Abstract
Family formation behavior is strongly linked to one’s social class position. While this has been true throughout America’s history, the interplay of class and family dynamics is unique today because we better tolerate peoples’ individualistic choices—we no longer expect people to privilege the aims of their elders over their own interests. Further, heterosexual men and women have more options today. They can decide who they partner with, when they do so, and under what legal arrangement. Also, people can decide whether to become parents and, if so, when. Our family choices reflect our lived experiences and expectations and thus reveal the different opportunities and challenges of people in different class locations. Therefore, studying family behavior provides an avenue to examine and illuminate America’s social classes.
In Social Class and Changing Families in an Unequal America, Marcia Carlson and Paula England have assembled a valuable collection of writings by prominent sociologists about the dramatic changes that have occurred within American families over the last sixty years and how families are configured differently across the socioeconomic hierarchy. Moving beyond a facile “poor” and “non-poor” dichotomy, the volume explores patterns across education and income levels. Together, the chapters provide valuable insights into the causes and consequences of different partnering and parenting choices.
In Chapter One, Paula England, Elizabeth Aura McClintock, and Emily Fitzgibbons Shafer explore differences in young women’s age at first intercourse, use of birth control, and abortion—all of which contribute to a socioeconomic gradient in the likelihood a young woman experiences an early, unintended birth. Thus, with great detail, the authors walk through the proximate determinants of fertility to explore how these differences emerge according to their mothers’ educational attainment.
Philip Morgan, in Chapter Two, seeks to understand family behavior using the theory of conjectural action (TCA), which emphasizes how people construe their objective and unequal situations. He then leverages TCA to categorize observed differences in fertility according to whether they arise from (1) temporal transitions, (2) durable structural arrangements, or (3) political dynamics between groups that lead people to alter their identity and behavior.
In Chapter Three, Andrew Cherlin takes a closer look at the family patterns of individuals with moderate levels of education (i.e., those with a high school degree and/or some college training). These largely working-class individuals have been greatly impacted by global, macroeconomic changes and, as a corollary, have distinct family patterns. They have more residential partnerships, more children within cohabitation, and more stressful and precarious marriages.
In Chapter Four, Kathryn Edin, Timothy Nelson, and Joanna Miranda Reed leverage rich qualitative data to explore low-income, urban fathers’ romantic relationship experiences and their reflections on these relationships. For these men, the father-child relationship is idealized and binds them to the child’s mother. Instead of being their first priority, the father-mother relationship is ambiguous and contingent. These romantic relationships, however, eventually destabilize the father-child relationship.
Sara McLanahan provides a comprehensive review of key findings from the groundbreaking and unique study of fragile families in Chapter Five. Children in these fragile families experience great household instability and complexity. This instability exacerbates their parents’ precarious financial and mental health status and undermines their parenting practices. Together, these processes harm child well-being, particularly for boys.
In Chapter Six, Annette Lareau and Amanda Cox leverage unique, longitudinal qualitative data on 12 families to explore how parents of different class backgrounds support their children in the transition to adulthood. Middle- and upper-class parents possess a global knowledge and cultivate a specific knowledge to help their children get into the best college. They also help stave off problems that would thwart their child’s education, though these interventions come at a cost. Working-class and poor parents provide equal emotional support to their child, but they cannot offer the same instrumental knowledge to advance their child’s education.
In Chapter Seven, Timothy Smeeding and Marcia Carlson provide a valuable description of the social policies affecting disadvantaged American families. They subdivide policies into those that affect family budgets, current family relationships, and family formation behavior. The authors note the difficulty of developing policy that meets the challenges of modern family complexity in this economic environment, but conclude that the current infrastructure is too little, too late for most poor families. They advocate for a broader public and private effort, particularly the provision of a living wage, to prevent the formation of more unmarried families with children from multiple partners.
Finally, in the most unique chapter, Chapter Eight, Frank Furstenberg, Jr. flexes his sociological imagination and reflects upon how American family customs, as well as the sociological studies of families, have changed over his career. The reader is swept along with his wide-angle retrospective. His narrative about the shifts in the field and in his career makes this chapter a great read for budding family sociologists.
As a collection, the volume will readily appeal to family sociologists. Among them, early career scholars will greatly benefit from both the breadth and depth of this volume—it provides a good overview of the intersection of social class and family formation. In fact, this book would make an excellent text for both advanced undergraduate and graduate courses. Seasoned family scholars will recognize many (but not all) of the insights proffered, yet will find the volume stimulating for its potential to spark new questions. For example, what more can we learn about the families of the “moderately educated” and how can we apply TCA to study other areas of family behavior? Taking a cue from Furstenberg, we can leverage the findings in this book to imagine how the field will develop over the next forty years.
Sociologists focused on social stratification and inequality will also greatly benefit from this volume. The book reveals the consequences of the increasing economic polarization in America for our lived family experiences. Further, these family formation behaviors provide an avenue by which one can explore and understand how the growing economic inequality can be transmitted to the next generation.