Family Life

The New Extended Family

The "new extended family," the stepfamily, the "recombinant family," the "blended family": by whatever name, such familial configurations became the standard in American society during the 1990s. The government estimated that by the year 2007, stepfamilies would outnumber traditional nuclear families. In 1999 there were already more than 5.5 million stepfamilies in the United States. Although the members of many stepfamilies made the necessary adjustments and compromises, there remained a sizable number of such families that struggled or failed. A variety of studies collectively demonstrated that stepchildren were more likely to become disciplinary problems, perform poorly in school, have to repeat a grade, or drop out of school altogether than children who lived in traditional, two-parent homes. American children living in stepfamilies were less likely to go to college or to receive financial support from their family if they did. Worse, according to the extensive research of Martin Daly and Margo Wilson of McMaster University in Ontario, stepchildren were more commonly the victims of physical and sexual abuse, and were one hundred times more likely to be killed by a stepparent than by their biological parents. Such studies fueled the conservative indictment of step-families as unnatural arrangements and the consequent push for stronger "pro-family" social policies designed to discourage divorce and preserve the traditional nuclear family. These measures included many ideas proffered by the nascent "marriage movement," such as marriage-friendly tax policies and "covenant marriages" that were intended to make divorce and remarriage more difficult. Meanwhile, critics argued that creating social policies to force unhappy and dysfunctional families to stay together was far riskier than life in a stepfamily.

Family Law

One possibility that emerged during the decade to strengthen stepfamilies was the effort to alter the legal status of stepparents. Like domestic partners, stepparents had almost no legal standing in most states, which meant that even when they assumed financial and emotional responsibility for their stepchildren, they had no corresponding rights. If the marriage ended, the stepparent had no legal right to request custody or visitation. During the 1990s family law was challenged in various ways in different jurisdictions with inconsistent results. Experts on the family will no doubt be arguing for legislation that will explicitly spell out both the rights and responsibilities of stepparents.

Changing Attitudes

Cultural and social change regarding steptamilies came even more slowly than legal change. Yet, by the end of the 1990s, there were unmistakable indications that longstanding attitudes were beginning to erode. In Kansas City, Missouri, for example, the Reverend Roger Coleman began to perform marriage ceremonies specifically designed to include children from previous unions, and thereby to help them overcome their confusion and insecurity. Coleman's ceremonies aimed to legitimize and celebrate the "new family." Changes also began to occur in public schools across the country. Through the efforts of the Step Family Association of America, school officials began to acknowledge the increasingly important role of stepparents, for example, by accepting their signatures on school registration forms and field-trip permission slips. Change was also evident in a marketplace eager to exploit a widening social trend. In a sign of the times, the Hallmark greeting-card company launched a line of cards devoted entirely to nontraditional families. The cards in the "Ties That Bind" series were aimed at persons who had come together as the result of remarriage. The message of some cards was straightforward: "There are so many different types and ways to be a family today." Others were more elliptical: "It's like looking at a puzzle where the pieces aren't where they used to be." Yet, all the cards were aimed at the vast and growing market of men, women, and children who no longer identified with the traditional definitions of family and were trying to find new ways to make their families work.

GENEALOGY

The 1990s saw a veritable explosion of interest by people seeking to learn more about their roots. Thanks to a host of computer programs and websites devoted to the subject, finding out about your family became easier than even According to one study, genealogy ranked with sex, finance, and sports as one of the biggest areas of interest on the Internet. For instance, one site, RootsWeb, received more than 160 million messages through its site in a single month. In April 1999 the largest repository of genealogy in the United States, the Church of Latter Day Saints (Mormon Church) announced that it would host a website that eventually will catalogue more than six hundred million names in an effort to help those looking for pieces of their family history.

Sources:

Marmot Hornblower and Melissa August, "Roots Mania," Time, 153(19 April 1999): 54-67.

Davul Jackson, "How to Program Your Family History," Tints, 153 (19 April 1999): 58-60.

GENERATION X

Although overshadowed by the seventy-eight million members of the Baby Boom generation, the forty-five million children born between 1965 and 1977 made themselves heard during the decade of the 1990s. Known as "Generation X, these youths were at first depicted as cynical, drifting, and lazy. But this portrayal was far from accurate. Unlike the Baby Boomers, who tended to grow up in affluent circumstances and who have come to accept prosperity as their due, Generation X could never presume on that kind of success. They grew up in the 1980s during a recession, witnessed increased divorce rates and the hard reality of homelessness, lived and loved in the shadow of AIDS, and entered a job market that was tight and less rewarding. Despite these obstacles, the "Gen Xers" have shown themselves to be hardworking, ambitious, and confident. Committed to a variety of social causes and yet dedicated to making money, this group of young people took hold of their futures. Representing an impressive S125 billion in purchasing power a year, Generation X is also the first group to have grown up with computers, and they have shown themselves to be savvy in the business world as well. Many believe that working hard will provide the key to obtaining the high quality of life that they desire.

Sources:

Margot Hornblower, "Great Xpcctations" Time, 149 (9 June 1997):

Karen Shocmcr, "Talking 'Bout Our Generation," Newsweek, 124 (26 December 1994): 32-34.

Sources:

Brad Edmondson and Judith Waldrop, "Married With Children," American Demographics, 15 (December 1993): 31-33.

Wray Herbert, Suzi Parker, and Stephen Sawicki, "When Strangers Become Family," U.S. News & World Report, Ml (29 November 1999): 58-67."

John K. Rosemond, "Blended Families … One Step At A Time," Better Homes & Gardens, 12 (February 1994): 56.

Elaine Fantle Shimberg, Blending Families (New York: Berkeley Books, 1999).

FAMILY LIFE

Change

Family life changed considerably in this decade. In 1960 married couples with children comprised 44.2 percent of American households; by 1980 this had dropped to 30.9 percent. The number of men living alone rose from 4.3 to 8.6 percent, and women living alone from 8.7 to 14 percent. The percentage of the population who never married also increased from 17.3 to 22.5. The median age at first marriage increased, as did the divorce rate, the number of births to unmarried mothers, and the number of adults in unmarried-couple households.

Explanations

Although the explanations for the increase in divorce vary, many experts believe that because the courts accepted mental cruelty as grounds for divorce and tended to award custody of children to their mothers, divorce and remarriage became more acceptable to and for women. Greater employment opportunities and economic independence for women also contributed to the increased divorce rate. Also, no-fault divorce laws passed by many states in the 1970s permitted couples with irreconcilable differences or incompatible relationships to end their marriages quickly and inexpensively on nonadversarial grounds.

Empty Nest Syndrome

American birth and fertility rates, which increased dramatically in the 1950s and declined rapidly in the 1960s and early 1970s, were fairly steady by 1975. Perhaps the most significant change in family life was the trend for young adults to leave their parents' home after age eighteen. As the number of adolescents attending college (often living away from home) increased in the 1970s, fewer graduates returned home after college. The empty-nest syndrome referred to parents of college-age children who had no children living at home. With children away at college or living in their own apartments, middle-aged parents often felt a sense of loss. Some mothers reentered the labor force after decades of child rearing and housekeeping; others returned to college or worked in nonprofit community organizations.

Blended Families

Birth control and a lower birth rate also affected families, as did the number of working women. Average family size declined from 3.67 members in 1960 to 3.29 members in 1980. Increasing divorce rates also produced more "blended" families, as divorced parents remarried spouses with children. This social trend was represented in the popular but unrealistic television series The Brady Bunch (1969-1974), featuring a widow with three daughters happily married to a widower with three sons.

The Louds

Network television sitcoms like The Partridge Family (ABC) and My Three Sons (CBS) also reflected these changes in the American family. But in 1973 many viewers were shocked by a PBS documentary, An American Family, depicting an affluent California household. The Loud family unexpectedly disintegrated on camera as the parents divorced and their son announced he was gay. Although they later appeared on talk shows claiming to be a "typical" American family, the Louds exemplified what many felt to be a new and serious social trend—the decline of the family.

Causes

Experts differ in explaining why the family changed in the 1970s. One theory is that the "crisis of the family" is no crisis at all but merely a convenient way to explain the paradox of poverty amid prosperity. Historically, Americans have blamed socioeconomic problems on changes in the family rather than grapple with economic imbalance or injustice in the social structure. Others see the decline of social welfare programs, shrinking union membership rates, declining employment opportunities for young workers, decreasing real wages for men, and increased labor participation by women as the economic causes of family social disruption and discontent. Finally, the anger, cynicism, selfishness, consumerism, extreme individualism, and erosion of rivic-mindedness can be seen as a source of family and community malaise in the 1970s.

DISNEY WORLD

Disney World opened on a forty-four-square-mile site near Orlando, Florida, in 1971. Building on the enormous success of the Disneyland amusement park opened in Anaheim, California, in 1955, Walt Disney designed this Florida amusement park in 1964, but it was not completed until after his death. The thirty-thousand-acre site quickly became one of the world's most popular vacation resorts.

In 1965 Walt Disney also broke ground for the adjacent Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow (EPCOT Center), which opened in 1982. Together, Walt Disney World and the EPCOT Center feature many unique technological wonders and have attracted 500 million visitors by 1994. The Walt Disney World Resort combines the glitter of Hollywood with the magic of Disney and has changed forever the image, nature, and scope of amusement theme parks in the United States.

Source:

Marc Eliot, Walt Disney: Hollywood's Dark Prince (New York: Birch Lane Press, 1993).

Source:

Stephanie Coontz, The Way We Never Were (New York: Basic Books, 1992);

Pat Loud and Nora Johnson, Pat Loud: A Woman's Story (New York: Bantam, 1974).

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