Families

Do Families Play an Important Role in Explaining Racial Inequality? Positive Effects of Families –Colin Powell –Oprah Winfrey Adverse Effects of Families –Yvette (Anderson: Code of the Street) –Vietnamese refugee (Zhou and Bankston: Growing Up American)

A Central Concern: Single Parent Families Are single parent families more prevalent among racial and ethnic minority groups? Why? What are some of the differences in life chances associated with growing up in a single parent family?

Table 1: Percentage of children aged 0-17, by family living arrangements: ArrangementsGroup TotalWhiteBlackLatinoAsianAmerican Indian Both Parents72% Father Mother Relatives Other Total Source: Hogan and Lichter, 1996, Table 3.2, p. 105.

Table 2: Percentage of children aged 0-17 below the poverty line, by family living arrangements: ArrangementsPercentage Poor TotalWhiteBlackLatinoAsianAmerican Indian Overall Both Parents Father Mother Relatives Source: Hogan and Lichter, 1996, Table 3.3, p. 107.

What is a family? Nuclear Family Blended Family Extended Family Non-relatives? Moore: giveaways; Duneier: life on the street

The Debate Over Single- Parent Families Moynihan, The Negro Family: The Case for National Action (1967) –Continuing racism –Three centuries of sometimes unimaginable mistreatment –“The Negro family in the urban ghetto is crumbling.”

Alternative Views: Carol Stack, All My Kin Support networks outside the nuclear family Low income, not absence of father figure, seen as real problem Robin Jarrett: 1)low-income families can be stable; 2)important to examine the functioning of families, not just their demographic type

Evidence Family Structure as a risk factor Single parent families have become more prevalent: changes in sexual behavior, separation of childbearing and marriage; divorce Racial and ethnic differences in family structure Parental education, family size, neighborhoods also play a role

Problems Low Incomes of Single-Mother Families Absentee Fathers and Child Support Teen Pregnancy Out-of-wedlock childbearing

Possible Solutions Strengthen Social Programs Fatherhood Initiatives Sex Education and Improved Contraceptive Use

Changing Numbers, Changing Needs American Indian Families and Children in the 21st Century

Themes In many respects, American Indian families are following the same trends as non-Indian families. In most respects, American Indian families are “worse off” than others. We find considerable variation across groups and reservations. We must do more to help families and children.

Some illustrations, 1990 USA Indian Reser Okla % child/2 par % wom NM % wom Div % poor % unemp

Variations Across Reservations Pine Ridge: 35.2% of children lived with two parents and 43.5% of women aged 15+ had never married. Navajo: 57.2% of children lived with two parents. Zuni: 31.3% of women aged 15+ had never married

Enduring Ways of the Lac du Flambeau Ojibwa or Chippewa: follows them through a year Roles of nuclear and extended families Cultural preservation

Duneier, Sidewalk General Reactions to the book What made 6 th Avenue a sustaining habitat? Was Local Law 33 a good idea or a bad idea?

Wacquant, AJS (May 2002) Duneier replaces negative stereotypes of street vendors, panhandlers, and scavengers with inverted cardboard cutouts. –Parochial, solely American view of urban poor – close to his subjects with insufficient attention to larger sociological theoretical issues –Mad scramble for accessible books on sexy topics

Duneier’s response Wacquant chooses to ignore the balanced portrayal of the good and bad behaviors of Sidewalk’s characters Ethnographers have tough choices to make in deciding how to present their findings and results. A major thrust of Duneier’s work has been to reveal the common elements of humanity.