Family historian Stephanie Coontz

“How has marriage changed?”
– “Marriage was invented to get in-laws.”
– “About 200 years ago, people started
marrying for love.”
– “Women couldn’t afford to marry for love until
they had economic independence.”
– “In 1964, three-fourths of college age women
said they would consider marrying someone
they did not love.”
Sociology 1201
Coontz 2
“Marriage has become fairer, more
passionate, more fulfilling. (But) the things
that have strengthened marriage as a
relationship have weakened marriage as
an institution…”
 Besides being an economic arrangement,
of course, marriage has also been about
raising children.
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Sociology 1201
What is a Family?
Coontz/s big point: the sheer diversity of
families: “Not until the mid-19th century
did the word “family” commonly come to
refer to a married couple with their coresident children.”
Ancient China: “You have only one family
but you can always get another wife.”
Indigenous societies of North America
seldom distinguished between “legitimate”
and “illegitimate” children.
Sociology 1201
Family systems of early North
America
Native societies:”used family ties to organize
nearly all political, military, and economic
transaction that in Europe were becoming
regulated by the state.”
“Few institutions (define) organized on any basis
other than kinship.” No “state”(p. 34, 36)
Contrast with European families that came to
North America(34-35)
Sociology 1201
Slave families
“The family arrangements of slaves and their families
depended on whether they lived in great cotton or
tobacco plantations utilizing gang labor, small
backwoods farms where one or two slaves lived and
worked under a master’s close supervision, colonial
villages where there were just a few personal slaves,
or the free black settlements that gradually emerged
in some areas.”
White men and black women:
(Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings
(Post-Slavery Jim Crow system… Duke oral
histories)
Sociology 1201
The Rise of the Domestic Family
Ideal
“From about the 1820s, the spread of a
market economy led to the gradual
separation of home and work, market
production and household production….
Diaries of the day increasingly complain
about the need to raise cash.” See p. 37
“A new middle class ideal” p. 38
Not without resistance: abortions and birth
control (p. 38)
Sociology 1201
Family changes that
accompanied industrialization

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
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1. Separation of home and work\
2. Reduction of household membership to its
nuclear core
3. Fall in marital fertility
4. Longer residence of children in their
parents’ home (middle class)
Sociology 1201
Family Consumer economy: the
20th century
“By the 1920s, for the first time, a
slight majority of children came to live
in families where the father was the
breadwinner, the mother did not have
paid employment outside the home,
and the children were in school rather
than work.”
(Different story for immigrant children,
then arriving in large numbers)
Sociology 1201
Related or supporting changes
“Dating” replaced “courting” (automobiles,
movie theaters)
 Center of emotional life shifted to the
husband-wife bond
 “Family wage jobs” became more plentiful
for blue-collar workers (Wagner National
Labor Relations Act and unionization)
Veterans benefits after World War II
 U.S. dominated the world economy

Sociology 1201
More economic changes
affecting families
“Between 1947 and 1973, real wages rose,
on average, by 81% and the gap between
rich and poor declined significantly.”
“Golden age” of families in the 1950s… age
of marriage and parenthood fell, divorce and
desertion dropped , percentage of women
remaining single hit a hundred year low
Baby boom
Sociology 1201
Many family problems swept under
the rug
Family violence, alcoholism
 30% of white children living in poverty
 African-American married couples with
children had a poverty rate of 50%
 National poll of American housewives, p.
45
 “As early as 1957, the divorce rate began
to grow again.”

Sociology 1201
Parenting: trends
1. Bringing fathers into the birthing experience
(Childbirth Education Association)
2. Single parent families
3. Shared parenting
4. Arlie Russell Hochschild: “the daddy
hierarchy”—”new fathers” vs “fading
fathers”
Sociology 1201
Unequal Childhoods, ch. 2
“…Children grow up in within a broad,
highly stratified social system.”
 Conceptualize social class in terms of
categories vs gradations

– Lareau prefers categories: poor and working
class vs middle and upper middle class
– One fifth of all children below the poverty
line; twice that rate for Black children
Sociology 1201
Two Schools
Lower Richmond: pp. 15-16. “About one half
of each class reads below grade level.”
Swan School: pp. 19-20. “Most students in
fourth grade, including the low achievers,
read at grade level (or above).”
Sociology 1201
Teachers’ views of good parenting
Teachers at both schools support
concerted cultivation, although they might
also complain about children being
overscheduled.
 Teachers want parental involvement in
schooling—supervison of homework,
attendance at conferences
 Teachers themselves use concerted
cultivation.

Sociology 1201
Discussion Groups
Lareau, chapters 3-5
 The parenting experiences of:

– Garrett Tallinger
– Tyrec Taylor
– Katie Brindle
Which of these families would fit in Promises I
Can Keep?
Sociology 1201
Video: “Unequal Education”
Riverdale Junior High and James Kelly
 South Fordham Junior High and Lonnie
Smith
 Why are these schools so different, given
that both are part of the NYC school
system and that they are just miles apart?

Sociology 1201