Blog #14: Extended Families

“Networks of Interdependence in an Age of Independence”

This chapter from Not-So-Nuclear Families: Class, Gender, and Networks of Care discusses how families often times use members of their extended family when it comes to things such as raising and providing care to their children. The kind of clash between beliefs and practices that Hansen describes is that we as a society tend to define the family as a small nuclear unit. However this belief goes against this belief because often times we resort to others outside of the family unit, for example when it comes to childcare. So while we believe that the family should be one way, we actually tend to structure our families in the completely opposite way. SNAF, as defined by Dorothy Smith as the Standard North American Family, can also be called the “breadwinner family.” The ideology of SNAF is that families are made-up of two heterosexual individuals which might or might not have children. However, for those who do have children, it is the parents who are expected to be the ones to provide care and “constitute the primary site of child rearing.” Therefore, the clash relates to the ideology of SNAF because as stated before it is not only the parents who are providing care to their children, which is the ideology of SNAF. The role that work plays in creating this clash is that today more mothers have to go out and work instead of staying home to take care of the children like they used to. While some mothers do still have the ability to stay home and take care of their children, the number of mothers who cannot has increased significantly. It is because these mothers are forced to work that they are helping to create this clash. The role that school plays in creating this clash is that children actually spend much of their time at school, meaning that a lot of the care that children are getting when they are younger is provided by the school staff. Hansen writes, “Overall, the structures of work and school combine to make providing care for school-age children an ongoing challenge for employed parents. No matter how well organized, no matter how reliable, no matter how hard-working, these parents have difficulty making sure their children are supervised during the care gap.” This just shows that when two parents are working they have to do whatever it takes to make sure that their children are in are being cared for and that someone is watching them when they are unavailable.

“Extended Family Ties among Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, and Whites: Superintegration of Disintegration?”

The point of this article is to see how different ethnic groups vary and are similar when it comes to extended family integration. It looks at Mexican, Puerto Rican and White families. This study is interesting because not only does it look at three different backgrounds, but it also looks at two backgrounds that are of the same race, Mexican and Puerto Rican, and also compares them. According to Sarkisian, Gerena and Gerstel the ethnic differences in extended family integration are that Latino families are more integrated than White families. Also that Latino families, who on the whole tend to be worse off financially, are less likely to give their families financial support but are more likely to help out their relatives in ways that do not require them to use/spend money. While not directly related to culture or ethnic background, it was found that families of a lower SES were more likely to live closer to their relatives, to be in contact with them more frequently, while those of a higher SES were more likely to live farther and have less contact with their families, but to offer them greater financial support. Sarkisian et al. write, “These findings also suggest that family integration is based primarily on some combination of ability and need and far less on cultural predispositions.” This just proves that it is not so much the fact that there are differences between certain cultures, but that there are other factors, such as economic resources for example, that also play a huge role in whether or not there is high or low extended family integration.