Class 7

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Class 7
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(No Transcript)
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American Indian Families Primacy of the Tribes

• American Indian Indigenous people who settled
  in North America
• Lived in family units based on lineages
• Native American families an exception to other
  types of families
• Tribes, both matrilineal and patrilineal
• Matrilineal ties to maternal kin
• Patrilineal ties to paternal kin

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Commercial Capitalism and Slave Society 1607-1865

• Tied closely to expansionist policies of English
  political and economic elites
• Initially a combination of Royal enterprises of
  the king and independent entrepreneurs
• By the 18th century included the general pattern
  of merchants in the north and slave plantation
  owners in the south
• Was established with the objective of securing
  raw materials and markets for English goods.
• Alleviated the overflow of workers in Europe being

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Commercial Capitalism and Slave Society 1607-1865

• Two modes of production dominated
• household (small farm)
• capitalist (slave plantation and merchants)

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American Families Before 1776

• European colonists Primacy of the public family
• Families performed public services
• Education, hospitals, correction, orphanages,
  nursing homes, and poor houses
• No room for privacy or private lives
• Family affairs were public business

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American Families Before 1776

• Children were viewed as economic assets
• Father head of conjugal family and unchallenged
  ruler of household
• Married women had few rights

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Spanish Monarch

• 1. Patrilineal and Matrilineal
• 2. Marriage tied to property
• 3.Political and Public

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American Families 1776 to 1900

• Marriage was based on mutual respect and
  affection
• Wife cared for home and children
• women seen as morally superior
• Childhood considered a time to protect and
  support children
• Number of children per family declined

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Industrial Capitalism 1865-1920

• Civil War followed by westward expansion and an
  industrial boom.
• Transformed from an economy dominated by
  competitive capitalists (small medium-sized
  businesses) to an economy dominated by large
  enterprises
• Agriculture ( ) and Manufacturing ( )
• Post Reconstruction South, freed slaves as low
  wage laborers, tenant farmers, sharecroppers

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Industrial Capitalism 1865-1920

• Government influence on Racial and Ethnic
  relations
• US military power pressed for US interests abroad
  I.e. Spanish American War
• Homestead Act (1960s)
• Euro-American, 160-320 acres
• Black Americans ineligible, not yet citizens when
  act passed
• Mexicans (Mex-Amer war 1840s) subordinated and
  absorbed

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Authority vs. Affection

• Passing on land ownership had been basis of who
  and when to marry
• Began changing in late 18th century
• Total fertility rate (TFR) was high because
  people married younger
• Average woman gave birth to 7 children
• TFR declined by 1850
• Average woman gave birth to 5 children

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Affective Individualism

• Rise in number of personal relationships based on
  emotional rewards and autonomy

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From Cooperation to Separation Mens and
Womens Spheres

• Change in mode of production
• Advent of commercial capitalism
• Men worked outside the home
• World of work governed by business ethic
• Women worked inside the home
• Home considered place where women would renew
  husbands character and spirituality

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1950s Home Econ Textbook
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Working Class Families

• Immigrant Families
• African-American, Mexican-American and
  Asian-American
• Worked long hours for low wages
• Living Between Modes of Production
• Economic contributions of both husband and wife,
  as well as children, were needed to survive

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Working Class Families

• Families lived as if they were producing for
  themselves, but were in the labor force or at
  home producing for others
• Women
• Earned money by taking in laundry, doing
  piecework or housing boarders
• Common family fund
• The good of the family reigned
• Father decided how the money was spent

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Instability of Family Life

• Children grew and were left to earn their own
  money
• Authority of father eroded
• Families produced fewer children due to economic
  stress
• Children began to be seen as economic liabilities

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American Families 1900 until Today

• Early decades
• Rise in premarital sex, decline in births, rising
  divorce rate, inappropriate behavior
• Rise in marriage rate ? greater emotional
  satisfaction from marriage
• happiness, companionship, romantic love ? family
  central to satisfying life

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American Families 1900 until Today

• Privacy and private families on increase
• More apartments built
• Rise of individualism beginning
• Basis of marriage shifted from economics to
  emotional satisfaction and companionship
• Men and women more economically independent of
  each other than before
• Marriage weakened
• Divorce more common

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Advanced Industrial (multinational) Capitalism
1920s-1990s

• World War I --gt the Roaring 20s
• Large, International Corporations dominate US
  Economy(steel, auto etc) Robber Barons
• The Great Depression (1930s)
• Overproduction, layoffs, whites displaced blacks,
  New Deal unequal aid
• World War II (US Domination)
• Suburban Flight
• Rustbelt to Sunbelt, and beyond

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• Left off 5-29-03

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Families in the 1950s

• Married younger and had more children
• Baby Boom renewed emphasis on marriage and
  children
• Highpoint of Breadwinner-Homemaker model
• Women went back to work when kids went to school

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Families in the 1960s and Beyond

• Birthrate plunged
• Married, on average, 4 years later than before
• Young people wanted independence
• Divorce rate doubled from 1960s-70s
• Cohabitation more common from 1970s
• Women working away from home

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The Changing Life Course

• Consider cohorts
• Compare circumstances and results
• Life Course perspective
• Study of changes in individual lives over time
• How do these changes relate to historical events?

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History and Family Structure, 2 Slides Overlay
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• Why are emotional satisfaction, intimacy, and
  romantic love more important in American life now
  than perhaps 100 years ago?
• One possible answer

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• Maslow posited a hierarchy of human needs based
  on two groupings deficiency needs and growth
  needs. Within the deficiency needs, each lower
  need must be met before moving to the next higher
  level.

Source http//chiron.valdosta.edu/whuitt/col/regs
ys/maslow.html
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• Extra Material if you are interested

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Source http//web.utk.edu/gwynne/maslow.HTM

• The need for self-actualization is "the desire to
  become more and more what one is, to become
  everything that one is capable of becoming."
  People who have everything can maximize their
  potential. They can seek knowledge, peace,
  esthetic experiences, self-fulfillment, oneness
  with God, etc. It is usually middle-class to
  upper-class students who take up environmental
  causes, join the Peace Corps, go off to a
  monastery, etc.

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Family Systems of Native Americans and Americans
From Other Regions

• Emphasis on kin beyond conjugal
• unit
• Marriage central
• Tradition of family support

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Depression Generation

• Impact on family finances
• Undermined authority of father
• Divorce rate fell

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Depression Generation

• Postponement of marriage and childbearing
• 1 in 5 never had children (1 in 10 norm)
• Birth cohort all people born in a given year
• Children helped out by working

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What History Tells Us

• Americans come from all different regions of the
  world
• Different family traditions
• Americans of European descent
• Emphasis on conjugal family
• Sharp division of labor between male and female
• Division broke down in latter half of 20th
  century
• Importance of personal satisfaction to judge
  relationship