Ancestry - Biological

Structure - Marriage, Adoption

Function - Finanical/ Emotional support

•  Social Institution - Family provides care so society has new productive members

• A family life is diverse, resilient and adaptive to new circumstance.
• Marriage is undergoing a revolutoin, not a crisis

• A family life is seriously degraded by movement away from marriage & children.
• Excessive individualism and self- indulgence

Unconscious decisions

• Not aware of all alternatives
• Pursure a course of action because it is common, seems easiest

1. Recognizing as many options and alternatives as possible
2. Considering conseqences of alternatives
3. Being aware of values and choosing to act consistently with them
4. Relation to families

• To Parent/ Not Parent

• Freedom of a child free union, rewards of parenthood, providing foster care

Most dramatic change of 20th century

• People are living significantly longer
• Life expertancy in 1900: 47 years
• Life expertancy in 2006: 78 years

Male or Female anatomy and physiology.

• Biological

1. Reflects the unsual way we think about being male & female.
• Beliefs about what is "normal" for woman and men
2. Organize out expectations
3. Simplify our life
4. Can limit choices

• Characterized by thoughts that when men have urgent sex drives, women are natually passive
• Men controlled women's sexuality
• Sex = reproduction (Marriage)

• Sexually is basic part of being human for both women and men.
• Sexually is more then just reproduction, enhances human intimacy.
• Used to express feelings and emotions

• Today peoplea re more cautions about risk of STDs
• However, majority of unmarried young adults do report having intercourse.
• More liberal sexual environment
• Potentially there are more satisfying sexual relationships
• Controversy over sex educaiton in public schools
• Abstinence Only: promotes abstinence as only chioce until marriage.
• Comprehensive: complete information on contraception and STD protection.

1. Intimacy: Close connected bonoded feelings
2. Passion: romance, phyical attraction

3. ·         Commitment: to love and maintain that love

• Dependence: reliance on another for continual support or assurance A-Frame

Each stick of an A is an independent

• Strong couple identity of self as indivdual

Independence: self-relience and self- suffciency H-frame

• Partners virtually stand alone, each self-sufficient, not much influence on each other

Interdependence: Degree of autonomy and sense of self, yet make commitment to another M-frame

• Sense of self with mutural influence and emotional support

• Almost 50% of the population
• Never-Married
• Growing tendency to postpone marriage until older Divorced

• Living arrangement in which two people who are not related and not married live together and most likely engage in a sexual relationship.
• Dramatic

Gain independence from parents

• Prove adulthood

Practical reasons (Large groups)

• Share expenses, chores, time, sexual accessibility

1. Pressure to parent:

• Pronatalist Bias - having children is taken for granted while not having children needs to be justifed

2. Pressure not to parent:

• Structural Antiatalism - US society doesn't provide enough support for parents and children

Reason for misbavior

• Attention seeking, boredom

What does H.A.L.T.S mean?

• H - Hungry
• A - Angry
• L - Late
• T - Tired
• S - Sick

What is Natural and Logical Conseqences?

• Natural - occur without parent intervention
• Logical - parent designed related to the behavior

• Parenting roles often conflict with working roles

• Parents are only one of several influences on children

• Parents advice abounds
• Not all experts agree
• Not all advice are helpful /wanted

1. Authoritarian
2. Authoritative
3. Laissez Faire

• Low on emotional nurturing and support but high on direction and control.
• Parent in charge, Final say
• Set and enforce rules

• Combines emotional nurturing and support wwith parental direction
• Consistently set limits, enforces rules, and consistently show love
• "Warm, firm and fair"

• Make few demands for responsibility or conduct
• Allow children to regulate their own behavior
• Few rules, inconsistently enforced
• Sometimes there very high on emotional nurturing

• Both partners are in the labor force
• Current norm among married couples

• Sources of paternal stress
• Difficult to find
• Hours of operation

• Male
• Conversation to convey information

• Female
• Conversation to reinforce relationships and intimacy

• Contempt
• Criticism
• Defensiveness
• Stonewalling

• Name calling, threats, humiliation
• Tearing someone down
• More freguent and devastatinng than physical violence
• Nearly always present in cases of physical violence

1. Tension Building
2. Violence
3. Honeymoon

1. Expected
2. Brief
3. Gradually improve over time

1. Sudden unexpected changed

• Natural disasters
• Promotion

2. Daily Family Hassles

• Balancing work/ family
• Transportation

• 40 % of First Marriage end in a divorce
• 8 years is the median length of First Marriage that ends in a divorce.

• Marriage partners are young (teens- early 20s)
• Brief engagement (brief dating)
• Few Years of education
• Multiple Marriage

• Unually starts first nice, than argument problems
• Thinking in terms of "I" instead of "We"
• Withheld postive emotions and communication
• Decision that marriage can't be saved

• Formal dissolution of the marriage
• No - Fault divorce since 1970s, no longer have to prove "grounds for divorce"

• Division of assets and debts
• Child Support
• Conflict over economic issues often continues long after legal divorce

• Informing children of the change
• Co-parents contiune to raise the children together
• Court agreements between partners regarding legal responsibilities

• Partners separate from each other emotionally
• Goal: Respectful indifference
• Go through "morning process"
• Some people never go thrugh this stage
• Pain, Anger, and Resentment Remain

Bi-nuclearr Family: two households, one family

• Couples maintain that civility and co-parent

1. In home care (paid service)
2. Assisted Living (nursing home)
3. Informal Care ( family-spouse, children, and siblings)

• While providing care can be positive & rewarding experience, caregivers have added demands & stress.
• Strains time/ enegry
• Complex decisions to make
• Complicated care regimens to follow
• Develop own health issues
• Social isolation/ depression