. Husbands contribute to a family’s survival by performing “instrumental” functions, such as earning income, and wives specialize
in the “expressive” functions associated with rearing children and meeting
their family’s emotional needs.
These theories provided an influential framework for analyzing family life
in industrial societies, especially following World War II, when almost 60%
of US households consisted of a married couple with a single (male) earner,
but they also sparked critical responses. Critics argued that the functionalist
framework prescribes how families should be organized rather than explaining the diverse ways that modern families are organized. Feminist historians noted that the rise of the industrial system did not predetermine gender
differentiation, detailing how the ideology of feminine domesticity rose to
justify rather than explain women’s relegation to the private sphere. Feminist economists examined how men’s efforts to secure a “family wage” left
women segregated in occupations with lower pay and less job security (Hartmann, 1976). These and other critiques rejected the argument that industrialization inevitably required a family structure based on a gender division
between paid and unpaid work, arguing instead that the model of separate
spheres and privatized nuclear families emerged from a protracted process
of political and social struggle.
POST-INDUSTRIALISM AND ACCOUNTING FOR FAMILY DIVERSITY
The predominance of the breadwinner-homemaker family as a demographic
reality and a cultural ideal proved to be short-lived. The past three decades of
the twentieth century witnessed interrelated worldwide trends—including
rapid rises in women’s employment, marital separation, cohabitation,
delayed marriage, and single parenthood—that undermined the hegemony
of the two-parent, gender differentiated household. As the twenty-first century arrived, alternative forms, such as two-income couples, single-parent
households, same-sex couples, and unmarried single adults, outnumbered
“traditional” families in the United States and most other affluent societies.
Rather than static family types, today’s families are increasingly fluid, with
most households changing their composition and organization over time.
Indeed, the image of family pathways may now provide a more useful way
to understand family life than the notion of static family types (Gerson, 2011).

Changing Family Patterns

5

Growing family diversity has prompted analysts to question the empirical accuracy of structural-functional theories. “Family decline” theorists see
traditional marriage as ideal but argue that cultural forces stressing individualism have undermined its viability and legitimacy (Popenoe, Elshtain,
& Blankenhorn, 1996). Rational choice and conflict theories emphasize the
role of self-interest in family formation and functioning. Becker (1981) pioneered a “new home economics” that sees everyone as a rational actor, but
argues that men find it rational to maximize their earnings by specializing
in market work while women find it rational to offset their market ties with
unpaid caretaking. Although the rational action framework replaces a theory
of gendered personalities with a human capital approach, it reaches similar
conclusions about gender-based allocation of family tasks.
Conflict theory, in contrast, sees the domestic sphere as a site of conflicting interests. Collins (1971) argues that historical changes in family structure
reflect shifts in how social systems organize power and allocate resources,
especially along the axes of gender and age. In this framework, advanced
market societies create conditions for more equal forms of sexual exchange
by limiting men’s ability to impose their will through physical force and by
enhancing women’s access to economic resources in the labor market.
Feminists have also focused on inequality within and between families, but
they have taken different positions about its causes and consequences. Some
approaches accept gender differences in personality, but see these differences
as unnecessary and unjust. Chodorow (1978) contends that gender asymmetry in parenting creates a circular process of gender differentiation, but equal
parenting provides a healthier psychological blueprint for everyone.
As post-industrialism has brought household diversity and fluidity, ethnographers (Stack, 1974), survey analysts (Sarkisian & Gerstel, 2012), and theorists (Collins, 1991) have charted how families defy the model of an isolated
nuclear household by constructing networks of real and fictive kin as strategies of survival, especially in poor and working-class neighborhoods. Others
have turned their attention to how social actors construct contemporary families in response to constrained options. Social-constructionists argue that the
family is a site where people “do gender” through their interactions (West
& Zimmerman, 1987). Others point to the ways that post-industrial families
exist in uneasy tension with other social institutions, creating a stalled revolution (Hochschild & Machung, 1989) in which privatized caretaking and
time-demanding workplaces conflict with the need to share and integrate
work and family life (Blair-Loy, 2003; Gerson, 2011). The emergence of new
family forms and practices has undermined earlier frameworks and raised
new questions about the future of family patterns throughout the world.

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

CUTTING-EDGE DEVELOPMENTS AND KEY ISSUES GOING FORWARD
If the 1950s produced a short-lived consensus on the “ideal nuclear family,”
the twenty-first century poses a series of puzzles about the future of family life. What is a family, and why has its definition become so contested?
What are the prospects for adult commitment and the future of marriage?
How has family change reshaped childhood and the transition to adulthood?
How are families connected to institutions outside the home, and how are
these links complicated by gender change and blurring boundaries between
public and private spheres? What role does family life play in structuring
social inequality? In addition, what social policies make sense in an era of
diverse family forms? These questions draw attention to the dislocations and
contradictions of family change, but they also point to new opportunities.
Twenty-first-century citizens have few blueprints for constructing their family lives, but they also have unprecedented options to create the families
they want.

WHAT IS A FAMILY?
From the early anthropological charting of kinship systems to current
analyses of proliferating family forms, defining “the family” has been
central to studying it. The question of what counts as a family—and who
can claim the social status and legal rights of family membership—has no
simple answer. While longstanding definitions typically refer to a group of
people who share some combination of legal and biological ties, the rise of
divorce, remarriage, same-sex relationships, new reproductive technologies,
and out-of-wedlock childbearing has complicated the classic definition.
Recent research has shown that Americans use a variety of criteria to decide
when a group of people is a family (Powell, Bolzendahl, Geist, & Steelman,
2010). Almost everyone agrees that marriage and parenthood make a family,
but significant numbers also consider unmarried couples without children
a family, and disagreement about who should be allowed to marry underlie
the heated political struggles over same-sex marriage.
Many controversies reflect disagreement between those who maintain a
traditional definition of the family as a household anchored by a married,
heterosexual couple and those who conceive of families more broadly. Examining the varying ways that individuals define “family”—and decide whom
they consider a member of their own family—is an important element of
charting the future of family life. This question turns attention to the beliefs,
norms, and values that inform multiple, and often conflicting, views of family membership and the rights and obligations of family members toward
each other and the wider society.

Changing Family Patterns

7

THE FUTURE OF MARRIAGE AND ADULT COMMITMENT
The emergence of acceptable alternatives to traditional marriage has transformed the social context in which adults form intimate commitments. The
rise in women’s employment has reduced financial pressures to marry and
to stay married. The sexual revolution and the expansion of contraception
have eased the social sanctions on sexual activity outside of marriage and
created opportunities for partnerships, such as same-sex relationships, once
considered taboo. Increased divorce has made it easier to leave a marriage
without being faulted. In addition, the extended life span has allowed adults
to postpone marriage and even reject it altogether. Taken together, these shifts
represent what Cherlin (2009) calls the “deinstitutionalization” of marriage,
which is now one option among many rather than a prerequisite for forming
a family.
The availability of cohabitation, serial relationships, gay partnerships, and
permanent singlehood has transformed the meaning of and reasons for getting married. Marriage remains highly valued, but it has become a voluntary
bond rather than a requirement for economic survival and social acceptance. Standards for mate selection are more likely to place interpersonal
factors, such as emotional connection and mutual interests, above
gender-linked traits such as a man’s economic prospects or a woman’s
housekeeping skills. When Coontz (2005) declares that “love has conquered
marriage,” she means that marital ties have become contingent on the
vicissitudes of the human heart. As people search for partners who can
meet their emotional desires, marriage to one partner for life will likely
remain but take its place amid other types of intimate partnerships and
more changeable adult commitments.
FAMILY STRUCTURES, FAMILY PROCESSES, AND CHILDREN’S WELL-BEING
Throughout the industrialized world, the rise of divorce, out-of-wedlock parenthood, and employment among mothers has changed the experience of
childhood. Children today are more likely to grow up in a home with two
employed parents, a single parent, or a same-sex couple and to experience
a change in their family composition before leaving home. Even children
whose parents stay together and whose mothers do not hold a paid job now
grow up in environments where their friends and relatives are likely to experience these life events.
These changes have fueled longstanding debates about the effects of
employed mothers or parental breakups on children. Despite concerns
about children whose mothers hold a paid job, decades of research show no
demonstrable harm. Instead, a mother’s satisfaction with work, the quality
of child care, and the involvement of the father and other caretakers matter
more for a child’s well-being.

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

The effects of growing up in a single-parent home or experiencing a
parental breakup are more complex. Children reared consistently by two
parents appear to fare better on a variety of measures, but this difference
shrinks significantly—and, on some measures, disappears—after controlling
for financial resources and parental conflict (Amato & Booth, 1997). Scholars
trace most negative consequences of parental separation to a high level
of conflict surrounding a breakup and a loss of financial stability. The
consequences of a parental separation—whether it reduces or increases
parental conflict, involvement, and economic support—matter more than
the event itself. Indeed, diversity within family types outstrips the differences between them, and family process is more important than family form
(Acock & Demo, 1994). As children are now likely to grow up in families
that change as they grow to adulthood, the key to their well-being is having
financial security and emotional support regardless of the form a family
takes at any point or the path it follows over time (Gerson, 2011).
The process of making the transition to adulthood has also changed. Events
such as leaving home, finishing school, getting a job, and marrying are more
likely to take place at later ages (Newman, 2012). As important, the markers people use to decide who is—and is not—an adult now stress a person’s
ability to support himself or herself rather than his or her marital or parental
status (Furstenberg, Rumbaut, & Settersten, 2005). These changes have produced a new life stage that some call “emerging adulthood” (Arnett, 2000).
Yet images of youth “failing to launch” do not capture the complex experiences of this life stage. Studies show that new generations hope to find a
lifelong partner and bear children within an enduring relationship, but they
also believe they need time to develop their own identities, find the right
partner, and prepare for an uncertain future that requires more education
and training.
PARENTING, GENDER, AND WORK-FAMILY CONFLICT
Now that women are an integral part of the labor force and a critical source of
family income, the home and workplace are increasingly in conflict. Despite
the rise of dual-earner and single-parent families, an “ideal worker” ethos
continues to penalize family caretaking (Williams, 2001). In some countries,
such as the United States, parents face pressures to work long hours and juggle nonstandard schedules (Jacobs & Gerson, 2004).
Women, in particular, face contradictory pushes and pulls. At work, they
contend with a “motherhood penalty” that decreases earnings and erects barriers to advancement (Budig & England, 2001). Carework, whether paid or
unpaid, remains economically and socially undervalued. Yet, mothers also

Changing Family Patterns

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confront a norm of “intensive motherhood” that expects them to lavish time
and attention on their children (Hays, 1996).
The clash between family needs and workplace pressures has created time
crunches that stress parents and contribute to an unequal “second shift,”
where many employed mothers add domestic duties to their work schedules (Hochschild & Machung, 1989). Some evidence suggests that growing
work-family conflicts have contributed to declining birthrates, especially in
countries with few childcare supports. Women’s labor force participation
rates have leveled off in recent years, but there is little evidence that women
are “opting out” of paid work (Stone, 2007). Despite juggling family demands
with paid jobs, younger generations—both men and women—hope to share
work and domestic responsibilities (Gerson, 2011). Although fathers’ participation in childcare and housework lags behind that of mothers, the gender gap is shrinking (Sullivan & Coltrane, 2008). To lessen the work-family
conflicts that pervade much of the industrialized world, societies need to
restructure jobs and caretaking so that parents of all classes and genders can
integrate paid and domestic work.
FAMILIES, CLASS, AND SOCIAL INEQUALITY
The causes and consequences of inequality among families remain additional
contested areas. Do divergent life chances for individuals and households
reflect differences in family cultures or unequal opportunities? The cultural
perspective, recently exemplified by Annette Lareau’s study of workingand middle-class families (Lareau 2003), posits a circular link between class
cultures and the generational transmission of inequality. Lareau argues that
middle-class parents engage in “concerted cultivation,” scheduling children
in structured activities, stressing language skills, and imparting a sense of
entitlement when interacting with authorities. Working-class families, in
contrast, rear children according to “natural growth,” which involves an
unstructured approach to leisure, less attention to cognitive development,
and more deference to authority. These contrasting childrearing styles
leave working-class children at a disadvantage in negotiating middle-class
institutions.
The structural perspective focuses on how unequal opportunities shape
family outcomes. This approach points to the social and economic obstacles
facing poor and working-class families, especially when they are concentrated in disadvantaged neighborhoods with limited social and economic
resources. Still others posit an intersectional approach, which argues that
class, race, and gender intersect in complex ways that make it difficult—and
misleading—to distinguish among their separate effects (Collins, 1991).

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

In the debate about family inequality, empirical studies suggest that the
relationship between culture and structure is complex. Families in different
classes and ethnic subcultures may share many core values and practices
but still have different economic fates. A Black middle-class, for example,
has emerged amid the persistence of an African-American underclass (Wilson, 1980). Similarly, families in the same class may have different family
cultures, especially in multiracial and multiethnic societies. Moreover, intragenerational and intergenerational mobility varies across historical periods
and across countries with different social conditions and policies. Despite
the historic stress on equal opportunity in the United States, American class
mobility now lags behind much of Europe’s.
Drawing clear class boundaries has also become more complicated. Household composition tends to affect class position. Two-parent, dual income
families are more likely to enjoy economic stability, while a disproportionate
proportion of single-parent families headed by women remain poor. Yet
family composition—and its financial circumstances—can shift over time as
members marry, divorce, and change their labor force situation. The fluidity
of family life leaves many contemporary families living on a “fault line”
between maintaining their economic position and dropping below it (Rubin,
1994).
Family fluidity draws attention to how a range of factors—resources,
opportunities, and outlooks—shape the life chances of family members.
Understanding family inequality requires examining the full array of
supports and obstacles surrounding and within the household.
FAMILIES, POLITICS, AND SOCIAL POLICY
Uneven family change means that people today not only live in different
types of families but also have different outlooks on family life. Those who
support nontraditional options are more likely to favor policies, such as universal daycare, parental leave, and same-sex marriage, that ease the dilemmas facing new families. Those who disapprove are more likely to oppose
such policies. These conflicting views, and the political conflict they create,
make it difficult to assess prospects for the future. Family diversity is here to
stay, but so is the debate.
Different policy approaches exist among nations at similar levels of economic development. From Europe to Asia, post-industrial nations have experienced similar family shifts, such as women’s rising labor force participation,
the postponement of marriage, and the proliferation of nontraditional family forms. Yet the policy responses to these shared demographic trends are
diverse.
Some countries, especially in Scandinavia, have developed policies that
provide universal supports to all citizens, regardless of family situation. This

Changing Family Patterns

11

“egalitarian” approach includes paid parental leaves, universal daycare and
healthcare, free education, and anti-discrimination workplace policies. Other
countries encourage traditional family structures through a “familistic”
approach that offers women incentives to bear and rear children. Ironically,
countries that have resisted incorporating women into the public sphere
(such as Japan) are more likely to face a birth dearth as many young adults
postpone marriage and resist parenthood.
Some national policies, including the United States, adopt an “individualistic” approach that stresses equal opportunity. Unlike familistic approaches,
there is less concern for re-creating the traditional family through “maternalism” (Gornick & Meyers, 2009); but unlike egalitarian approaches, there is
less concern for diminishing work-family conflict or providing childcare support. Individualistic policies focus more on addressing workplace discrimination and less on providing universal supports for families and caretaking.
Countries vary in the extent to which they have addressed family change
and developed effective social policies to address it. Yet all post-industrial
societies must face the dislocations posed by these new family realities.
CONCLUSION
Family life, or what Goode called the familistic package, is a multidimensional
set of private experiences and public developments that leaves no one
untouched. The family is also an institution in continuous flux. Some family
shifts, such as the incorporation of women into paid work and the rise of
alternatives to permanent, gender-divided, heterosexual marriage, are so
deeply embedded into modern economic and social structures that they are
here to stay. Yet the individual and collective responses to these inexorable
demographic trends are not predetermined.
Is the family “declining,” or does the diversification of family forms represent resilience in the face of revolutionary social forces? Is it possible to
isolate one “best” family form, or does a variety of family practices better
fit post-industrial exigencies? How do adults balance personal autonomy
and lifelong commitment, and how do parents choose between earning and
caretaking? How do children cope with growing up in changing families
and negotiating uncertain adulthoods? How do societies address growing
inequalities among family forms and growing conflicts between the home
and the workplace?
These questions point to how intertwined and reinforcing social changes
have created new opportunities, but also new insecurities, dilemmas,
and controversies. Twenty-first-century citizens face family options that
their parents and grandparents could barely imagine; the future of family
life will depend on how individual and collective actors respond to the

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

inconsistencies and contradictions of change. Family change is inescapable,
but its long-term outcomes are not preordained. The challenge will be
finding common ground for addressing the needs of diverse families and
realigning public and private institutions to better fit the new circumstances
of family life.
REFERENCES
Acock, A. C., & Demo, D. H. (1994). Family diversity and well-being. Thousand Oaks,
CA: Sage Publication.
Amato, P. R., & Booth, A. (1997). A generation at risk: Growing up in an era of family
upheaval. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Arnett, J. J. (2000). Emerging adulthood: A theory of development from the late teens
through the twenties. American Psychologist, 55, 469–480.
Becker, G. S. (1981). A treatise on the family. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press.
Blair-Loy, M. (2003). Competing devotions: Career and family among women executives.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Budig, M. J., & England, P. (2001). The wage penalty for motherhood. American Sociological Review, 66, 204–225.
Chodorow, N. (1978). The reproduction of mothering: Psychoanalysis and the
sociology of gender. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Collins, P. H. (1991). Black feminist thought: Knowledge, consciousness, and the politics of
empowerment. London, England: Routledge.
Collins, R. (1971). A conflict theory of sex stratification. Social Problems, 19, 3–21.
Furstenberg, F. F., Rumbaut, R. G., & Settersten, R. A. (Eds.) (2005). On the frontier of
adulthood: Emerging themes and new directions. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago
Press.
Gerson, K. (2011). The unfinished revolution: Coming of age in a new era of gender, work,
and family. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Goode, W. J. (1963). World revolution and family patterns. New York, NY: Free Press.
Hartmann, H. (1976). Capitalism, the family, and job segregation by sex. Signs, 1(3),
137–169.
Hays, S. (1996). The cultural contradictions of motherhood. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Hochschild, A. R., & Machung, A. (1989). The second shift: Working parents and the
revolution at home. New York, NY: Viking.
Jacobs, J. A., & Gerson, K. (2004). The time divide: Work, family, and gender inequality.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Lareau, A. (2003). Unequal childhoods: Class, race, and family life. Berkeley: University
of California Press.
Levi-Strauss, C. [1957] (1964). Reciprocity, the Essence of Social Life. In R. L. Coser
(Ed.), The Family: Its Structure and Functions (pp. 3–14). New York, NY: St. Martins
Press.

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13

Malinowski, B. [1913] (1964). Parenthood, the Basis of Social Structure. In R. L. Coser
(Ed.), The Family: Its Structure and Functions (pp. 51–63). New York, NY: St. Martins
Press.
Newman, K. S. (2012). The accordion family: Boomerang kids, anxious parents, and the
private toll of global competition. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.
Parsons, T., & Bales, R. F. (1954). Family, socialization, and interaction process. Glencoe,
IL: Free Press.
Popenoe, D., Elshtain, J. B., & Blankenhorn, D. (1996). Promises to keep: Decline and
renewal of marriage in America. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
Powell, B., Bolzendahl, C., Geist, C., & Steelman, L. C. (2010). Counted out: Same-sex
relations and American’s definitions of family. New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation.
Rubin, G. S. (2011). The traffic in women: Notes on the ‘political economy’ of sex. In
Deviations: A Gayle Rubin reader (pp. 33–64). Durham, NC: Duke University Press
[1975].
Rubin, L. B. (1994). Families on the fault line. New York, NY: HarperCollins.
Stack, C. B. (1974). All our kin: Strategies for survival in a black community. New York,
NY: Harper and Row.
Stone, P. (2007). Opting out? Why women really quit careers and head home. Berkeley:
University of California Press.
Sullivan, O., & Coltrane, S. (2008). Men’s changing contribution to housework and child
care. Chicago, IL: Council on Contemporary Families Briefing Paper (April 25).
West, C., & Zimmerman, D. (1987). Doing gender. Gender and Society, 1, 125–151.
Williams, J. C. (2001). Unbending gender: Why family and work conflict and what to do
about it. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

FURTHER READING
Cherlin, A. J. (2009). The marriage-go-round: The state of marriage and the family in America today. New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf.
Coontz, S. (2005). Marriage, a history: From obedience to intimacy, or how love conquered
marriage. New York, NY: Viking.
Gornick, J. C., & Meyers, M. K. (2009). Gender equality: Transforming family divisions of
labor. New York, NY: Verso Books.
Risman, B. J. (Ed.) (2010). Families as they really are. New York, NY: W.W. Norton.
Sarkisian, N., & Gerstel, N. (2012). Nuclear family values, extended family lives: The
importance of gender, race, and class. New York: Routledge.

KATHLEEN GERSON SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Kathleen Gerson is Professor of Sociology and Collegiate Professor of Arts
and Science at New York University. Her research focuses on gender, work,
and family life, with an eye to understanding the work and family pathways
emerging in the United States and other post-industrial societies. As a

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

specialist in conducting and analyzing qualitative interviews, her research
combines the deep understandings of in-depth, life history interviews with
the rigor of systematically collected samples and carefully situated comparisons. Professor Gerson’s most recent book, The Unfinished Revolution:
Coming of Age in a New Era of Gender, Work, and Family (Oxford, 2011)
received the William J. Goode Distinguished Book Award, awarded by
the American Sociological Association. Her other books include The Time
Divide: Work, Family, and Gender Inequality (with Jerry A. Jacobs, Harvard,
2004), No Man’s Land: Men’s Changing Commitments to Work and Family
(Basic Books, 1993), and Hard Choices: How Women Decide about Work,
Career, and Motherhood (California, 1985). She is currently at work on two
books, a study of work and care in the new economy, which is based on
interviews with contemporary workers and their families, and a book on the
theory and method of in-depth interviewing.
Her website links include:
www.KathleenGerson.com;
http://sociology.fas.nyu.edu/object/kathleengerson
STACY TORRES SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Stacy Torres is a PhD candidate in sociology at New York University. Her
research focuses on community, aging, and social relationships. To understand the lived experience of aging in place, she has conducted a 4.5-year,
multisited ethnographic study following a group of older adults as they have
coped with gentrification and the closing of neighborhood establishments,
the accumulated losses of neighbors, friends, and family, health setbacks,
financial struggles, and other everyday challenges. Her writing has appeared
in The New York Times, The New York Daily News, Slate, Reuters, and Contexts, among other publications.
Her website links include:
http://sociology.fas.nyu.edu/object/soc.stacy_torres

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Changing Family Patterns
KATHLEEN GERSON and STACY TORRES

Abstract
All societies have families, but their form varies greatly across time and space. The
history of the family is thus one of changing family forms, which result from the interplay of shifting social and economic conditions, diverse and contested ideals, and the
attempts of ordinary people to build their lives amid the constraints of their particular time and place. Because the family is a site of our most intimate experiences, the
study of families tends to prompt heated theoretical and empirical debate. From the
early anthropological charting of kinship systems to current analyses of proliferating
family forms, studying the family has been a contested terrain. If the 1950s produced
a short-lived consensus on the “ideal nuclear family,” the current context of rapid
family change poses a series of puzzles and paradoxes. What is a family, and why has
its definition become so controversial? What are the emerging contours of adult commitment, and what is the future of marriage? How is family life linked to institutions
outside the home, and how are the boundaries between public and private spheres
blurring? What role does family life play in the structuring of social inequality? In
addition, what are the prospects for creating social policies that meet the needs of
diverse family forms? These questions draw our attention to the dislocations and
contradictions of family change, but they also point to new opportunities to build
more just and humane family forms. The challenge will be to find common ground
for addressing the needs of diverse families and realigning both public and private
institutions to better fit the circumstances of family life in the twenty-first century.

INTRODUCTION
The family is an institution of paradoxes. All societies have families, but their
form varies across time and space. The family is a site of our most intimate
experiences, but it is shaped by a range of impersonal forces far beyond its
boundaries. In addition, as few areas of social life are more complex, its ubiquity creates a sense of easy understanding. It is thus no surprise that the study
of families is subject to heated debate.
Understanding the family as a social institution is challenging for several
reasons. We are all connected to family life in some way, which encourages a
belief in our expertise even without wider knowledge. Personal experiences
also encourage strong, emotionally charged views about family life. The
Emerging Trends in the Social and Behavioral Sciences. Edited by Robert Scott and Stephen Kosslyn.
© 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. ISBN 978-1-118-90077-2.

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

family is so closely linked to the desire for human happiness that it invites
searches for an ideal form, even though one person’s utopian dream can
easily become another’s nightmare.
It may not be possible—or desirable—to disavow the values we bring to
understanding the family, but it is essential to distinguish the analysis of family patterns from the evaluation of family change. The study of family life
requires viewing the family from the “outside”—as a product of historically
specific social conditions and forces. The history of the family is a history of
changing patterns, which result from the interplay of shifting social conditions, contested ideals, and people’s attempts to build their lives amid the
constraints of their time and place. To paraphrase Marx, people make families, but not under conditions of their own choosing. The challenge is to decipher how, why, and with what consequences these interacting forces have
brought us to where we are today and how they shape the possibilities for
where we are likely to go.
FOUNDATIONAL RESEARCH
Research on the family reflects many of the theoretical debates in the social
sciences more generally. From early anthropological studies of kinship
systems in small scale societies to the mid-twentieth century focus on
breadwinner-homemaker households to contemporary concern with diverse
family forms, historical shifts in family patterns have inspired—and
required—new explanatory frameworks.
The first major paradigm, structural-functionalism, grew out of a search
for universal family forms and then focused on the rise of gender-divided,
nuclear households in the industrialized West. In the late twentieth century,
as the family forms in advanced industrial societies began to diversify, countervailing approaches rejected functionalism’s stress on social equilibrium
and focused instead on processes such as conflict, power, and inequality that
earlier theories ignored or downplayed. Conflict theories stressed the clash
of divergent interests within and among families, especially along the axes of
age, gender, and class. Early feminist approaches argued that gender inequality is both unnecessary and dysfunctional. More recent social-constructionist
frameworks have focused on how human actors construct diverse family
forms in response to social opportunities, constraints, and contradictions.
In this way, changing theoretical accounts of family life reflect the need to
account for new empirical developments.
THE SEARCH FOR FAMILY UNIVERSALS
The systematic study of family life began in earnest in the early nineteenth
century, when anthropologists observing daily life in premodern societies

Changing Family Patterns

3

sought to explain why some family practices existed in all societies, but took
different forms in different contexts. In New Guinea, Malinowski [1913]
(1964) found a kinship system noticeably different than the nuclear family
household common in turn-of-the-century Europe. In the Trobriand islander
“avuncular” society, biological fathers resided with their offspring, but were
not recognized by others as their father. Instead, maternal uncles provided
their sisters’ children with social status and were deemed their “social
father.” Malinowski concluded that societies may vary in who is defined as
the social father, but all societies have a “principle of legitimacy” in which a
designated father provides social placement.
Decades later, Levi-Strauss [1957] (1964) proposed another family universal, the “principle of reciprocity” to explain the incest taboo. He argued that
these taboos exist not to prevent inbreeding and tainted gene pools (as people in premodern societies are unaware of the science of genetics) but rather
to force clans and close-knit groupings to reach across kinship boundaries
to form alliances with others. By outlawing intraclan marriage, incest taboos
make society possible. The principles of legitimacy and reciprocity provided a
framework for decades of subsequent research, but they also inspired extensive revision as social scientists learned more about how family practices vary
throughout human history and among contemporary societies.
Feminist anthropologists questioned the assumption of men’s monopoly on
power—or patriarchy—that underlies these arguments. Their field studies
found thriving systems of economic exchange among women and a variety of
gender patterns. Today, the importance of legitimacy as a form of social placement has declined as modern economies have eroded the power of socially
designated fathers. The principle of reciprocity has also undergone revision.
While incest taboos remain one of the few family universals, they need not
be based on the presumption of a worldwide patriarchal system in which
women are traded among powerful men (Rubin, [1975] 2011). In the modern world, men cannot require their daughters or other women relatives to
become wives in a group ruled by another man.
INDUSTRIALISM, THE NUCLEAR FAMILY, AND THE SEX ROLES PARADIGM
Following in the footsteps of early anthropological studies, sociologists
extended the logic of structural functionalism to family practices in industrial societies. Drawing on Weber’s concept of “elective affinity,” Goode
(1963) saw a fit between the emergence of a worldwide market economy
requiring a socially and geographically mobile labor force and a family system organized around an autonomous married couple freed from parental
control and able to respond to economic opportunities. He called this the
conjugal family.

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

Functionalists such as Parsons and Bales (1954) focused on a process of
“structural differentiation” in which the family specialized in emotional support and childhood socialization as other tasks, such as the production of
goods and education of the young, moved from the home to the factory and
school. Parsons and his colleagues used a “sex roles” paradigm to argue that
breadwinner-homemaker households meet the functional requirements of
modern societies. Husbands contribute to a family’s survival by performing “instrumental” functions, such as earning income, and wives specialize
in the “expressive” functions associated with rearing children and meeting
their family’s emotional needs.
These theories provided an influential framework for analyzing family life
in industrial societies, especially following World War II, when almost 60%
of US households consisted of a married couple with a single (male) earner,
but they also sparked critical responses. Critics argued that the functionalist
framework prescribes how families should be organized rather than explaining the diverse ways that modern families are organized. Feminist historians noted that the rise of the industrial system did not predetermine gender
differentiation, detailing how the ideology of feminine domesticity rose to
justify rather than explain women’s relegation to the private sphere. Feminist economists examined how men’s efforts to secure a “family wage” left
women segregated in occupations with lower pay and less job security (Hartmann, 1976). These and other critiques rejected the argument that industrialization inevitably required a family structure based on a gender division
between paid and unpaid work, arguing instead that the model of separate
spheres and privatized nuclear families emerged from a protracted process
of political and social struggle.
POST-INDUSTRIALISM AND ACCOUNTING FOR FAMILY DIVERSITY
The predominance of the breadwinner-homemaker family as a demographic
reality and a cultural ideal proved to be short-lived. The past three decades of
the twentieth century witnessed interrelated worldwide trends—including
rapid rises in women’s employment, marital separation, cohabitation,
delayed marriage, and single parenthood—that undermined the hegemony
of the two-parent, gender differentiated household. As the twenty-first century arrived, alternative forms, such as two-income couples, single-parent
households, same-sex couples, and unmarried single adults, outnumbered
“traditional” families in the United States and most other affluent societies.
Rather than static family types, today’s families are increasingly fluid, with
most households changing their composition and organization over time.
Indeed, the image of family pathways may now provide a more useful way
to understand family life than the notion of static family types (Gerson, 2011).

Changing Family Patterns

5

Growing family diversity has prompted analysts to question the empirical accuracy of structural-functional theories. “Family decline” theorists see
traditional marriage as ideal but argue that cultural forces stressing individualism have undermined its viability and legitimacy (Popenoe, Elshtain,
& Blankenhorn, 1996). Rational choice and conflict theories emphasize the
role of self-interest in family formation and functioning. Becker (1981) pioneered a “new home economics” that sees everyone as a rational actor, but
argues that men find it rational to maximize their earnings by specializing
in market work while women find it rational to offset their market ties with
unpaid caretaking. Although the rational action framework replaces a theory
of gendered personalities with a human capital approach, it reaches similar
conclusions about gender-based allocation of family tasks.
Conflict theory, in contrast, sees the domestic sphere as a site of conflicting interests. Collins (1971) argues that historical changes in family structure
reflect shifts in how social systems organize power and allocate resources,
especially along the axes of gender and age. In this framework, advanced
market societies create conditions for more equal forms of sexual exchange
by limiting men’s ability to impose their will through physical force and by
enhancing women’s access to economic resources in the labor market.
Feminists have also focused on inequality within and between families, but
they have taken different positions about its causes and consequences. Some
approaches accept gender differences in personality, but see these differences
as unnecessary and unjust. Chodorow (1978) contends that gender asymmetry in parenting creates a circular process of gender differentiation, but equal
parenting provides a healthier psychological blueprint for everyone.
As post-industrialism has brought household diversity and fluidity, ethnographers (Stack, 1974), survey analysts (Sarkisian & Gerstel, 2012), and theorists (Collins, 1991) have charted how families defy the model of an isolated
nuclear household by constructing networks of real and fictive kin as strategies of survival, especially in poor and working-class neighborhoods. Others
have turned their attention to how social actors construct contemporary families in response to constrained options. Social-constructionists argue that the
family is a site where people “do gender” through their interactions (West
& Zimmerman, 1987). Others point to the ways that post-industrial families
exist in uneasy tension with other social institutions, creating a stalled revolution (Hochschild & Machung, 1989) in which privatized caretaking and
time-demanding workplaces conflict with the need to share and integrate
work and family life (Blair-Loy, 2003; Gerson, 2011). The emergence of new
family forms and practices has undermined earlier frameworks and raised
new questions about the future of family patterns throughout the world.

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

CUTTING-EDGE DEVELOPMENTS AND KEY ISSUES GOING FORWARD
If the 1950s produced a short-lived consensus on the “ideal nuclear family,”
the twenty-first century poses a series of puzzles about the future of family life. What is a family, and why has its definition become so contested?
What are the prospects for adult commitment and the future of marriage?
How has family change reshaped childhood and the transition to adulthood?
How are families connected to institutions outside the home, and how are
these links complicated by gender change and blurring boundaries between
public and private spheres? What role does family life play in structuring
social inequality? In addition, what social policies make sense in an era of
diverse family forms? These questions draw attention to the dislocations and
contradictions of family change, but they also point to new opportunities.
Twenty-first-century citizens have few blueprints for constructing their family lives, but they also have unprecedented options to create the families
they want.

WHAT IS A FAMILY?
From the early anthropological charting of kinship systems to current
analyses of proliferating family forms, defining “the family” has been
central to studying it. The question of what counts as a family—and who
can claim the social status and legal rights of family membership—has no
simple answer. While longstanding definitions typically refer to a group of
people who share some combination of legal and biological ties, the rise of
divorce, remarriage, same-sex relationships, new reproductive technologies,
and out-of-wedlock childbearing has complicated the classic definition.
Recent research has shown that Americans use a variety of criteria to decide
when a group of people is a family (Powell, Bolzendahl, Geist, & Steelman,
2010). Almost everyone agrees that marriage and parenthood make a family,
but significant numbers also consider unmarried couples without children
a family, and disagreement about who should be allowed to marry underlie
the heated political struggles over same-sex marriage.
Many controversies reflect disagreement between those who maintain a
traditional definition of the family as a household anchored by a married,
heterosexual couple and those who conceive of families more broadly. Examining the varying ways that individuals define “family”—and decide whom
they consider a member of their own family—is an important element of
charting the future of family life. This question turns attention to the beliefs,
norms, and values that inform multiple, and often conflicting, views of family membership and the rights and obligations of family members toward
each other and the wider society.

Changing Family Patterns

7

THE FUTURE OF MARRIAGE AND ADULT COMMITMENT
The emergence of acceptable alternatives to traditional marriage has transformed the social context in which adults form intimate commitments. The
rise in women’s employment has reduced financial pressures to marry and
to stay married. The sexual revolution and the expansion of contraception
have eased the social sanctions on sexual activity outside of marriage and
created opportunities for partnerships, such as same-sex relationships, once
considered taboo. Increased divorce has made it easier to leave a marriage
without being faulted. In addition, the extended life span has allowed adults
to postpone marriage and even reject it altogether. Taken together, these shifts
represent what Cherlin (2009) calls the “deinstitutionalization” of marriage,
which is now one option among many rather than a prerequisite for forming
a family.
The availability of cohabitation, serial relationships, gay partnerships, and
permanent singlehood has transformed the meaning of and reasons for getting married. Marriage remains highly valued, but it has become a voluntary
bond rather than a requirement for economic survival and social acceptance. Standards for mate selection are more likely to place interpersonal
factors, such as emotional connection and mutual interests, above
gender-linked traits such as a man’s economic prospects or a woman’s
housekeeping skills. When Coontz (2005) declares that “love has conquered
marriage,” she means that marital ties have become contingent on the
vicissitudes of the human heart. As people search for partners who can
meet their emotional desires, marriage to one partner for life will likely
remain but take its place amid other types of intimate partnerships and
more changeable adult commitments.
FAMILY STRUCTURES, FAMILY PROCESSES, AND CHILDREN’S WELL-BEING
Throughout the industrialized world, the rise of divorce, out-of-wedlock parenthood, and employment among mothers has changed the experience of
childhood. Children today are more likely to grow up in a home with two
employed parents, a single parent, or a same-sex couple and to experience
a change in their family composition before leaving home. Even children
whose parents stay together and whose mothers do not hold a paid job now
grow up in environments where their friends and relatives are likely to experience these life events.
These changes have fueled longstanding debates about the effects of
employed mothers or parental breakups on children. Despite concerns
about children whose mothers hold a paid job, decades of research show no
demonstrable harm. Instead, a mother’s satisfaction with work, the quality
of child care, and the involvement of the father and other caretakers matter
more for a child’s well-being.

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

The effects of growing up in a single-parent home or experiencing a
parental breakup are more complex. Children reared consistently by two
parents appear to fare better on a variety of measures, but this difference
shrinks significantly—and, on some measures, disappears—after controlling
for financial resources and parental conflict (Amato & Booth, 1997). Scholars
trace most negative consequences of parental separation to a high level
of conflict surrounding a breakup and a loss of financial stability. The
consequences of a parental separation—whether it reduces or increases
parental conflict, involvement, and economic support—matter more than
the event itself. Indeed, diversity within family types outstrips the differences between them, and family process is more important than family form
(Acock & Demo, 1994). As children are now likely to grow up in families
that change as they grow to adulthood, the key to their well-being is having
financial security and emotional support regardless of the form a family
takes at any point or the path it follows over time (Gerson, 2011).
The process of making the transition to adulthood has also changed. Events
such as leaving home, finishing school, getting a job, and marrying are more
likely to take place at later ages (Newman, 2012). As important, the markers people use to decide who is—and is not—an adult now stress a person’s
ability to support himself or herself rather than his or her marital or parental
status (Furstenberg, Rumbaut, & Settersten, 2005). These changes have produced a new life stage that some call “emerging adulthood” (Arnett, 2000).
Yet images of youth “failing to launch” do not capture the complex experiences of this life stage. Studies show that new generations hope to find a
lifelong partner and bear children within an enduring relationship, but they
also believe they need time to develop their own identities, find the right
partner, and prepare for an uncertain future that requires more education
and training.
PARENTING, GENDER, AND WORK-FAMILY CONFLICT
Now that women are an integral part of the labor force and a critical source of
family income, the home and workplace are increasingly in conflict. Despite
the rise of dual-earner and single-parent families, an “ideal worker” ethos
continues to penalize family caretaking (Williams, 2001). In some countries,
such as the United States, parents face pressures to work long hours and juggle nonstandard schedules (Jacobs & Gerson, 2004).
Women, in particular, face contradictory pushes and pulls. At work, they
contend with a “motherhood penalty” that decreases earnings and erects barriers to advancement (Budig & England, 2001). Carework, whether paid or
unpaid, remains economically and socially undervalued. Yet, mothers also

Changing Family Patterns

9

confront a norm of “intensive motherhood” that expects them to lavish time
and attention on their children (Hays, 1996).
The clash between family needs and workplace pressures has created time
crunches that stress parents and contribute to an unequal “second shift,”
where many employed mothers add domestic duties to their work schedules (Hochschild & Machung, 1989). Some evidence suggests that growing
work-family conflicts have contributed to declining birthrates, especially in
countries with few childcare supports. Women’s labor force participation
rates have leveled off in recent years, but there is little evidence that women
are “opting out” of paid work (Stone, 2007). Despite juggling family demands
with paid jobs, younger generations—both men and women—hope to share
work and domestic responsibilities (Gerson, 2011). Although fathers’ participation in childcare and housework lags behind that of mothers, the gender gap is shrinking (Sullivan & Coltrane, 2008). To lessen the work-family
conflicts that pervade much of the industrialized world, societies need to
restructure jobs and caretaking so that parents of all classes and genders can
integrate paid and domestic work.
FAMILIES, CLASS, AND SOCIAL INEQUALITY
The causes and consequences of inequality among families remain additional
contested areas. Do divergent life chances for individuals and households
reflect differences in family cultures or unequal opportunities? The cultural
perspective, recently exemplified by Annette Lareau’s study of workingand middle-class families (Lareau 2003), posits a circular link between class
cultures and the generational transmission of inequality. Lareau argues that
middle-class parents engage in “concerted cultivation,” scheduling children
in structured activities, stressing language skills, and imparting a sense of
entitlement when interacting with authorities. Working-class families, in
contrast, rear children according to “natural growth,” which involves an
unstructured approach to leisure, less attention to cognitive development,
and more deference to authority. These contrasting childrearing styles
leave working-class children at a disadvantage in negotiating middle-class
institutions.
The structural perspective focuses on how unequal opportunities shape
family outcomes. This approach points to the social and economic obstacles
facing poor and working-class families, especially when they are concentrated in disadvantaged neighborhoods with limited social and economic
resources. Still others posit an intersectional approach, which argues that
class, race, and gender intersect in complex ways that make it difficult—and
misleading—to distinguish among their separate effects (Collins, 1991).

10

EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

In the debate about family inequality, empirical studies suggest that the
relationship between culture and structure is complex. Families in different
classes and ethnic subcultures may share many core values and practices
but still have different economic fates. A Black middle-class, for example,
has emerged amid the persistence of an African-American underclass (Wilson, 1980). Similarly, families in the same class may have different family
cultures, especially in multiracial and multiethnic societies. Moreover, intragenerational and intergenerational mobility varies across historical periods
and across countries with different social conditions and policies. Despite
the historic stress on equal opportunity in the United States, American class
mobility now lags behind much of Europe’s.
Drawing clear class boundaries has also become more complicated. Household composition tends to affect class position. Two-parent, dual income
families are more likely to enjoy economic stability, while a disproportionate
proportion of single-parent families headed by women remain poor. Yet
family composition—and its financial circumstances—can shift over time as
members marry, divorce, and change their labor force situation. The fluidity
of family life leaves many contemporary families living on a “fault line”
between maintaining their economic position and dropping below it (Rubin,
1994).
Family fluidity draws attention to how a range of factors—resources,
opportunities, and outlooks—shape the life chances of family members.
Understanding family inequality requires examining the full array of
supports and obstacles surrounding and within the household.
FAMILIES, POLITICS, AND SOCIAL POLICY
Uneven family change means that people today not only live in different
types of families but also have different outlooks on family life. Those who
support nontraditional options are more likely to favor policies, such as universal daycare, parental leave, and same-sex marriage, that ease the dilemmas facing new families. Those who disapprove are more likely to oppose
such policies. These conflicting views, and the political conflict they create,
make it difficult to assess prospects for the future. Family diversity is here to
stay, but so is the debate.
Different policy approaches exist among nations at similar levels of economic development. From Europe to Asia, post-industrial nations have experienced similar family shifts, such as women’s rising labor force participation,
the postponement of marriage, and the proliferation of nontraditional family forms. Yet the policy responses to these shared demographic trends are
diverse.
Some countries, especially in Scandinavia, have developed policies that
provide universal supports to all citizens, regardless of family situation. This

Changing Family Patterns

11

“egalitarian” approach includes paid parental leaves, universal daycare and
healthcare, free education, and anti-discrimination workplace policies. Other
countries encourage traditional family structures through a “familistic”
approach that offers women incentives to bear and rear children. Ironically,
countries that have resisted incorporating women into the public sphere
(such as Japan) are more likely to face a birth dearth as many young adults
postpone marriage and resist parenthood.
Some national policies, including the United States, adopt an “individualistic” approach that stresses equal opportunity. Unlike familistic approaches,
there is less concern for re-creating the traditional family through “maternalism” (Gornick & Meyers, 2009); but unlike egalitarian approaches, there is
less concern for diminishing work-family conflict or providing childcare support. Individualistic policies focus more on addressing workplace discrimination and less on providing universal supports for families and caretaking.
Countries vary in the extent to which they have addressed family change
and developed effective social policies to address it. Yet all post-industrial
societies must face the dislocations posed by these new family realities.
CONCLUSION
Family life, or what Goode called the familistic package, is a multidimensional
set of private experiences and public developments that leaves no one
untouched. The family is also an institution in continuous flux. Some family
shifts, such as the incorporation of women into paid work and the rise of
alternatives to permanent, gender-divided, heterosexual marriage, are so
deeply embedded into modern economic and social structures that they are
here to stay. Yet the individual and collective responses to these inexorable
demographic trends are not predetermined.
Is the family “declining,” or does the diversification of family forms represent resilience in the face of revolutionary social forces? Is it possible to
isolate one “best” family form, or does a variety of family practices better
fit post-industrial exigencies? How do adults balance personal autonomy
and lifelong commitment, and how do parents choose between earning and
caretaking? How do children cope with growing up in changing families
and negotiating uncertain adulthoods? How do societies address growing
inequalities among family forms and growing conflicts between the home
and the workplace?
These questions point to how intertwined and reinforcing social changes
have created new opportunities, but also new insecurities, dilemmas,
and controversies. Twenty-first-century citizens face family options that
their parents and grandparents could barely imagine; the future of family
life will depend on how individual and collective actors respond to the

12

EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

inconsistencies and contradictions of change. Family change is inescapable,
but its long-term outcomes are not preordained. The challenge will be
finding common ground for addressing the needs of diverse families and
realigning public and private institutions to better fit the new circumstances
of family life.
REFERENCES
Acock, A. C., & Demo, D. H. (1994). Family diversity and well-being. Thousand Oaks,
CA: Sage Publication.
Amato, P. R., & Booth, A. (1997). A generation at risk: Growing up in an era of family
upheaval. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Arnett, J. J. (2000). Emerging adulthood: A theory of development from the late teens
through the twenties. American Psychologist, 55, 469–480.
Becker, G. S. (1981). A treatise on the family. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press.
Blair-Loy, M. (2003). Competing devotions: Career and family among women executives.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Budig, M. J., & England, P. (2001). The wage penalty for motherhood. American Sociological Review, 66, 204–225.
Chodorow, N. (1978). The reproduction of mothering: Psychoanalysis and the
sociology of gender. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Collins, P. H. (1991). Black feminist thought: Knowledge, consciousness, and the politics of
empowerment. London, England: Routledge.
Collins, R. (1971). A conflict theory of sex stratification. Social Problems, 19, 3–21.
Furstenberg, F. F., Rumbaut, R. G., & Settersten, R. A. (Eds.) (2005). On the frontier of
adulthood: Emerging themes and new directions. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago
Press.
Gerson, K. (2011). The unfinished revolution: Coming of age in a new era of gender, work,
and family. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Goode, W. J. (1963). World revolution and family patterns. New York, NY: Free Press.
Hartmann, H. (1976). Capitalism, the family, and job segregation by sex. Signs, 1(3),
137–169.
Hays, S. (1996). The cultural contradictions of motherhood. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Hochschild, A. R., & Machung, A. (1989). The second shift: Working parents and the
revolution at home. New York, NY: Viking.
Jacobs, J. A., & Gerson, K. (2004). The time divide: Work, family, and gender inequality.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Lareau, A. (2003). Unequal childhoods: Class, race, and family life. Berkeley: University
of California Press.
Levi-Strauss, C. [1957] (1964). Reciprocity, the Essence of Social Life. In R. L. Coser
(Ed.), The Family: Its Structure and Functions (pp. 3–14). New York, NY: St. Martins
Press.

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Malinowski, B. [1913] (1964). Parenthood, the Basis of Social Structure. In R. L. Coser
(Ed.), The Family: Its Structure and Functions (pp. 51–63). New York, NY: St. Martins
Press.
Newman, K. S. (2012). The accordion family: Boomerang kids, anxious parents, and the
private toll of global competition. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.
Parsons, T., & Bales, R. F. (1954). Family, socialization, and interaction process. Glencoe,
IL: Free Press.
Popenoe, D., Elshtain, J. B., & Blankenhorn, D. (1996). Promises to keep: Decline and
renewal of marriage in America. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
Powell, B., Bolzendahl, C., Geist, C., & Steelman, L. C. (2010). Counted out: Same-sex
relations and American’s definitions of family. New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation.
Rubin, G. S. (2011). The traffic in women: Notes on the ‘political economy’ of sex. In
Deviations: A Gayle Rubin reader (pp. 33–64). Durham, NC: Duke University Press
[1975].
Rubin, L. B. (1994). Families on the fault line. New York, NY: HarperCollins.
Stack, C. B. (1974). All our kin: Strategies for survival in a black community. New York,
NY: Harper and Row.
Stone, P. (2007). Opting out? Why women really quit careers and head home. Berkeley:
University of California Press.
Sullivan, O., & Coltrane, S. (2008). Men’s changing contribution to housework and child
care. Chicago, IL: Council on Contemporary Families Briefing Paper (April 25).
West, C., & Zimmerman, D. (1987). Doing gender. Gender and Society, 1, 125–151.
Williams, J. C. (2001). Unbending gender: Why family and work conflict and what to do
about it. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

FURTHER READING
Cherlin, A. J. (2009). The marriage-go-round: The state of marriage and the family in America today. New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf.
Coontz, S. (2005). Marriage, a history: From obedience to intimacy, or how love conquered
marriage. New York, NY: Viking.
Gornick, J. C., & Meyers, M. K. (2009). Gender equality: Transforming family divisions of
labor. New York, NY: Verso Books.
Risman, B. J. (Ed.) (2010). Families as they really are. New York, NY: W.W. Norton.
Sarkisian, N., & Gerstel, N. (2012). Nuclear family values, extended family lives: The
importance of gender, race, and class. New York: Routledge.

KATHLEEN GERSON SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Kathleen Gerson is Professor of Sociology and Collegiate Professor of Arts
and Science at New York University. Her research focuses on gender, work,
and family life, with an eye to understanding the work and family pathways
emerging in the United States and other post-industrial societies. As a

14

EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

specialist in conducting and analyzing qualitative interviews, her research
combines the deep understandings of in-depth, life history interviews with
the rigor of systematically collected samples and carefully situated comparisons. Professor Gerson’s most recent book, The Unfinished Revolution:
Coming of Age in a New Era of Gender, Work, and Family (Oxford, 2011)
received the William J. Goode Distinguished Book Award, awarded by
the American Sociological Association. Her other books include The Time
Divide: Work, Family, and Gender Inequality (with Jerry A. Jacobs, Harvard,
2004), No Man’s Land: Men’s Changing Commitments to Work and Family
(Basic Books, 1993), and Hard Choices: How Women Decide about Work,
Career, and Motherhood (California, 1985). She is currently at work on two
books, a study of work and care in the new economy, which is based on
interviews with contemporary workers and their families, and a book on the
theory and method of in-depth interviewing.
Her website links include:
www.KathleenGerson.com;
http://sociology.fas.nyu.edu/object/kathleengerson
STACY TORRES SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Stacy Torres is a PhD candidate in sociology at New York University. Her
research focuses on community, aging, and social relationships. To understand the lived experience of aging in place, she has conducted a 4.5-year,
multisited ethnographic study following a group of older adults as they have
coped with gentrification and the closing of neighborhood establishments,
the accumulated losses of neighbors, friends, and family, health setbacks,
financial struggles, and other everyday challenges. Her writing has appeared
in The New York Times, The New York Daily News, Slate, Reuters, and Contexts, among other publications.
Her website links include:
http://sociology.fas.nyu.edu/object/soc.stacy_torres

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