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Ecology of the Family - Coggle Diagram

- - - - matriarchal family family in which the mother has formal authority and dominance
        patriarchal family family in which the father has formal authority and dominance.
- - - - Socialization/education. The family ensures that the society's values, beliefs, attitudes, knowledge, skills, and techniques will be transmitted to the young.
        
        Assignment of social roles. The family provides an identity for its offspring (racial, ethnic, religious, socioeconomic, and gender roles). An identity involves behavior and obligations.
      - Economic support. The family provides shelter, nourishment, and protection. In some families, all members except very young children contribute to the economic function by producing goods. In other families, one or both parents earn the money that pays for goods the entire family consumes.
        
        Nurturance/emotional support. The family provides the child's first experience in social interaction. This interaction is intimate, nurturing, and enduring, thus providing emotional security for the child. The family cares for its members when they are ill, hurt, or aging.
- - - - Assignment of Social Roles
        Social roles within the family are defined by which members perform what jobs, as well as the distribution of authority. Changes in family roles over time, as discussed here, illustrate chronosystem influences.
        
        Economic Support
        A major function of the family remains the economic support of its members, but the scope of this responsibility has changed, as well as which family members contribute financially.
        
        Authority Patterns
        The balance of power and authority patterns in the family have changed over time Like families in the Biblical era and ancient Rome, families in colonial America were patriarchal and extended. The father was not only responsible for the economic survival of the family, but also for the socialization of the children as well. It was not until the 20th century that mothers gained status as family providers, influenced by political events. Their help was needed in the workforce while many men were engaged in the war effort
        
        Nurturance/Emotional Support
        The nurturing and emotional support function of families for the young (and sometimes the old) has remained fairly stable, but the range of the caregiving has diminished. For example, as medicine advanced, the family turned to doctors and nurses to provide health care. In the 19th century, health care as we know it today did not exist.
- - - - As the divorce rate has risen, so has the frequency of remarriage (Department of Health and Human Services [USDHHS], 2009), another common change in family ties affecting children. When a divorced person remarries, the children gain a stepparent. With the stepparent come additional kinship relationships. New roles and obligations, not derived from custom and tradition, have to be established.
        
        Divorce and the Law
        In the 1970s, many states changed their divorce laws to reflect societal changes, such as the increased cost of living, employment of women, and father's increasing role in child care. Prior to then, the law permitted divorce only if one spouse committed such serious marital misconduct as adultery, cruelty, or desertion. Traditional divorce proceedings involved a determination of who was guilty and who was innocent.
        
        Today, divorce law is “no-fault”; assigning blame is no longer a legal issue. Instead, divorces are granted on the basis of “irreconcilable differences” or “marital breakdown.” The financial consequence, in most states, is that the family's assets are divided equally between the spouses, often necessitating that the family home being sold. Thus, in addition to the emotional impacts of the dissolution of a marriage, there are significant economic and social ones as well.
        
        Divorce and the Family
        Divorce has certain consequences for family functioning and the socialization of children. Barring external social support, the effect of divorce on the custodial parent is that the responsibilities double. The single parent is responsible for financial support, child care, and home maintenance. Because the parent is usually under great stress, parenting is likely to diminish (Emery, 2011). The children may have to take increased responsibility for themselves and may have less time available to spend with the parent to receive love and security.
        
        Divorce and Family Dynamics
        To assess the effect of divorce, one must examine how all the various members of the family deal with the transition, reestablish their role obligations to one another, and perform such functions as the following (Hetherington & Clingempeel, 1992; Hetherington & Kelly, 2002):
        
        Regardless of their marital status, women do not earn income on the same scale as men. Sometimes a woman who heads a family must turn to her own family of orientation or to the government for economic assistance. Evidence has shown that children living in mother-only families were four times as likely to be poor compared to children living with two parents
        
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- - - - Child's Gender and Divorce Effects
        Gender influences the impact of divorce, with research showing that boys are harder hit. Two years after the divorce, many boys have trouble concentrating, do poorly on intelligence tests, and have difficulty with math. Also, they interact aggressively with their mothers, their teachers, and boys their own age. Monitoring of boys was lower in divorced, non-remarried households, and the boys engaged in more antisocial behavior
        
        Child's Emotional Support and Divorce Effects
        Although divorce is upsetting to everyone involved, it is probably worse for a child to live in an embattled household. For parents, divorce is a very stressful time, and feelings of depression, loss of self-esteem, and helplessness interfere with parenting abilities. Parents must find support outside the family to bolster their confidence in themselves and their ability to parent. They must tell the child that even though they are divorcing each other, they are not divorcing the child.
        
        Child's Marriage Role Models and Divorce Effects
        A serious long-range effect of divorce is the removal of marriage role models. Unrealistic expectations of future mates occur. Children may grow up idealizing the absent parent. Ideals are wishes for perfection; they are untempered by reality.
- - - - Single-parent mothers experience economic as well as emotional and physical strain (Hetherington & Clingempeel, 1992; Peterson, 1996). Frequently, female-headed families are poor; at the least, a drop in the family's standard of living occurs if the woman was previously married (CDF, 2012).
        
        Joint Custody
        Joint custody is a contemporary solution to the quandary facing many judges: Which adult claimant should be given custody of a child? It also provides the rationale for father-mother involvement in child rearing, which enables the child to relate to both male and female role models (Bauserman, 2002).
        
        binuclear family family pattern in which children are part of two homes and two family groups
        
        Although joint custody gives children access to both parents, thereby avoiding the feeling of being abandoned by the noncustodial parent, some children, especially younger ones, are actually harmed by the inevitable continual separation and reattachment.
        
        Kin Custody
        Kin refers to blood relatives or those related by marriage or adoption. An increasing number of children are being raised by kin other than parents, the most common being grandparents raising grandchildren, especially since the Great Recession around 2007 (Livingston & Parker, 2010). Some of these families have informal arrangements (without legal custody or guardianship); others are part of the formal foster care system.
        
        Stepfamilies Children in a stepfamily may feel abandoned by the noncustodial parent. Having to live with new rules and values, while still trying to deal with the old rules and values from both parents, places an enormous burden on the child.
        
        Maternal Employment and Child Weil-Being
        One of the largest topics in the literature on dual-earner families has continued to be the relationship of parental employment, especially maternal employment, to child well-being (Bianchi & Milkie, 2010). Mother employment almost always improves the economic well-being of families with children, and often makes the difference between whether or not they can make ends meet.
        
        Dual-Earner Families Studies on dual-earner families expanded in scope and coverage during the first decade of the 21st century (Bianchi & Milkie, 2010). A major trend was the increased diversity of families and workplaces. Families increasingly diverged from the two-parent family with breadwinner father and homemaker mother to single parent, stepparent, kin, unmarried, and same-sex parent families.