Politics, Public Policy and the Future

Throughout the course of the semester, I have learned more about families past and present than I ever thought existed. From eavesdropping children, to the rise in cohabitation, to men mothering, the topics reached were both broad and fascinating. When looking toward the future of the family, I find it difficult to be as pessimistic to say that the trends we have seen, such as the increase of divorce, children out of wedlock, the rise of cohabiting, will continue to rise attributing to the decline of the family. Call me a romantic (and I know there are studies about children of divorce having an unrealistic view of marriage) but I see marriage as an institution that is not going anywhere. Although I understand people’s reasons and wants for cohabiting, in an ideal world I see myself using it as a form of trial marriage.

Kiernan suggests a reason for the rise in cohabitation: “the growth in cohabitation and the mergence of same-sex marriage have contributed to the deinstitutionalization of marriage… the result of longer term cultural and material trends.” (Kiernan 982). Don’t get me wrong, I understand that same-sex marriage hasn’t until recently been legal, so couldn’t this perhaps increase marriage? Couldn’t this change of policy shift rates of marriage in the future?

I think parental rights is an extremely difficult topic to broach, and fully understand, especially in modern times. Not only are there parents, step-parents, adoptive parents and biological parents, but there are surrogate mothers, and sperm donors and egg donors, and sometimes mistakes happen with reproductive technology wherein some people give birth using other peoples eggs and sperm by accident. From here, who has the right to parent? I find it difficult for legislation to bear meaning and cast down what they believe to be family. As well, I see huge problems within using precedence in court cases, because I see each family as an individual and unique case. An example of a mix-up is found here: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/36878268/ns/health-kids_and_parenting/

Luckily, it was solved and the result was mutually satisfying for both parties. From this example, it becomes clear that the some legislation, such as the exclusivity doctrine, is not applicable to all contemporary families.

As this is my last blog, I wanted to say how much I enjoyed taking this course! It was my first seminar course, and I looked forward to come to class and hear everyone’s (although very different) opinions on the family. Thanks everyone for everything and happy holidays!

1. How do you see marriage in the future? Do you think the increasing legalization of same-sex marriage will increase marital rates and decrease cohabitation?

2. Is it within government interest to create policy that promotes and encourages families? How would they go about doing this?

3. How do you see our generation and their families? What trends from the course do you see continuing, or what new trends may occur? Do you agree with Hoschild’s cold modern world?

Household Labour

After reading for this week, I took a little time to think about Monkeys Reject Unequal Pay… now what exactly was it doing there? On readings about dual-income parenting and sharing of household duties, where exactly did this fit in?

I think after doing this weeks’ readings the findings point to a gender discrepancy when it comes to housework, or unpaid labour. It seems that women are assumed to be doing the housework, unless a negotiation or shift has occurred. Take for example the fact from Jennifer Hook’s research that “for each percentage increase in national levels of married women’s employment, men’s unpaid work time increases by 0.5 minutes.” So, it follows that only when women are not at home, a negotiation or shift needs to be made.

Coltrane also mentions that in ¾ of the couples interviewed, the women performed the majority of the early infant care. Coltrane also stresses that almost all the fathers stressed that they had to learn how to nurture, as if they were starting from scratch, and it was something that did not come naturally to them. There was also the example in which the man would set the table, and clear it, but not to his wife’s liking, so she still essentially cleared the table. This was interpreted as men doing domestic work, yet the house is still evidently the domain of the woman.

So, why is gender a factor in housework? Why, in a sense, don’t married women reject unequal pay for domestic work?

1. Reading Hook’s article, I came across a few items that made me pause and think of explanations. First of all, she says that married men do more unpaid work than single men. Also, she said when men are NOT employed, they do 19 minutes less of unpaid work per day than do employed men? How does this work? Any ideas?

2. How do you interpret the Monkeys Reject Unequal Pay article? Do you think it's relatable to human actions?

3. After reading all of the readings, are you convinced by Risman and Johnson-Sumerford’s finding that gender equality can be found in the home?

Work and Family

After reading Hoschild’s Emotional Geography and the Flight of Capitalism, I immediately began relating it my family’s professional experience, which is actually completely different from Amerco. From personal experience, the companies and places of employment my family works at seems to be in a warm modern category. My mother works for IBM, as did my father when I was born, and she was able to take a year off when my sister and I were born, and then for the first three months back at work, she was able to work part-time. Although my father didn’t take parental leave, the benefits awarded to my mother seemed to remedy this. As well, after my parents got divorced, my mother was able to take on the added responsibility of being a single parent (with my father only having custody every Wednesday and other weekend) by switching to part time work. Once my sister and I were able to get to and from school on our own, my mother was able to work full-time yet again.

My step-brother actually shared parental leave with his wife, each of them taking six months after their son was born. As well, my step-sister, after taking her full year of maternity leave for each of her two sons (her husband is a professor, so he was able to be around a lot to help with the kids), she re-entered the workforce by job-sharing with another young mother.

My father’s common-law partner works at a company called Lexis Nexis, essentially a huge publishing company, and there are in place many family friendly policies. First of all, in the summer, every Friday ends at noon, to equal one half day off. However, if you do not want to take this half day off, you can bank them, essentially saving all the half Fridays from the summer, and take a week long vacation. Interestingly, this same company is an example of “the new company town” where the employees can socialize and utilize many services even within the same building. They have movie nights (where they supply the drinks and popcorn), catered breakfast every morning, and a masseuse that comes in each week.

In all of the cases depicted above were from dual earner couples, which most definitely do not fall into the work-as-home and home-as-work model. I’m not sure if it is my living experience that is out of the norm, or is it Amerco that is? I’m just finding Hoschild’s utilization of one major company to depict the need for more family friendly policies in America a little troubling. After reading Becker and Moen’s article, I find it frustrating that Hoschild would depict the dual-earner couple as cold and work-obsessed when that is not the majority case.

As well, I recently stumbled across an interesting article from the New York Times, called the Opt-Out Revolution, in which women with high levels of education, on a track to high status of employment, choose to opt-out of work in order to be a full time mother” http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/26/magazine/the-opt-out-revolution.html?pagewanted=all . It is definitely an interesting read, and gives some insight as to why mothers may be perceived as less committed to their jobs as depicted by the Motherhood penalty article.

1. Am I the only one who has experience a warm modern category? Or in your experience does the workforce fall into a cool modern or traditional stance? Which way should it be?

2. In Becker et al. it is stated that women often fulfill the job category and not the career category in a dual earning couple. How could you justify the work constraints put on women in a dual earning couple? Is the breadwinner ideology following yet again? Is this why in a career/job couple women are more likely to hold the job?

3. To play devil’s advocate, do you think women are more attached to their children and therefore are less committed to their profession? How does the motherhood penalty fit into professions where salaries are set based on seniority (e.g. lawyers and teachers)?

Children

I feel as if there exist an endless number of topics (and therefore articles) that could be related to the sociological discussion of children. This week, we yet again are looking at very different situations, but all relating to children.

I find it interesting that it so often comes back to gender roles, and women being the more competent parent. In Stacey and Bilblarz, we come across a finding from a study: “It is undeniable that, just as a mother’s influence is crucial to the secure, healthy and full development of a child, a paternal presence in the life of a child is essential to the child emotionally and physically.” (161). As well, when analyzing lesbian vs. gay parenting, they find that the “female gender is probably the source of the positive signs for parenting skill, participating in child rearing… “ (175). As we learned last week, men are capable of “mothering,” but this does not come across within this weeks readings.

I would also be intrigued to see if Orellana et al. study were to be revisited, with more than ten years having passed since it was published, to see the differences in communication patterns back home. After watching Stefana Broadbent’s TED talks, I’m almost certain it must have. Now, most people have computers and some Internet access. With the Internet comes email, instant messaging, and most importantly Skype (essentially free phone calls to and from anywhere on the planet). As well, cell phone use has increased, and with it comes the possibility of texting, which is cheaper than calling. Personally, my sister and I live in different provinces, and I am able to speak to her multiple times a day, through different mediums. We use blackberry messenger, Facebook chat, I chat, MSN Messenger, and sometimes (although rarely), we call each other on the phone. I think today, migrants would be much more able to maintain communication with the home country, without the expectation that came along with having to send money with a letter. Also, many of these forms of communication are inexpensive, especially compared with long distance phone calls.

1. In Does the Sexual Orientation of the Parent Matter, it comes across that a lot of the differences in the children of lesbigay parents can stem from the added systemic stress that comes along with not being in a legally recongnized union. This is not the case in Canada. Do you think this would have altered the findings anyway?

2. Do you as a child ever remember eavesdropping on your parents? Who were your caregivers other than your parents? If both of your parents were working, would you say you experienced a time bind?

3. How do you think it would be possible to solve or fix the problems inherent in the school system as depicted in Lareau’s study. Do you think it is the onus of the teacher or parent to make sure the child is learning and staying on the right track? Should teaching patterns be altered based on income of the neighborhood?

Family Structures and Bonds

This week we look at family structures and bonds, from a wide range of perspectives. We see how the life course effects marital quality, if single fathers can mother, why growing up is hard to do, how grandparents are parenting, as well as consequences for divorce on both parents and children. Although it seems that we are reading about a wide array of topics, all have one thing in common, in that they discuss the relationships within the family, and how they effect its members.

Within the first few weeks of this class, the question “Does divorce beget divorce?” was proposed. Without the literature on the subject, it was unclear what the answer was, but according to the literature, it does. Although not addressed in Amato’s The Consequences of Divorce for Adults and Children, he had released a previous article entitled Explaining the Intergenerational Trend of Divorce (found on JSTOR if anyone is interested). It turns out, that children of divorced parents have an increased 70% chance of divorce within the first five years of marriage compared with those whose parents did not divorce, with the risk increasing if both partners experienced a parental divorce (Amato, 628 and 634). Interestingly, Amato found that children of divorced parents tend to marry earlier than most (due to many factors such as emotional neediness, wanting to get out of a household with stepparents, or economic hardships living with a single mother) and says that early age at the time of marriage is a great predictor of divorce (Amato, 629). As well, divorce can act as a barrier to the development of traits and interpersonal orientations that hinder intimate relations. For example, children of divorced parents do not have a model for successful marriage; therefore they do not know what a successful dyadic relationship is like. More importantly, experiencing a divorce can also lead to developing traits such as lack of trust, jealousy issues and inability to commit, that stem from emotional insecurity, which serve to strain a marital relationship (Amato, 631).

In this week’s reading’s we come across the question, Do you consider yourself an adult? This question is difficult to answer, as adulthood no longer begins when adolescence ends. This is reiterated in the article Growing Up is Harder to Do where children are depicted as stalling the beginning of adult life in order to gain a better education or until they can establish an independent household. These trends continue and are existent within a Canadian framework. By examining a Statistics Canada article entitled Parents with Adult children living at Home, written by Martin Turcotte, we are introduced to the boomerang generation and its effect in Canadian households. The boomerang generation are young adults who choose to live with their parents after a brief period of living on their own. According to the 2001 Canadian General Social Survey, in 2001 57% of young men and women aged 20 to 24 were living with their parents; in 1981, the proportion was only 41%. (Turcotte, 2) This is only a twenty-year difference, but it is a large increase. What exactly are the reasons for this increase? The survey indicates that parents who were living in urban cities like Vancouver, Toronto and Ottawa were most likely to have an adult child living at home. Some of the explanations for this increase are due to the high cost of living in large cities and increased probability of postsecondary schools in large cities.

Although having an adult child live at home can be seen as a method of maintaining family ties, there are also consequences associated with it. In As Good as It Gets: A Life Course Perspective on Marital Equality, we learn that marital quality diminishes following the birth of the couple’s first child and doesn’t begin to improve until the children leave the parental home, with the lowest marital quality reached when kids are in their teens. The rationale behind this stems from the fact that children impose additional household and childcare duties and interfere with both the quantity and quality time that the couple is able to spend together. Although it is unclear in the life course article that the adult child is in fact a boomerang child (rather than an adult child who has just never moved out), “living with adult children may impose some strain on parents’ marriage or that living with adult children interferes with positive interactions between parents. (Umberson, 502) Canadian literature provides the same results in regards martial quality being lower when adult children are in the home, because the departure of an adult child lowers the level of conflict that often accompanies the arrival of a child in the marriage. This stage in the life course is also said to provide parents with the satisfaction of having successfully completed the responsibility of childrearing. So, when the adult children delay their departure from home, it is possible that the frequency of conflict within couples remains higher a little longer. Although the Canadian General Social Survey used loaded questions to ask parents living with adult children if they strongly agree, agree, disagree or strongly disagree such as, “I am often frustrated because my children take so much of my time,” (Turcotte, 6) the trends seems to follow the same pattern as the American results.

Although on a vast array of topics, all of this weeks readings touch upon the relationships formed within the family, and the consequences and reactions that stem from them. As the family adjusts to the modern world, new trends become evident. Our parents’ generation became adults when they graduated high school, and were raised primarily by their two heterosexual parents. It is evident through the reading material that these norms have evolved to create a new modern family, where grandparent’s parent, dad’s mother, and children never grow up. Through this week’s topic, we get to explore these changing trends and ideas.

Now for fun, take a look at this piece on “Yuckies” and “Babygloomers” http://schott.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/01/yuckies/?scp=2&sq=boomerang kids&st=cse

Here is another article, a Canadian look at the Boomerang Generation (us and our peers):

http://www.canada.com/life/Part+They+have+boomeranged+failed+launch+call+them+dysfunctional/3608275/story.html

Another way of looking at the multi-generational bonds is a surprising new travel trend written about in the Globe and Mail: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/travel/have-grandparents-will-travel/article1768519/

And although not a single Dad, here is a video of a stay-at-home dad “mothering”:

http://www.canada.com/news/family-portraits/Video+Family+portrait/3612171/story.html?tab=VID

(Don’t worry; all the links are really short!)

We look forward to reading your responses! Please label your posts Family Structures and Bonds.

Marriage, Cohabitation and Parenthood

I really did enjoy this week’s readings. I found that they were quite engaging and interesting to follow. One aspect of the reading’s I found was the prevalence of the breadwinner role in differing couple relationships.

I both Patterson and Seltzer’s, although articles on different aspects of family life, both indirectly postulate the existence of a breadwinner ideal in both relationships of lesbian and gays as well as cohabiting heterosexual couples. In Patterson, it is found that “older, wealthier men tended to have more power in their intimate relationships” and this finding was found to me the same for older and wealthier women in lesbian relationships. This finding continued into the economic realm for gay couples, but not lesbian couples, in that the wealthier man in the relationship had more power in money management issues. In Seltzer’s article on cohabiting couples, it follows that within cohabiting couples the ones more likely to marry are those when the male is stable economically. As well, couples opt to cohabit over marrying, especially in young couples, when the male’s “economic circumstances are precarious.”

In this time of “equality” when it is now socially accepted to cohabit rather than marry, and in Canada where gay marriage is legal, I found it completely fascinating that so much depends on earnings. In gay couples, being the breadwinner equals more intimate power, as well as in gay couples, more power over finances. In cohabiting couples, it dictates the time of marriage. It is interesting to see that money is such an important and crucial factor in determining the dynamic of a relationship.

I also found Hoschild’s article quite fascinating, and I too was quite offended by the ad. However, what is so striking about it, rather than the over-use of the word sensual, is that he was looking for one person to fulfill many roles in maintaining his household. He wasn’t just looking for a masseuse, or a cleaning lady, or a personal assistant, he was looking for it all: he wanted a complete package. Had he hired a separate person for each duty, it wouldn’t be such a big deal. However, he is looking for one person to fulfill these roles, which seems as though he is looking for a housewife for hire.

1. Were you offended by the ad Hoschild mentioned? Do you think that the commodity he is purchasing truly is purchasing a wife?

2. How important do you think income is when establishing power in a relationship? Do you think children can sense power discrepancies between their parent’s relationship?

3. What I felt was missing from LeBourdais and Lapierre-Adamcyk’s study were enough hypotheses as to why the cohabitation rate in Quebec is so high. Do you have any ideas or hypotheses as to why cohabitation rates are so much higher in Quebec than the rest of Canada? Can you posit a relationship between the trend of cohabiting in Quebec to cohabiting in Sweden?

Family, Attachment & Intimacy

It is interesting to read about academic ideas love and attachment. As I’m reading, I keep asking myself “oh – is that really how it’s supposed to happen? Am I supposed to feel that way?” Because I come from a divorced family am I really going to have a first-love-that-fails and a second-love-that-works? All though I am not in control of my emotions, I don’t think anyone truly is, I’m not sure that I would subconsciously sabotage an otherwise perfectly fine relationship in order to “project everything bad” onto him so at a later date I could project “everything good on someone else.”

However, I really enjoyed Hochschild’s ideas on feelings, especially in a situation when we know what our reaction should be, and our reaction is completely different. This has most definitely happened to me. Here’s the thing, I’m a crier. I cry at the movie theatre, watching Izzy Stephens and Alex Carev getting married on Grey’s Anatomy, and seeing Tracy Porter catch the game clinching interception at last years Super Bowl. Within a social-situational measuring rod, I’m pretty sure I have violated certain norms in situations based on my tears. For example, no matter what funeral I’m at, I’m going to cry. And I’m not a pretty crier. I get red, and blotchy, and my eyes turn an eerie green. Essentially, if I cry, you’re going to notice. So, even at a funeral of someone else’s grandparent, who I do not know, where I’m just going to show moral support, I end up being in tears as much as the immediate family. Not so appropriate when everyone is looking at you and trying to console you.

Reading Roseniel and Budgeon really made sense to me. Even before my parent’s separated, they relied a lot on the support of friends, as both of them were not from Toronto, and had no family living closer than two hours away. If they couldn’t pick us up from school, one of their friends did. After my parent’s got divorced, each of them definitely leaned on their close friends even more than before for support. My father moved into a house with 3 of his friends, who he remains close with today. My mother, who kept the house in the settlement, leaned on old friends and made lots of new ones. We would go for dinner’s at friends houses, go on vacations with friends of my parent’s and their children (often other divorcees as well). It makes sense to lean on to support from friends when family isn’t available.

1. Do you think that Karen and Polly’s living arrangement is better for their daughters that raising them on their own? Is the “queering of the family” a source of confusion for children?

2. Do you believe that the “Cinderella Complex” is detrimental to woman in a relationship? Or in order to have a successful relationship in modern times does a relationship need to “cool” and more detached?

3. Helen Fisher describes romantic love of having the same symptoms of addiction? Do you think that “romantic love is one of the most addictive substances on earth”? Do you think her dating site, Chemistry.com, would be more effective than other dating sites?

Feminism and Care perspectives

I found this week’s gender and care centered to be really interesting, especially because they come from three totally different perspectives. I found that Hochschild brought to light some aspects of gender and care work that I would have not really considered otherwise. When she said, “a Thai nanny… tells me she loves the American children she cares for more than here own children back in Thailand…” I found this absolutely heartbreaking, but was able to understand the logic behind it after reading Ferree’s Gender article and how different countries promote different roles for both the mother and the father. By using the examples of the Philippines she demonstrated how certain countries promote the migration of parents to provide more for their children, and the example of Italy for a country that recruits migrant workers for care roles, so that both women and men could work. I also found Hochschild’s evaluation of her wanting to go work based on her mother’s perceived unhappiness while being a housewife, and her father’s happiness while working full-time. I feel that I was also very influenced by the fact that I saw my mother working, and enjoying it. I’ve always said I want a career, and not to be a stay-at-home mom (although interestingly, my Mother tried to explain to me that this is a lot easier said then done, especially after giving birth).

After reading Pyke’s essay, I felt a little underwhelmed. I like the perspective that she’s taking, but I think that her research would have been different and more reliable had she interviewed people that stayed married, rather than those that divorced and remarried. This is because perhaps these masculine and feminine clashing that she says was a reason they got divorced, is able to function properly in couple’s who do not get divorced. It’s very hard to know. She also assumes that gender role discrepancies are often the reason for divorce, rather than other factors such as falling out of love, such as the example of Phil and Jean. As well, she uses loaded language in order to get her point across, for example she says “this need for a wife to serve as a maid and a nanny,” instead of just saying that a high salary earning husband sees the need for a more domestic oriented wife. I understand it is still not an example of gender equality, but is much less malicious.

1. In Ferree’s filling the glass, she states that after interviewing employer’s, the reason that was given for the low wages for care work, “so that only those who are willing to do this work for love would be willing to do this work.” Do you think that higher wages would change people’s commitment to care work?

2. Do you think that Pyke’s article was written from the perspective of a neutral researcher? Why or why not.

3. Why do you think that there are differing “user manuals” in order to act feminine? Are any of these codes in play today?

Theoretical Perspectives of the Family

A few pages into Parson’s, I was getting a little offended. Who was this guy saying, “the majority of married women, of course, are not employed…” Then I flipped to the front of the article and looked to the date, 1942. So these trends of the family and the sexes are almost 70 years old. What I was surprised about was how much was still applicable today. He states there is no difference in formal education, that it is not until the post-graduate level is reached do the sexes begin to differentiate. This is true today, how many women are go into the engineering program? As well, he mentions “girls are given a kind of protection and supervision by adults to which boys of the same age group are not subjected.” This definitely continues today. As well, there still exists a “youth culture” that elicits rebellion, as well as an idealized “swell guy/glamour girl.”

I found Becker’s mention of the quality of the child to be very interesting. Parent’s want quality children, not quantity. A quality child is in need of many resources (he mentions how expensive children are), which affects the amount of children one can raise. I see this as true today, and one of the explanations as to the decline in fertility. Parent’s want to provide the best they can for the children they have, which creates a quality child. Also fascinating of Becker is his ideas on monogamy and polygamy. I believe today that people date and mate with people like themselves, in the same socio-economic group, same ideals, and sometimes the same religion. This is similar to his idea that high-quality men and women mate with each other, and low-quality men and women mate with each other. It is interesting to hear about polygamy from an economic standpoint, my favourite explanation being that “several women can substitute for one high-quality woman.”

Although complicated, the bio-social perspective was enlightening. I never knew testosterone could affect how I choose a sexual partner, or how its level would affect how traditionally or non-traditionally I choose to live my life. However different these groups of theories are, I don’t see any of them as complete explanations to the family. They do however compliment each other, and together contribute to a greater understanding of family dynamic, roles, and relationships.

1. In Joan Aldous’ article, it states that the family development approach emphasizes a family as a unit of interdependent members. Does being a family necessitate being independent?

2. Is there any truth to Parson’s article in a 21^st century world? What trends can you see that continue or do not continue into today’s family?

3. After reading the biosocial article, are you more apt to believe nature (the impact of genes, hormones on environment) or nurture (the impact of environment on genese and hormones)? Which one do you believe is more prevalent. (Keep in mind the example of the blank slate twins)

Is the family in decline?

According to Popenoe, my life has been an example of family decline. My parent’s got divorced, and my mother was in the workforce. And I do not think that my mother was in the workforce because she was “turning instead to investments in (her)self.” I believe it was because she wanted to provide best for her family, ensuring her children had everything that we needed, not at all signaling the end of “the century of the child.” Reading Popenoe infuriated me. I don’t mind that he postulates that family is in decline, but writing a scholarly article that is filled with personal opinion and speculation makes his article offensive. A prime example of this speculation occurs when he discusses his feelings towards parenting; the number of those who viewed it as a role to fulfill major values reduced in the past, so obviously “it has probably dropped still lower today… these attitudinal changes are associated with a remarkable decrease in the stigma associated with childlessness.” The first of which is speculation, and the second of which is only a probable reason. Changes in family form, such as single-parents and, two earner households, according to Popenoe are display of family decline, rather than just a change in family structure.

The reading I identified the most with was that of Cowan’s, as he shares many of my views on Popenoe. He agrees that Popenoe speculates, that women joining the workforce is not the problem (rather this is blaming the victim), and that having a working mother can be more beneficial for the child than having a stay-at-home mother (“they are less depressed than stay at home mothers”).

According to the blog posted online, Canada differs quite vastly from the USA in relation to maternity leave. This leave eases the burden and conflict that Popenoe references by allowing the mother to still hold her job, yet be at home with the child for the first year of life. The unpaid year in Canada can be split between the mother and father, ridding of this conflict, whereas in the United States only 12 weeks is allowed, all unpaid, and can only be used by the mother.

It is undeniable that the family is changing. But as someone who has experienced this ‘change’ I would never say that the family is in a decline. I still had two loving parents, who both cared enough about me as a child to give me the best life possible.

1. Which article either of Popenoe, Stacey, Glenn or Cowan do you most identify with? Did any elicit an emotional response?

2. In light of the Canadian statistics, that of maternity leave, the legalization of gay marriage, as well as our universal healthcare, do you think that this would alter Popenoe views on non-nuclear family’s ability to raise children? Would this shift his view of decline?

3. Do you believe in Popenoe’s statement “family change as family decline”? Why or why not. (Think about Coontz’s piece on marriage, and how these seemingly new changes of the family existed in years past e.g two parent families or divorce being common in the past without women’s say)