1.3 A Historical Context for Today’s Families
Elizabeth B. Pearce
Once upon a time, single-parent and same-sex families did not exist, or so the popular television shows and movies of past decades would have us believe. Neither did interracial couples, mothers working outside the home, couples deciding not to have children, or other family forms and situations that are increasingly common today. Domestic violence and child abuse were not widely discussed or acknowledged publicly. However, other family forms and situations also existed then, though they have become more visible, more accepted, and perhaps more common today.
The “Nostalgia Trap”
In contrast to idealized images of the past, we now hear that parents are too busy working at their jobs to raise their kids properly. We hear of kids living without fathers because their parents either are divorced or were never married in the first place. We hear of young people having babies, using drugs, or committing violence.
We hear that the breakdown of the nuclear family, the entrance of women into the labor force, and the growth of single-parent households are responsible for these problems. Some observers urge women to work only part-time or not at all so they can spend more time with their children. Some yearn wistfully for a return to the 1950s, when everything seemed so much better and easier. Children had what they needed back then: one parent to earn the money and another parent to take care of them full time until they started kindergarten, when this parent would be there for them when they came home from school.
Families have indeed changed, but this yearning for the 1950s falls into the “nostalgia trap” (Coontz, 2000). The 1950s television shows did depict what some families were like back then, but they failed to show what many other families were like. Moreover, the changes in families since that time have probably not had the harmful effects that many observers allege. It is more likely that the challenges that many families face today have more to do with economic change; increasing levels of poverty; and systemic racism, sexism, and other “isms.”
Much of this text focuses on uncovering systemic forces that interact with family life. In fact, historical and cross-cultural evidence suggests that the Leave It to Beaver–style family of the 1950s was a relatively recent and atypical phenomenon and that, given equitable access to resources, many other types of families can thrive just as well as those 1950s television families did.
Defining Family
Many family forms exist in the United States and throughout the world. When we try to define the word “family,” we realize just how slippery of a concept it is.
The dominant ideology of what constitutes a family in the United States was a very class- and race-specific type of gendered family formation (figure 1.12). This family formation has been labeled the Standard North American Family (SNAF) and is defined as:
A conception of the family as a