Which Statement Best Summarizes How American Families Are Changing?

The task of integrating family research needs to start with defining the family itself. Families consist of members with very different perspectives, needs, obligations, and resources. The characteristics of individual family unit members alter over time—inside life spans and across generations. Families exist in a broader economical, social, and cultural context that itself changes over time.

United States households and families are undergoing unprecedented changes that are shaping the wellness and well-being of the nation. Primal and rapid changes in family construction, immigration, and work and family unit, for example, have transformed the daily lives and developmental trajectories of Americans in recent years. This chapter summarizes four presentations, including 3 studies that examine family modify largely from a demographic perspective and i that drew on qualitative methods to identify specific groups in a larger quantitative study. Demographic indicators provide a baseline of information for many other kinds of family enquiry.

A particular focus in this chapter is the set of measures used to identify and rail consistency and change in family structure. New and rapidly changing family unit forms crave the evolution of new measures and their incorporation into existing and new instruments. New measures likewise need to recognize the tremendous diversity among groups that tin can exist hidden in nationally representative averages of such family characteristics as cohabitation, marriage, family unit disruption, and fertility levels. As economic and cultural shifts, such as immigration, go on to diversify family construction and dynamics, researchers need to explore new ways of conceptualizing and measuring household characteristics.

MEASURING Family STRUCTURE AND STABILITY: EMERGING TRENDS AND MEASUREMENT CHALLENGES

Family unit living arrangements and trajectories are increasingly varied and circuitous in the Usa. Age of matrimony is at an all-time high. Cohabitation, non marriage, is the typical starting time blazon of wedlock in U.S. society. Divorce and remarriage remain common, and births to unmarried women accept accelerated apace, from 5 percent in 1960 to about 40 percent today.

These changing family dynamics accept major implications for the living arrangements of children, said Susan Brown, professor of sociology at Bowling Green Country University and codirector of the National Centre for Family and Wedlock Research. Furthermore, these living arrangements tin have major consequences for children'south health and well-being, since children in unmarried families experience greater family instability, on boilerplate. Drawing on a contempo review (Brown, 2010a) of the literature on family construction, instability, and kid well-existence, Brown discussed current measurement approaches and challenges.

The multifariousness of children's family experiences begins at birth. Of the 40 pct of births occurring outside matrimony, one-half are to unmarried cohabiting couples (Martin et al., 2009). The fertility rates of cohabiting and married women are really today about equal. As a result, children are spending less time in married-parent families and more fourth dimension in families that are formed outside wedlock.

Tabular array ii-1 shows the distribution of children's living arrangements according to a recent census study. The majority of children—60 percentage— nevertheless reside in traditional families with 2 biological married parents. The 2nd nigh mutual family grade for children is the single-mother family, in which near 20 percentage of all children reside, followed by the married stepfamily category. Less common family forms for children include two biological cohabiting-parent families, cohabiting stepfamilies similar to the married stepfamily, single-father families, and children who alive without either biological parent.

Demographers accept developed innovative ways of conceptualizing and measuring family unit structure. These new approaches consider heterogeneity among 2-parent families, the definition of family membership, some emerging family forms, how and when family structure is measured, and ambiguous family boundaries.

These new ways of thinking about two-parent families besides make it possible to begin examining how children who live in traditional married biological two-parent families compare with those in other family arrangements. What about children who live with both biological parents but the parents are unmarried? What most children who live in a stepparent family or with one biological parent and an single parent? What nearly children who live with same-sex parents?

Traditional measures of family unit structure often ignore the presence of other family unit members, fifty-fifty though these individuals can be consequential for child well-being. For example, siblings can exist whole siblings, half-siblings, or stride-siblings. For 6 to eleven percent of children who reside with two biological married parents, half- or step-siblings are also in the family unit (Ginther and Pollak, 2004; Halpern-Meekin and Tach, 2008). Footstep-and one-half-siblings can also reside in other households, reflecting multiple partner fertility. "Some researchers argue that it is not enough to measure out co-residential unions such as marriage and cohabitation, merely that we as well need to be addressing non-co-residential dating types of relationships that parents may be involved in," said Brown. Non surprising, these "visiting relationships" are often less stable than cohabiting and married ones.

The language has not kept stride with new family unit forms, Brown observed. For instance, with cohabiting relationships, researchers exercise not take shared understandings of how to depict these families or refer to family members. Some surveys use the term "unmarried partner," merely qualitative research has demonstrated that this term is not peculiarly meaningful for individuals who are involved in these relationships. They tend to think of their unmarried partner as a "boyfriend" or a "girlfriend." And to the extent that response categories are not meaningful to survey respondents, the prevalence and significance of cohabiting relationships may be underestimated.

This is even more the case for living autonomously together (LAT) relationships, which have attracted considerable attention in the European context just have been largely overlooked in the United States. LAT relationships consist of married or unmarried couples who live in split households but otherwise are like cohabiting couples. The definition and the measurement of LAT relationships are muddy, particularly in distinguishing them from dating relationships.

The timing of when people are asked about family unit structure also tin can influence their responses. For example, in a survey conducted as part of the Fragile Families study—which is post-obit a accomplice of about five,000 children in large cities born betwixt 1998 and 2000, three-quarters of whom were born to unmarried parents—mothers were asked when a child was born whether they were married, cohabiting, or unmarried. A year afterwards they were asked again whether they were married, cohabiting, or single when the child was born. Amongst women married at the time of birth, 97 percent said a year later that they were married at the time of birth. Merely for women who said they were cohabiting, just 89 per centum gave the same response a year later. And for women who said they were single, just 67 pct said they had been single a year later, with the others saying they were either cohabiting or married (Teitler et al., 2006). These retrospective discrepancies are consequential "for the subsequent relationship trajectories that the mothers and hence their children experience," Brown said.

Research has demonstrated that family unit structure is more subjective than researchers might presume. In the National Longitudinal Report of Adolescent Health—known equally Add together Health, a nationally representative written report of how social contexts affect the health and risk behaviors of teens and young adults—adolescents and their mothers were asked almost family construction (Harris, 2009). In families with two biological parents, 99 pct of the responses were the aforementioned. But in families with single mothers, married stepparents, or cohabiting stepparents, 11.6 percent, 30.2 per centum, and 65.nine percent of the responses, respectively, were different (Brown and Manning, 2009). "The more complex the family unit form, the greater the family purlieus ambiguity," Brown said. This ambiguity tin affect even estimates of family structure, depending on which person in a family unit is asked near the structure.

Future information collection efforts need to accommodate these complexities by emphasizing longitudinal designs, by incorporating multiple family members across households whenever possible, and by using more nuanced measures of family configurations. These more than nuanced configurations volition need to exist validated through qualitative research to make up one's mind whether the categories are meaningful for individuals. In addition, the increasingly diverse living arrangements of children demonstrate the importance of moving beyond these static comparisons to look at family dynamics and instability.

Family construction determinations provide a snapshot of children's living arrangements. Simply as children experience more diverse living arrangements, they are also experiencing less stable ones. Some family forms are more than stable than others, so that family structure is confounded with family unit instability.

Using Add Health information, Brown (2006) adamant that, during a one-yr period, seven percent of adolescents reported a family construction change. For teens who were not residing in two biological parent families, this figure was nearly twice as high—fifteen pct. "The structure you start out with is setting yous on a trajectory for subsequent stability or instability," she observed.

Nascence contexts likewise gear up the stage for family trajectories. One study (Raley and Wildsmith, 2004) plant that a majority of children born to married parents feel no family living organisation transitions by age 12, whereas virtually children who are born to either single or cohabiting mothers experience at to the lowest degree one transition by that age. If cohabitation transitions are included in the measure of family instability, the levels of family unit transitions increment xxx percent for white families and 100 percent for black families.

Marital transitions, whether divorce or remarriage, on boilerplate have cumulative negative effects on child well-being (Cavanagh and Huston, 2008; Fomby and Cherlin, 2007). However, cohabitation transitions operate differently. Transitions from a cohabiting family into a single-mother family have been linked to gains in well-beingness, or at least no change (Brown, 2006). Stable cohabiting families appear to be detrimental to child well-being on some dimensions relative to stable single-mother families and stable married stepfamilies. Thus, unlike types of transitions can have unlike effects on child outcomes.

A range of measures tin can capture family instability, including the number of transitions, the types of transitions, the timing of transitions, and the exposure to unlike family forms. For case, research¹ has examined whether transitions that occur early in children's lives are the most detrimental (Cavanagh and Huston, 2008; Heard, 2007). Other studies take examined the duration or proportion of fourth dimension spent in a given family form (Dunifon and Kowaleski-Jones, 2002; Magnuson and Berger, 2009). "There is no consensus in the literature on how to operationalize family instability" said Brown. Sometimes researchers will utilise more than i indicator. Sometimes they will command for current family structure or structure at birth. "This is a state of affairs in which our data have outpaced our theory."

Family scholars need to revisit and expand existing theories related to family unit instability Brown said. They also need to develop new theoretical frameworks for understanding how, why and when family unit instability shapes children'south outcomes. Some of this theory development could be informed by a systematic review of these empirical findings, which are extensive and complex.

Researchers need to strive for greater consistency across studies in the measurement of family instability. Also, they need to pay more than attention to diverse groups for whom family instability might have differential effects. These groups include disadvantaged populations, such every bit children who are built-in to single mothers, and different racial and ethnic groups. In detail, few studies have been conducted on Latino families. Gay and lesbian families have also been understudied.

The wide array of various living arrangements has generated considerable interest in family unit instability, but in that location is no consensus on how to anticipate or measure it. "Innovative measurement will crave new concepts and theories that reverberate these very rapid changes that are occurring in U.S. families," Brown observed.

THE Complexity OF LIVING ARRANGEMENTS: COHABITATION AND FLUIDITY

R. Kelly Raley professor of folklore and training managing director at the Population Research Centre at the University of Texas at Austin, explored the issues of cohabitation more deeply. In well-nigh research, cohabitation means sharing a household with a sexual or romantic partner. Roommates who are not sexually involved therefore are not ordinarily considered cohabiting couples, nor are sexual partners who are not living together. Cohabitation is generally applied to both heterosexual and homosexual unions, although by far the majority of the inquiry in this area has focused on heterosexual partnerships. Levels of commitment in cohabiting relationships range from extended hookups or casual sexual relationships to couples who are engaged to be married within a few days. Some have a residence elsewhere but sleep over most of the time, perchance to hide from parents that they are cohabiting.

Demographers ofttimes use a iii-category grouping for cohabitation. The first group consists of cohabiters who may be experimenting with a married living arrangement. They may be engaged to ally or plan to marry somewhen. A 2nd group, known as the "alternative to existence unmarried" group, may not intend to stay together for the long term but enjoy the convenience and the economies of calibration of living with a romantic partner. A tertiary grouping, the "culling to marriage" grouping includes people who view traditional matrimony critically and choose not to ally, although in most other ways the relationship resembles marriage.

Within the grouping that is treating cohabitation every bit a trial union, at that place is substantial heterogeneity. Some take a marriage date, and others would similar to marry someday but face up many barriers, such as unstable employment or drug and booze abuse. For this latter grouping, these barriers will probably contribute to the finish of their cohabiting union before they get married.

One way to view cohabitation is as a signal or a symptom of growing female person autonomy. From this perspective, much family change has been generated past long-term shifts in ideology that undermine old patriarchal family arrangements. For instance, increases in women's labor strength opportunities have made them less dependent on marriage. Since people however enjoy companionship, cohabitation serves as an alternative, less committed, and less patriarchal arrangement.

An alternative fashion to view cohabitation is as a response to doubtfulness, particularly economic uncertainty. Difficult transitions into a career, with spells of unemployment or underemployment following the completion of education, strongly predict cohabitation.

Today about half of all marriages dissolve. However, divorce rates are declining amongst the college educated, although they remain high and are maybe even growing amid the less well educated. People with less education rightly believe that marriage is uncertain, particularly when steady employment is in brusque supply. Cohabitation is a response to this uncertainty both most union and nearly their hereafter economic prospects.

Demographers started to track cohabitation closely as family unit structures changed substantially over the 1970s and 1980s. Important trends include the ascent age at union, increases in divorce, and rapid growth in unmarried-parent families. As shown in Effigy 2-1, the proportion of women married by age 25 has declined substantially by birth cohort. The proportion of women having a first matrimony by age 25 too declined during that period, though not nearly equally much every bit the rate of marriage. The increasing gap betwixt percentages of start union and union before age 25 points to a ascension of cohabitation. Raley also pointed out that cohabitation is increasingly mutual after a divorce, but much less is known nigh the repartnering process and postmarital cohabitation.

Effigy 2-1

Trends in the percentage of women ever in union past age 25. SOURCE: Raley (2010), based on data from, (a) Bumpass et al. (1991); (b) Raley (2001); and (c) CDC/NCHS, National Survey of Family unit Growth (NSFG) Cycle half-dozen (2006-2008).

Cohabitation has get an increasingly mutual characteristic of childhood. Most of the increase in nonmarital fertility in recent decades has come from births to cohabiting women (see Figure two-2). Consequently, an increasing proportion of children—maybe as many as half—live at some indicate in their life with a cohabiting mother. Tracking cohabitation can improve measurements of family stability. Fewer cohabiting unions now result in wedlock than in the past. After most five years, simply most half such couples are married, and 37 percent have split (Bumpass and Lu, 2000). By this measure out, even though levels of divorce have been roughly stable since 1980, the probability that a kid experiences a union dissolution is increasing.

Effigy 2-two

Trends in the percentage of births that are nonmarital. SOURCE: Raley (2010), based on data from (a) Bumpass and Lu (2000); and (b) Kennedy and Bumpass (2008).

Rates of cohabitation vary beyond population groups. For case, many previous studies have shown that cohabitation is more than common amongst less educated groups. However, if cohabitation is measured in the first iii years after leaving school, it is seen to exist a common feature of the life course for all education groups (Daniels and Raley, 2010). Information technology is the most common family formation effect in the showtime iii years after leaving school. What is unlike across groups with different levels of pedagogy is that the more highly educated women are more probable to marry. More than educated women are also less likely to have a premarital nascency (Daniels and Raley, 2010). Thus, in that location is substantial variation by socioeconomic status in family formation patterns.

These observations relate to the underlying meaning of cohabitation. Whether cohabitation signals changes due to growing autonomy or growing uncertainty depends in office on class. For more highly educated women, it may well indicate growing autonomy and increasing choices. For less educated women, information technology appears that cohabitation is probable more than a response to uncertainty. Qualitative research suggests that many women who want eventually to accept a child and who realistically are unlikely to marry shortly may finish using contraceptives in a cohabiting relationship. Raley stated, "They oft go pregnant, peradventure sooner than expected, merely it isn't a business organization. It is just something that happens sooner. It is not exactly planned, only information technology is not exactly something that they were trying to avoid."

Cohabitation is not institutionalized. No broadly shared understandings of privileges or obligations are associated with this status. This limits the usefulness of cohabitation as an indicator of family construction in 2 ways, said Raley. By covering a diverse range of human relationship types, this ambiguity creates a trouble for the development of survey questions to measure cohabitation. For example, if people are asked nigh their relationship to the householder and "unmarried partner" is one of the response choices, they often do not bank check that response fifty-fifty if they run across the definition of that term. Starting in 1990, the demography measured cohabitation by including unmarried partner equally a blazon of relationship to householder (Kreider, 2007). Then, in 2007, the census began asking, "Is there somebody in the household who is your boyfriend, girlfriend, or partner?" This new question resulted in an increase of 17 percentage points in the number of people in cohabiting relationships (Kreider, 2008).

Another way in which cohabitation is limited every bit an indication of family structure is related to its multifariousness. Some cohabiters are engaged to be married, and others have no intention to ally. For studies that aim to understand the limitations of cohabitation for children's or adults' well-being, this variability is potentially as great equally the difference between beingness married and being single. For this reason, it is important to measure out non only household structure but also the quality and the commitment of relationships.

Cohabitation or marriage is not the only important aspect of household construction. A pocket-size literature indicates that child well-beingness may be influenced by the presence of one-half- or footstep-siblings, even when they are living with both biological parents. One approach to measuring these relationships involves the use of a matrix in which each person in a household is asked nearly the relationship of each person in the household to each other person in the household. "It can be kind of burdensome, but it will be thorough in capturing all the children's relationships to all other children in the household," Raley said.

The Current Population Survey has taken a less crushing alternative. It is asking well-nigh all the parent figures for a child in a household, whether a biological parent, a stepparent, or an adoptive parent. "Hopefully this new resources will aid us better measure the additional important aspects of children's household structure," Raley said.

The last limitation of cohabitation measures is that they exercise not capture nonhousehold family relationships. For instance, parents transitioning into and out of visiting relationships may innovate of import aspects of modify and instability into children's lives. Similarly, research shows that one-half-siblings, quondam spouses, and extended kin living elsewhere can influence family unit operation.

If the variety in cohabiting households is cracking, the variability in noncohabiting unmarried-parent households is fifty-fifty broader and more cryptic. Some mothers are raising children on their own with piffling help or interference from the kid'due south begetter, extended kin, or current boyfriends. Others are maintaining a complex network of relationships with fathers of their children. These external household members tin can affect family processes in the household.

Despite the limitations of cohabitation every bit a measure of family structure, it should non be abandoned, Raley said. Cohabitation is a common experience and a useful indicator of instability. However, as family structure continues to change and diversify innovative ways of capturing change and variability must be adult. In detail, information technology is important to measure levels of commitment and the quality of relationships and to distinguish variability amongst cohabiting unions.

INTERGENERATIONAL ASPECTS OF Alter IN Family PATTERNS

Research on family structures usually begins with static measures, which have been used in recent years to capture an increasing diversity of family forms. But dynamic measures of family structure alter as well have shown tremendous improvement, as have measures of family and social networks. These developments accept made information technology possible to written report family unit construction across generations, said Kathleen Mullan Harris, professor of sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and manager of the National Longitudinal Written report of Adolescent Health (Harris, 2009; Harris et al., 2009).

Since 1994, Add Health has collected data on 4 waves of study participants to explore the causes of health and wellness-related behaviors of adolescents and their outcomes in immature adulthood (Harris, 2009). The participants in wave I were in grades 7-12 when the written report began. Among these adolescents, 74 percent lived in ii-parent families and 26 percent lived in single-parent families. The majority of adolescents lived with two biological or adoptive parents (54 pct). Approximately xx percent lived with a single female parent, 14 pct lived with a biological female parent and stepfather, 6 percent lived with surrogate parents (including grandparents, uncles, older siblings, foster parents, in group homes, and and so on), 3 percent lived with a unmarried male parent, and 3 percent lived with a biological father and stepmother. Every bit these numbers demonstrate, there is tremendous heterogeneity of families and some fuzziness between categories, said Harris.

The Add Health written report too gathered data on parents' relationship histories and on a child's coresidence history, which can be mapped with his or her age. Thus, measures of family unit construction are available each yr, making information technology possible to construct indicators or trajectories of family structure over fourth dimension. Family structure transitions also can be measured dynamically and added up over a child's life.

These changes in family structure tin be quite complex, Harris observed. Children tin can experience many parents in their lives. Gathering this data also can be costly in terms of survey time and taxing for respondents. Despite these difficulties, the bachelor data show that family alter at the level of parents affects family formation in a child's generation. The information from Add Health have supported other studies in final that growing upwards in a nonintact family form is associated with teenage parenthood, early marriage, nonmarital childbearing, and life-class trajectories of family instability. These intergenerational effects were consistent beyond numerous studies in the 1980s and 1990s.

The intergenerational effects of family change can operate in multiple contexts in a kid's life. Children spend fourth dimension with their friends, their classmates, the families of their friends and classmates, and families in their neighborhoods. The family patterns encountered during a child's life may be especially influential during boyhood, when young people begin to await to the future and form expectations nigh the kinds of families that they will form. They undergo a collective socialization toward family forms by observing them in the social contexts of their lives. Members of a parent's generation serve every bit role models, especially when romantic relationships get salient during adolescence. The social control of youth through monitoring and supervision is also important, and this is related to the number of adults in the social context of an adolescent'due south life.

This collective socialization can be difficult to written report considering of a lack of data. Just the pattern of Add together Health provides an opportunity to report intergenerational effects by looking at commonage socialization at the peer, the school, and the neighborhood levels (Harris et al., 2009). For instance, data from both moving ridge I and wave 2 capture youth in the transition to machismo to age 26 (Harris, 2009). Peer information are obtained by getting data from the adolescent's five all-time male person and five all-time female friends. Family unit data come from both parent and adolescent interviews, and neighborhood information come up from geocoded residence addresses. The family unit structure of friends, families in schools, and families in the neighborhood can be measured through the percentage of two-parent families, single-parent families, and other family forms.

Add Wellness information reveal the cumulative probabilities of starting time nonmarital births by the structure of the family of origin (Figure 2-iii). The lowest probabilities of first nonmarital birth are to youth who grew upward in a biological two-parent family. The highest probability is for youth who grew upward in a surrogate family or other family unit blazon.

FIGURE 2-3

The cumulative probabilities of outset nonmarital birth vary past the structure of the family of origin. SOURCE: Harris (2010), based on data from Harris and Cheng (2005).

The same analysis can exist done by looking at the pct of a person's friends from two-parent families. The lowest probabilities of nonmarital births are among individuals all of whose friends are in two-parent families (Figure two-four). When measured by the percentage of students at a schoolhouse from unmarried-parent families, the highest risks are for individuals with high percentages of schoolmates from unmarried-parent families. And when measured by the percentage of female-headed households with children, the risk is also higher in neighborhoods with large numbers of single mothers.

Effigy ii-iv

Cumulative probabilities of first nonmarital birth vary past the percent of friends from two-parent families. SOURCE: Harris (2010), based on data from Harris and Cheng (2005).

Modeling of these results has shown that the influences on nonmarital births act independently and are additive, said Harris. Youths who abound up with 2 biological parents but live in a neighborhood in which single-parent households are prevalent face college probabilities of nontraditional family unit formation.

Some researchers have begun to recall about creating family histories of instability or stability beyond generations, Harris observed. The Add Health report plans to reinterview parents in the next wave of information collection. It also plans to interview the children of the developed respondents, generating data that spans three generations. Additional questions are whether there are patterns that occur across more one generation and whether effects on family unit construction extend across a child'south family unit. But family change patterns across multiple generations are difficult to study

Some innovative designs and current enquiry are under fashion. For example, genetic data could help sort out shared and unshared genetic and ecology sources of variation in family germination patterns across generations.

MEASURING THE Touch OF RACE, CLASS, AND Immigration Status ON FAMILY STABILITY

Study of family structure began with mostly white scholars concerned near issues that afflicted mostly white, heart class, native-born Americans. But American society is much different today, observed demographer Daniel Lichter, professor of policy analysis and management and sociology and director of the Bronfenbrenner Life Course Center at Cornell University. Clearing has driven racial, indigenous, and class variation in the U.s. past creating rapid growth in the not-European immigrant population. Among Asians and Pacific Islanders, for example, almost ninety per centum of children have a strange-born parent. Among Hispanics, it is about two-thirds. These two groups are irresolute the ethnic and racial composition of U.Southward. society. The fact that America's new immigrant groups are mostly young adults means that their growing children will have a substantial issue on family change for the foreseeable time to come. As recent trends demonstrate, family scientific discipline must include the immigrant experience and how immigrant children are being raised in society.

As shown in Figure two-5, there has been a tremendous increase in the volume of immigration in the United States over the last ten years. Until the recent recession, nearly a million new legal immigrants were arriving in the Us every year (Martin and Midgley 2006). Much of this immigration is from Asia and Latin America. In improver, some other 12 to thirteen 1000000 immigrants are undocumented, and the future of this group will have major implications for the country'due south time to come.

FIGURE ii-5

Legal clearing to the United States was high around the turn of the century, declined during the Great Low, and has risen steadily since the end of Globe State of war II. SOURCE: Martin and Midgley (2006). Reprinted with permission. Copyright 2006 by (more...)

Roughly half of the growth in the U.S. population since 2000 has come from Hispanics, both through immigration and through the fertility of the new immigrant populations. This has created a large congenital-in demographic momentum for the future population growth of this grouping (Martin and Midgley, 2006).

The U.Southward. Census Agency (2010a) is projecting that by 2042 the United States will be a "majority minority" club—where the minority population exceeds the non-Hispanic white population. But for America'southward children, the future is at present. About half of all births in the United States are now to groups other than not-Hispanic whites. Already, the absolute numbers of white and black Americans are declining. "Over the next 20 years, the racial and ethnic composition of scholars studying family changes is going to be much dissimilar than we encounter in this room today," Lichter said.

Immigrants are more widely dispersed in the United States than they have been in the past. Hispanic populations are growing rapidly in many parts of the United States, often drawn to specific occupations. This growth is occurring in many locations that are dissimilar from traditional Hispanic gateway locations. Lichter observed, "I grew up in South Dakota. For a while when I was in college, I lived in a working course neighborhood in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. It was a Cosmic church that I attended. I went back there recently to this working class neighborhood. Now that neighborhood is mostly Hispanic. The church is Our Lady of Guadalupe. They have Castilian-speaking masses. It is four blocks abroad from the Morrill meat packing institute." These new immigration patterns will have implications for schooling, neighborhood segregation, the apply of English, and many other issues, said Lichter.

From the perspective of family unit structure, an important observation is that family construction and change are not the sole determinants of racial and ethnic variation in poverty. Family structure will certainly have some result on the poverty rates of children when they become adults, simply it is not the sole cistron.

Population-based, nationally representative studies have focused on marriage patterns, cohabitation, family unit disruption, and fertility. But most of this inquiry is focused on a unmarried signal in time and does not capture the dynamics of family instability, peculiarly for dissimilar immigrant groups or for unlike immigrant experiences. National averages hibernate tremendous diversity beyond unlike racial and ethnic groups.

For example, research by D. J. Hernandez (2004) has demonstrated differences betwixt native-born and immigrant children in U.S. households. Immigrant children are more likely to live in households with nonparents and to be in crowded households, and they are at greater risk of a diversity of negative experiences that may accept certain developmental consequences (run across Figure ii-vi) (Hernandez, 2004).

FIGURE 2-6

Immigrant children have more run a risk factors than practice native-born children. NOTE: The 4 take chances factors are (i) having a female parent who has not graduated from loftier schoolhouse; (2) living in economical deprivation (based on the ii×-poverty mensurate); (3) living (more...)

Many immigrant children alive with extended families, a situation known in some groups as "doubling upwards." Some groups also have very unlike experiences with transnational families that are linked in fundamental ways to families in other countries. Partners, spouses, and children may not be living with their parents just going back and forth between different countries.

Another effect that deserves consideration is interracial and intraracial marriage. When children accept parents of mixed racial and indigenous groups, or if they take one native parent and one foreign-born parent, these factors have implications for issues of racial identity and assimilation.

Structural and cultural variations in family structure, parenting practices, and child outcomes are other central bug, every bit are schoolhouse and neighborhood contexts, including neighborhood segregation of immigrants. In the past, geographic and social mobility have tended to go hand in hand. Just with the new movement of Hispanic groups into new destinations, that is changing. Many are less educated and have college rather than lower rates of fertility, which is driving population modify in these communities. "We don't know very much about the white response in these areas, whether there is going to exist a new kind of spatial patterning of out-migration or white flight from these rural areas. These are all issues that have implications for the future well-beingness of children generally but immigrant children in particular," said Lichter.

Several disquisitional kinds of information are lacking. Large national longitudinal survey samples frequently lack enough immigrants to drawn meaningful conclusions. Cross-sectional studies and the census tend to emphasize the prevalence of demographic characteristics rather than behavioral changes. Retrospective information do not enable much modeling because not enough data are bachelor on such factors equally economic conditions, employment, or migration. For these and other reasons, research on clearing is not specially nuanced or cumulative. Lichter observed, "it is very hard to link 1 discrete piece of research on a particular population of Vietnamese or Asians or Koreans or other groups with a broader theoretical or conceptual perspective. It is very hard to get a handle about what is important or what is needed adjacent."

A critical need in surveys is to distinguish 2d-generation Americans from college generation Americans. It would be useful for more than surveys to include a question on the land of origin of each parent. Lichter said, "I wish we had that in our census data, but nosotros don't. We have it in the Electric current Population Survey, then you tin can practice some things that make sense, but not in the decennial demography or American Community Survey."

Other data needs include the relationship of each person to everyone else in a household, income transfers and social support, mode of entry, migration histories, and connections to the bequeathed country or state of origin.

Changes to the American Community Survey have fabricated information technology possible to examine problems in ways that could not be washed in the past (U. S. Census Bureau, 2010b). For case, a new question showtime in 2008 asks whether a respondent had a birth in the past year. This can be linked to marital status, yielding insights into fertility among cohabiting partners. Some other series of question asks whether, during the past 12 months, a respondent was married, widowed, or divorced and how many times a person has been married. With this data, researchers can investigate marriage, remarriage, and other dynamic family processes.

Immigration is becoming an increasingly of import issue in U.South. society. Lichter also observed, "A growing racial and ethnic diverseness is hither to stay, even with highly restrictive immigration policy, in part because of the loftier rates of fertility that we have seen in the recent by." Assimilation does not corporeality to cultural genocide, Lichter observed. Groups equilibrate over time and continually touch each other.

THE Use OF MIXED METHODS IN THE STUDY OF THE HURRIED CHILD

Another striking feature of modern families is the extent to which children are involved in multiple activities in add-on to their time in school and at home. Sandra Hofferth, professor of family science and director of the Maryland Population Research Middle at the Academy of Maryland, gave an example of a mixed quantitative-qualitative study conducted when she was a fellow member of the Center for the Ethnography of Everyday Life at the University of Michigan. The question she addressed is whether busy children are overly stressed and pressured. One challenge was to define and measure "busy-ness."

She and her colleagues conducted qualitative interviews of parents and children ages 9 to 12 in 43 Michigan families (Hofferth, 2009). There was some variation in family unit construction, but these interviews were limited to white families with a mother who had at least a high schoolhouse education. Parents and children were asked about the children'due south activities, whether there were too many, whether they wanted to change, and what allowed them to manage their lives. This approach allowed the researchers to make up one's mind what parents meant by saying that their child had likewise many activities and also picayune time.

The results indicated that both the number and fourth dimension spent in activities mattered. The researchers too needed to define and measure stress. They found that parents mentioned the child crying or being ill, tired, and not wanting to participate in an action every bit signs of stress. To obtain comparable measures of activities and the fourth dimension spent in them in a large quantitative written report, the researchers used data from time-diary interviews with a nationally representative sample of children ages 9 to 12 beyond the United states. Based on the singled-out groups that arose from the qualitative study, they created four categories—hurried, balanced, focused, and inactive—using the corporeality of time and number of activities in which the child participated. They also used a standard calibration of internalizing beliefs problems to measure stress, which included such attributes as high-strung, nervous, fearful, anxious, unhappy, sad, and depressed. They then associated the action categories with measures of stress using multivariate methods.

They found, counterintuitively, that the more inactive children had higher levels of stress than the more active children. Parents have a trend to seek equilibria, said Hofferth. Parents had fabricated changes in the schedules of children who were overly stressed; therefore, children were non currently stressed. The inactive children were a greater challenge to parents, who wanted their children to get more involved with activities. This was a source of tension and stress in the parent-child human relationship. Parents reported that when less involved children became involved in activities, children's stress symptoms declined. "The results strike at strongly held stereotypes and behavior," said Hofferth. "Many refuse to believe the results in spite of the fact that parental interviews confirm them."

Quantitative research is a largely deductive process, she said. Information technology allows researchers to weed through hypotheses, throwing out some and keeping others, at least temporarily. Qualitative research is inductive. It starts with information, develops and improves constructs, questions, and measures, and ofttimes results in unanticipated findings. This enquiry tin produce of import insights—just it too raises challenges. Information technology generates enormous amounts of data, and it can exist hard to distill the results into curtailed conclusions. Coordinating this research may always exist difficult. And it tin can besides exist difficult to observe journals willing to publish this kind of inquiry, since journals prefer brusque, focused articles on narrowly divers topics. Hofferth's work on the hurried kid, for example, eventually was published in an edited book (Hofferth, 2009).

DISCUSSION

During the discussion period, Jane Guyer pointed out that families were unstable in the earlier function of the century because of a high rate of developed mortality, which was followed by a period of relative stability before the modern period of increased instability. She then asked whether certain forms of family instability today, such as incarceration, are the equivalent of expiry, because an adult can suddenly disappear from a child's life and not return. Kathleen Mullan Harris pointed out that if a single-parent household is formed as a result of parental death, child outcomes do not differ that much from two-parent families in comparison to families that undergo divorce, separation, or abandonment. She speculated that a divorce or separation may be accompanied by conflict that has a negative result on a kid. Likewise, the children of a deceased parent can remain in contact with the deceased parent's family unit, grandparents, and extended social network, so at that place is not as nifty a loss of social capital letter.

Susan Brown noted that one in four black children who were built-in in 1990 had a parent in prison past the historic period of 14 (Wildeman, 2009). "For item subpopulations, imprisonment actually is a pregnant factor that just now is getting some attention."

Hirokazu Yoshikawa asked whether surveys are being modified to capture diverseness in family structure. Brown responded that working groups are dealing with the problems and that progress is under way. For case, the National Center for Family and Union Research at Bowling Green State Academy is compiling data on cohabitation. This will be especially helpful in refining the terminology used to discuss family forms.

Jere Behrman asked about family unit construction in other parts of the earth, and Kelly Raley briefly discussed work in Western Europe. There is considerable geographic and population variation in family structure even in Western Europe, she noted. Similarly, in Latin America, both overall and detailed patterns differ from other parts of the world. "We need to move toward capturing some of this variability," she said. "Only using the umbrella term of 'cohabitation' is obscuring some important variations across racial and ethnic groups."

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The Lath on Children, Youth, and Families convened a workshop on student mobility in 2008. The workshop report, Student Mobility: Exploring the Impact of Frequent Moves on Mobility: Summary of a Workshop, is bachelor from the National Academies Press, http://www​.nap.edu.

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Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK56255/

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