Question

READ: Families don’t form or evolve in a vacuum. Instead, the family and its environment – macro and micro – are interdependent.

ANSWER: What society-wide and/or cultural conditions impact families the most? How/Why? Consider things like technology, the economy (poverty, wealth, homelessness, the job market, etc.), historical events (war, natural disasters, etc.), social movements (globalization, civil rights movements, labor movements, etc.), legal issues.

What role does family policy play in the lives of individual families concerning these issues?

How and why do policymakers formalize a definition of family? What happens when these definitions conflict with the individuals’ definition of family?

Answer 1

Within the sociology of the family, one area that sociologists examine is the cultural factors that shape family structures and family processes. For example, how gender, age, race, and ethnicity influence family structure, and the relationships and practices within each family. They also look at the demographic characteristics of family members across and within cultures and how they have changed over time.

• Focus on the demographic makeup of families, and how this shifts over time or from place to place. For example, research has found that millennial adults are more likely to live at home with their parents than any other previous generation.
• How social class affects a family and how the family itself might help or hinder the social mobility of its members.
• Social dynamics within families, including the specific roles family members play in relation to one another, and what families do together on a daily basis and in the long-term. Those interested in this aspect will be fascinated by the findings of the American Time Use Survey, which took a close look at family dynamics.
• How social and economic change affects families.
• How the family as an institution interacts with other institutions and social organizations.
• The diversity that families and households take.

All social and economic policies affect families, but the term family policy usually refers to social programs, laws, and public directives designed to promote and enhance marriage, reproduction, and raising children. Family policy also ensures child protection and child and spousal support and attempts to resolve conflicts between work and family. The state usually initiates such policies, but employers or voluntary organizations may also establish them. Legislatures and governments that create laws and policy, as well as the agencies mandated and financed to enforce them, such as child welfare agencies, will be referred to as the state. This entry focuses on policies and social programs initiated by governments. It investigates how academics have studied these policies and how they have explained variations among nations.

Until the 1980s, many governments saw the family as the basic unit of social support and respected family privacy unless children were flagrantly neglected or abused, discipline problems were apparent, or parents were clearly impoverished. Nevertheless, the state in industrialized countries has regulated some aspects of family life for more than a century, requiring the registration of marriages, births, and deaths. It has also legalized marriage, adoption, and separation, and tried to ensure that men support their wives and children. The state has also provided income security and social services for families in need

Family is defined as “one or more persons occupying a single dwelling unit, provided that unless all members are related by blood or marriage, no such family shall contain over five persons, but further provided that domestic servants employed on the premises may be housed on the premises without being counted as a family or families."

Although governments have granted more privacy to middle-class families, most researchers and social workers now agree that some aspects of family life should be considered public and of importance to governments. They argue that parents must be required (and helped) to support their children, and that the safety of children, women, and the elderly needs to be protected within the home. Laws must prevent siblings from reproducing together or fathers from raping their daughters. In addition, parents with dependent children (especially mothers) often require help to resolve the growing conflicts between employment and child raising.

Family policy research often involves comparisons among nations (Bradshaw et al. 1996). Lone mothers and the postdivorce family are now the center of attention, especially welfare-to-work programs and policies about child custody and support. Family policy research tends to concentrate on sole mothers because their poverty rates are so high in liberal welfare regimes. When these mothers become employed, they tend to be overrepresented in low-paid jobs, but global labor markets are producing more of these jobs. The income gap is also growing between full-time and part-time workers, but family responsibilities make it difficult for some parents to work full-time without assistance. Family policies clearly need to address labor market issues such as pay equity, parental benefits, childcare services, and leave for family responsibilities.