Chapter 7 Families

Chapter Introduction

This chapter explores gender in marriage, parenting and caregiving, work/family balance, and divorce. It opens with a comparison of contemporary legal debates surrounding marriage, specifically the 2015 U.S. Supreme Court decision, Obergefell v. Hodges, which extends marriage rights to same sex couples in all states and the reality of child marriage in the many U.S. states which allow it. While gay men and lesbians have led a movement to secure the rights and recognition that marriage has traditionally afforded to only heterosexual couples, many states have permitted children under the age of 18, most of them girls, to be married to partners who are typically adults. Abuse and sexual exploitation are common experiences of child brides in the U.S. and around the world.

Marriage

Marriage as a Legal Contract and the Challenge of Gay Rights Activists

The marriage contract is largely determined by law. Until 2015, an important specification of the marriage contract in most states was that the couple had to be heterosexual. This marriage prohibition for gay people created practical problems in terms of health insurance, life insurance, pensions, and health care decisions. Prior to the Supreme Court ruling, gay and lesbian couples could marry in several states and others offered civil unions or domestic partnerships which granted rights and responsibilities similar to those of heterosexual marriage but fell short of full legal equality.

History of Marriage in the United States

The text identifies three periods of marriage and family law in U.S. history. In the first period, the doctrine of coverture defined marriage as a unity in which the husband dominated. Married women could not own property, control their earnings, or be parties to lawsuits. The second period provided some economic equality between women and men but left in place different obligations of husbands and wives to one another in marriage. Married women’s property laws gave women the right to own property and to control their own earnings, but wives were expected to provide services for husbands, to be “helpmates,” and to be sexually accessible. The third period established gender equality in the eyes of the law. The idea of marriage as a shared partnership with equal responsibilities for economic, household, and child care tasks has been developing for the last 40 years in the U.S. However, legal equality has not necessarily meant social equality. Housework, market work, and child care are still all influenced by gender. Because women and men remain unequal in reality, problems have developed for divorcing women, especially when they have custody of children. The debate around gay marriage, visible beginning in the 1990s, marks a fourth period in which sexuality is most salient. Those who maintain that marriage should only be allowed between one man and one woman are supporting the idea that men and women are not equal but are different beings who can only marry someone of the “opposite” sex. Intersex and transgender people also present dilemmas if marriage is between one man and one woman.

Marriage Promotion in the U.S.

In the 1990s, the U.S. Congress passed the Defense of Marriage Act, which narrowly defined marriage as a legal relationship between one man and one woman. Laws promote marriage for welfare recipients in the erroneous belief that marriage will end poverty. Temporary Aid to Needy Families (TANF) is based on the assumption that failure to marry causes poverty. In reality, marriage does not cure poverty for many poor couples, and more than a quarter of poor children live in families with two parents. Low wages and lack of benefits, not failure to marry, create poverty even in two-parent families. Finally, single parents aren’t necessarily poor. In many other nations, single parents and their children qualify for safety nets that raise them above poverty as a matter of citizenship and human rights.

Love and Marriage

Marriage was once primarily an economic arrangement among the wealthy and powerful to consolidate wealth, transfer property, claim political power, and settle conflicts between nations. Love was not a reason to marry. In the 17th century in Europe and North America, the ideal of love as the basis of marriage began to take hold. Since then the connection between love and marriage has become a powerful ideology. However, the debates over marriage for gay and lesbian couples and the rules requiring marriage for poor people place gender issues before love.

Widowhood

Women are more likely to be widowed than men, who are more likely to live out their lives in a marriage. (See Box 7-1.) Women are less likely to remarry and more likely than men to live alone after age 65.

Parenting and Caregiving

Mothers and fathers experience being parents differently, and ideas about what makes a good mother or a good father are gendered. Race shapes parenting practices. Mothers spend more time with their children than do fathers, but African American fathers are much more likely than white fathers to participate in child care.

Motherhood Mystique

The motherhood mystique is the belief that women are only fulfilled when they become mothers. The mystique dictates that mothers must be involved in every aspect of their children’s lives, that they can best provide for the emotional, social, and intellectual needs of their children, that only they can protect their children from the worst of the outside world, and that their intense, exclusive devotion is good for their children. African American women’s experience with mothering is different from this model, which is directed toward middle-class and upper-class white women in the U.S. Slavery and then poverty have forced African American women into the labor market, where they often care for white children (and their parents) while being prevented from spending time with their own children. African American women have organized woman-centered networks of bloodmothers and othermothers (aunts, grandmothers, neighbors, and friends) to take care of children, sometimes for long periods of time and even as informal adoption.

Work and Family in Latino and African American Families

In the black community, mothering does not hold women back from employment and community activism as it does among upper-class and middle-class white women. Chicanas’ experiences with motherhood and paid labor are also somewhat different from the experience of white women in that they see the choice to work as an extension of their roles as wives and mothers. In contrast, white women often see employment and motherhood in opposition.

Working Mothers and the Mommy Wars

Women who combine employment and motherhood pay a “motherhood penalty” amounting to a 7% decline in income for each child. The association between lower wages and mothering has many causes. First, employers may discriminate against mothers. Second, mothers may choose to trade higher wages for mother-friendly jobs or they may interrupt their job history, causing them to be less competitive in the labor market. Third, mothers may be more distracted and exhausted at work and therefore less productive. In actuality, employed mothers contribute doubly to the community by raising children and working in the paid labor force. Some scholars name the tension between the motherhood mystique and social expectations that adults earn their way in our society as the “mommy wars.” The mommy wars show up most dramatically for low-income women in debates around welfare.

Welfare Mothers

Cash benefit welfare grants like TANF serve about 5% of the population at any given time. Utilization of food stamps, housing assistance programs, and other benefits is slightly higher. All of these programs, which we often collectively refer to as “welfare” still accounts for just 1% of the federal budget and 3% of state budgets. Despite these small numbers, welfare is a constant issue of political debate. About two-thirds of the people who receive welfare grants are children, and the majority of adults are single mothers. In the U.S., the belief that everyone should work for wages has led to support for imposing work requirements on welfare mothers and seeing the unpaid work of mothering as “not work.” The motherhood mystique and the family ethic hold that children should be cared for by their mothers. However, poor mothers cannot be “good mothers” when welfare policies force them into employment, creating a double bind for these women. The obvious solution to this problem is to acknowledge that the work women do to raise their children deserves remuneration. However, welfare policy is moving in the opposite direction, requiring more work from recipients and providing them with less support.

Temporary Aid to Needy Families (TANF).

In 1996, the U.S. federal government replaced the 60-year-old AFDC program with a new program called TANF, Temporary Aid to Needy Families, altering welfare programs significantly. First, welfare is no longer an entitlement. Today, almost half of eligible families do not receive assistance, up from 20% in 1996. Second, there are time limits on the number of years people are eligible for grants: two years at a time and five years in the lifetime of any adult in the household, regardless of need. Third, legal immigrants are barred from receiving TANF and food stamps. Fourth, criteria for receiving disability payments are more stringent. About 135,000 disabled children have lost welfare assistance with the new laws. Fifth, TANF cut the food stamp program by $27 billion. No legal immigrants are allowed to receive food stamps, and able-bodied adults under the age of 50 can receive food stamps only for three months in a three-year period. Sixth, states can cap the number of people within a household who are eligible for support. The assumption is that limiting welfare will reduce fertility among recipients. Ironically, lower birth rates are associated with more generous welfare programs in countries in Western Europe, Scandinavia, and Canada. Seventh, states must assign all individuals in a welfare household to job-training and job-finding activities. People may be exempt because they are ill, incapacitated, aged, under 16 or in school full time, already working at least 30 hours per week, more than six months’ pregnant, caring for an ill or incapacitated family member in their home, or caring for a young child. States have much flexibility defining these exemptions. Finally, states need not provide child care for children of TANF recipients who participate in job-support programs. These changes strengthen the idea that taking care of children is the individual responsibility of parents (mostly mothers) and they ignore the work involved in raising children. TANF policy strongly promotes the work ethic and abandons the family ethic, even though poor women continue to be judged by the ideology of the motherhood mystique.

Parenting by Fathers

Changes in work and family are also altering gender for men. When men actively parent, it has an effect on their behavior and personalities. Fathers who become the primary parents learn to be capable of caring for their children, and they begin to behave similarly to female parents. A new model of participatory fatherhood has emerged in the past few decades. Men who choose the traditional father role of breadwinner removed from daily child care may face long hours in the paid labor force to single-handedly support their families, may live with disapproving wives, and may be cut off from close relationships. On the other hand, involved fathers must balance work and family. Nonetheless, there is evidence that men are moving toward equality of caring for their children with their wives.

The Fatherhood Responsibility Movement

Fatherhood is currently a battleground of masculinity politics with two competing wings. The pro-marriage wing stresses that there is a natural difference between fathers and mothers and contends that only men can provide masculine models of risk taking, independence, discipline, and self-sacrificing protection. They believe that children must be raised in heterosexual marriages and advocate government intervention to support nuclear families and to promote family values. The fragile families group emphasizes the similarities between women and men and the need for fathers and mothers to work as a team to raise children. They do not believe that marriage is essential for raising children, nor do they believe that marriage can guarantee that children will be properly cared for. They argue that fathers must have jobs with decent wages and benefits in order to fulfill their role as good fathers and good providers, that women and men must share in the task of breadwinning, and that low-income men, especially low-income men of color, have not been able to play the role of breadwinner because of high unemployment and declining wages.

Biology and Parenting

Pregnancy and childbirth make some females different from all males. Both females and males contribute equal amounts of genetic material to a fetus, but it is only the female’s body that contributes nine months of gestation and the labor of giving birth. This difference played a role in the case of Baby M, which is extensively described in the text. Despite agreeing to bear a child for a childless couple, and being inseminated with the husband’s sperm, the birth mother changed her mind and wanted the keep the baby. The courts nullified the contract between the mother and the couple but held that the birth mother and the sperm donor father had equal rights to the child, finally deciding that the donor father and his wife would be better parents than the working-class birth mother. The courts treated the birth mother and the sperm donor father as equal genetic contributors to the child, but they made invisible the nine months of pregnancy and delivery the mother went through. In this case, equality of genetic contribution to the child failed to take into account the unique relationship between biological mothers and their children.

Another Kind of Family Caregiving: Elder Care

Care work includes the unpaid job of caring for parents, grandchildren, spouses, extended family, neighbors, and other members of the community in addition to children. Care for a broader group of people than the immediate family is more common among African Americans and First Nations people than among whites or Hispanics. In recent decades, elder care has become more central for several reasons: longer life expectancy, lower birthrates, childbearing at later ages, high divorce rates, and cuts in social programs.

Caregiving involves many hours of difficult tasks such as bathing, dressing, feeding, toileting, providing transportation, helping with medication and doing household tasks, and operating high-tech equipment to deliver treatments for acute and chronic conditions and to treat systemic infection and cancer. Nearly all of this work is done by women. Only among Asian Americans do men and women provide care at about the same rate. Women become caretakers for many reasons: an ideology that says women are natural caregivers, lower pay that makes their wages more dispensable than their husbands’, and their belief that their sacrifices are necessary. The government does little to provide paid care workers or care.

Gendered Styles of Care Work

Women are more likely than men to report anxiety, depression, physical strain, health problems, and lower life satisfaction. Men’s style of care is more “managerial” in that they are able to separate themselves emotionally from the work, allowing them to take time off and maintain outside interests. The difference is in their emotion work during caring. Men receive more recognition and get more help for caring than women. Men are often financially better off and can purchase support.

Grandparents and Care Work

More than 5% of all children in the United States live in households maintained by a grandparent, and these numbers are rapidly growing. Caretaking grandparents are likely to be women, poor, and black. Most research on grandparents focuses on grandmothers. One study of grandfathers found they had few caretaking skills and felt unprepared for their new role. Care work is stratified by age, class, and nationality. Wealthier families hire care workers from the global South.

International Chains of Care. Care work cannot be outsourced to other parts of the world the way that much production work and service work has been. As women of the global North are pulled into the labor force, the need for paid care workers grows and has stimulated poor women to migrate from their homes and families in the global South (the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Thailand, South America, and elsewhere) to work as nannies and housekeepers for middle-class and wealthy families in the global North.. For these women, taking jobs to support their own families entails moving to distant countries and leaving their own children and families for years at a time. This arrangement has emotional and health consequences for the women and for the families left behind. There is little labor-law protection for these migrant workers, nor is there protection for the women who take their places as domestics and nannies back home.

Balancing Work and Family. Research shows that young women and men want egalitarian marriages in which both partners share work and parenting. If these ideals are beyond their reach, their fallback strategies differ by gender. Most women prefer individual autonomy over dependence on a husband in a traditional marriage. Most men say they will fall back on an arrangement that allows them to get married and have children and to put their own work first, relying on their partner to take care of their family life.

International Comparisons on Family Support Programs

Some nations have policies that reduce the workweek, offer workers 5 to 6 weeks of paid vacation a year, and provide paid maternity leaves of at least 14 weeks (see Table 7-3). Sixty-five countries ensure that fathers have a right to paid parental leave for as much as 14 or more weeks. Relatively poor nations, such as Mexico, Cameroon, and Pakistan, provide paid leave for mothers. The U.S., the wealthiest nation in the world, provides no paid leave, along with Lesotho, Liberia, Papua New Guinea, and Swaziland (see Table 7-3). Family leave policy can be divided into 4 types: pro-family and non-interventionist; traditional breadwinner; pro-family and pro-natalist; and egalitarian.

Divorce

Divorce is common in the U.S.: about half of all marriages end in divorce. Not surprisingly, divorce is experienced differently by both women and men and causes further distinctions between them. First, from two-thirds to three-quarters of divorces are initiated by women. Second, men and women are stigmatized differently about divorcing. Men who have affairs suffer stigma, while women who have young children are stigmatized. Third, women’s incomes decline about 30% after divorce, while men’s incomes rise an average of 15%.

The Gendered Economics of Divorce

Common types of divorce are no-fault divorce, covenant divorce, repudiation laws in conservative Muslim nations, and reformed repudiation laws in more liberal Muslim nations. These variations both reflect and shape gender arrangements.

Divorce law is gender-neutral, but divorce takes place in a gendered society. A couple’s wisest economic decision is to get the husband educated and into the labor market quickly as possible and then see to the woman’s education (see Table 6-3). If the couple divorces, equal sharing of the property does not take this educational and work advantage into account. Alimony, now called spousal support, is supposed to equalize such inequities, but in reality, support payments are inadequate and often not honored. Black women are less likely to receive spousal support than are white women.

Challenges of Divorce for Men

Upon divorce in the U.S., nearly all children (85%) are placed in the custody of their mothers, creating economic difficulties for many women. But men who are not custodial parents also face problems when they divorce. Some noncustodial fathers avoid contact or responsibility for their children. Some want to stay close to their children but avoid their ex-wives. And some want to create parenting partnerships with their ex-wives and to remain responsible and connected to their children.

Variation in Divorce Laws in Different Nations

South African Divorce Laws

South African divorce laws are similar to the American no-fault laws but do not treat the two spouses as necessarily equal in claims to property. The partner with a better job and education receives a lesser share of the property. The South African court takes into consideration who has physical custody of the children and how that might affect the household finances of the divorcing parties.

Repudiation in Muslim Nations

Men in Muslim societies can terminate marriage at will without judicial intervention under Islamic law (shari’a). Critics of repudiation laws cite four problems: repudiation laws do not require court procedures; only men have the right to divorce; after repudiation, men have no financial responsibility for their wives; and the process is too easy for men. Egypt has a reformed version of repudiation. The current divorce laws in Tunisia allow for either the man or woman to request a divorce. The person who requests the divorce must compensate the nonconsenting person. The law also has special protections for women. Women now can obtain a divorce on the same grounds and through the same process as men and can receive alimony. Some disadvantages remain, however, such as the stigma of divorce and the compensation women must pay if they initiate the divorce.

Making Comparisons

No-fault laws in the U.S. attempt to ignore gender, but since divorce takes place in a highly gendered social context, the end result of divorce exacerbates differences, especially economic differences, between women and men. Repudiation laws are explicitly gendered and the results intensify inequality between women and men by keeping women in unhappy marriages and impoverishing women whose husbands choose to divorce them. In both cases, divorce leaves women in difficult economic and social situations after a divorce, no matter how much an improvement the end of the marriage may bring to their lives in other ways. South African laws reflect gender equality. Spouses (regardless of gender) are equal before the law, but the laws provide for protecting all of the parties by incorporating child custody into the divorce proceedings and protecting the more vulnerable people in the divorcing household. These contrasts illustrate the distinction between gender equality (equal treatment of women and men in the law and policies) and gender equity (fairness and justice in the distribution of benefits and responsibilities).

Gender Matters

Gender is central in families, but social institutions beyond families create important contexts that maintain or undermine gender inequities. An important change—that women are increasingly entering the paid labor force—is challenging because women are still expected to take the major responsibility for child care. This contradiction has created a care gap that is being filled by women from abroad, helping to promote equity in Northern households but creating terrible problems for women and families from the global South.

Short-Answer Essay Questions

1. What is coverture and what was its role in the history of marriage in the U.S.?
2. Explain the Defense of Marriage Act.
3. What assumption is the Temporary Aid to Needy Families (TANF) based on?
4. What is the “motherhood mystique”?
5. How are ideas about parenting different in black communities, in white communities, and among Chicanas in the U.S.?
6. What is the “motherhood penalty”?
7. How is elder care in the U.S. differentially gendered?
8. How does the U.S. rate in its family support programs in comparison with other nations?
9. How is divorce in the U.S. differentially gendered?
10. List three different ways divorce works in different cultures.

Long-Answer Essay Questions

1. One increasingly visible form of work is “care work,” work that is often unpaid and delegated to women. Write an essay describing who does care work and under what conditions. What are the relationships between care workers and those who are cared for? How does care work differ among care workers, according to working conditions (for example, as paid or unpaid work, by racial ethnic minorities, on behalf of the wealthy)? What is making care work more central today?
2. Write an essay discussing the relative advantages and disadvantages to women and to men of remaining in their marriages or divorcing their spouses. Base your discussion on the following scenarios: a couple with three small children and an abusive husband; a marriage between two lawyers with one child; a young woman on welfare married to a young unemployed man; a Muslim couple with grown children.
3. What is the impact of low wages on mothering? List and elaborate on the ways poverty affects parenting.
4. The text describes the “motherhood mystique” as an ideology that romanticizes motherhood, promotes mothering as women’s most fulfilling activity, and urges mothers to be fully involved in every aspect of their children’s lives. To what extent is this mystique observable in the mass media? Analyze the articles and photographs contained in one mass-circulation magazine directed toward women. What are its messages about mothering? What are the messages about fathers and fathers’ caretaking? Write a paper on your findings.
5. Chapter 7 uncovers contradictions in the conviction that marriage should be for love except for poor people and non-heterosexuals, who should marry for economic support or to conform to heterosexual standards. Those who are against gay marriage and in favor of promoting marriage for poor people believe that gender is key. According to this view, marriage is for one man and one woman and every man and every woman must be married regardless of love. Those who are in favor of allowing gay marriage believe that love is more important than gender. Interview middle-aged and older people; then interview students on campus. Ask respondents to answer the question: Which do you think is more important, love or gender? Explain your answer. Write a paper on your findings.

Critical Thinking Exercises

1. First make a list of ideal family life: what do you think is important for every family to have, to experience, to be able to do? Now, looking over Chapter 7, list challenges to family life that are specific to Americans. Do your values about family life conflict with American social life? If they do, how much of these conflicts relate to gender, how much to race ethnicity, and how much to capitalism?
2. Chapter 7 explains that family leave policies in different countries can be divided into 4 types: pro-family and non-interventionist; traditional breadwinner; pro-family and pro-natalist; and egalitarian. Explain what each policy is; then defend the policy that seems fairest to you.
3. As chapter 7 explains, there is a difference between gender equity and gender equality. What is the difference? In what situations does one occur without the other? Or would you argue that neither is possible without the other?

Multiple Choice Questions

1. How is marriage different from other contracts?
   1. Its details are specified, and when it ends through divorce, the state makes the final decision over nearly all arrangements.
   2. Most contracts are equal between both parties, whereas the marriage contract favors one party over the other.
   3. All of the legal restrictions placed on marriage by the marriage contract are negative.
   4. It provides more freedom than other contracts.
2. What is coverture?
   1. A practice in several cultures in which the husband of a pregnant woman takes to his bed as though he were giving birth to the child
   2. The requirement in ancient French cultures that women in a family cover their hair and faces during menstruation
   3. The doctrine that defined marriage as a unity in which husband and wife became one, and that “one” was the husband
   4. A term for welfare laws that protect the neediest families
3. How does the narrow definition of marriage as between a woman and a man create rules about gender?
   1. It suggests that after the marriage, women should take on certain tasks and a certain role, and men should do the “opposite.”
   2. It reminds us that men and women are not equal, but are different beings who can only unite with someone of the “opposite sex” in marriage.
   3. The marriage contract that presents this definition also lists tenets of male and female behavior.
   4. All of the above
4. In what ways are the U.S. government’s attempts to “promote marriage” as a way to address the problem of poverty flawed?
   1. They assume that failure to marry causes poverty and that marriage cures poor couples’ financial problems.
   2. The program does not acknowledge the issue of marriage quality.
   3. Single parenthood does not necessarily lead to poverty.
   4. All of the above
5. What is the effect of the “motherhood penalty” on working women, according to Michelle Budig and Paula England’s 2001 study?
   1. Women were 5 times less likely to find work after having children.
   2. Women’s income declined by 7% for each child they had.
   3. Working women choose not to have children or to wait until their 40s to try to have children.
   4. Women were taxed at a higher rate than men after having children.
6. How is the United States unique in the developed world in terms of its policy toward new parents?
   1. It only offers publicly funded paid leave for new parents if they are married.
   2. It only offers publicly funded paid leave for new parents if they are single.
   3. It lacks any publicly funded paid leave for new parents.
   4. It offers more publicly funded paid leave for new parents.
7. How is the 1996 Temporary Aid to Needy Families program (TANF) different from the Aid to Families with Dependent Children program (AFDC) that it replaced?
   1. TANF places more stringent limits on financial assistance to needy families.
   2. AFDC placed more stringent limits on financial assistance to needy families.
   3. TANF has a far larger budget of $33 billion annually, so it is able to disburse more funding to needy families.
   4. AFDC barred legal immigrants from receiving TANF and food stamps.
8. What does the “fragile families” group emphasize about fatherhood?
   1. That fathers and mothers should work as a team to raise children
   2. That there is a natural difference between fathers and mothers, which heterosexual marriage cements
   3. That it is a father’s responsibility to provide for a family economically
   4. That the fragility of the American family requires a renewed effort to save the institution of marriage
9. How do men and women experience divorce differently?
   1. Women are two to three times more likely to initiate divorce.
   2. Men and women are stigmatized in different ways and for different reasons.
   3. Women face a decline in their incomes after a divorce, while men see an increase.
   4. All of the above
10. What does “repudiation” refer to in divorce law?
    1. The right a woman has in South African divorce courts to rebut a claim that she has been unfaithful
    2. The unilateral prerogative for a man to terminate a marriage at will without judicial intervention under Islamic law
    3. The procedure in Egypt that puts women in an equal position with men in relation to no-fault divorce
    4. The laws in both Tunisia and Morocco by which a nonconsenting woman must be provided with alimony for life by her divorcing husband
11. Which of the following ideas does the fragile families perspective promote about fathers as wage earners:
    1. Fathers feel more engaged in family life when they have decent jobs with decent wages available to them.
    2. Societies should make it possible for women and men to share breadwinning responsibilities.
    3. Fathers should be the primary breadwinners for their families while mothers should take on primary responsibility for childcare.
    4. Both a. and b. are correct.
12. When it comes to government orientation to supporting families with children, which of the following orientations does the U.S. have?
    1. Pro-family and pro-natalist
    2. Non-interventionist
    3. Traditional breadwinner model
    4. Egalitarian
13. What does the “free rider” problem as related to having and raising children?
    1. Men do not spend as much time caring for children as women do
    2. Individuals and institutions benefit from the work that parents do but do not have to pay for that work
    3. Women who have children do not contribute as much to the economy
    4. Some parents rely too much on institutions and other individuals to raise their children for them.
14. Which of the following is true regarding laws surrounding marriage in the United States?
    1. It is legal is some states for individuals under the age of 18 to get married.
    2. All states must allow same-sex couples to either marry or enter into a civil union or domestic partnership.
    3. All states must allow same-sex couples to marry.
    4. Both a. and c. are correct.
15. Which of the following is the best definition of a neo-traditional couple?
    1. A heterosexual couple who share equitably in the responsibilities of earning income and caring for their children.
    2. A gay or lesbian couple who mirror traditional heterosexual patterns by designating one caregiver and one breadwinner.
    3. Any contemporary couple who implements a breadwinner/caregiver division of family labor
    4. A couple who believes is the equality of both partners but has a “fall back plan” of prioritizing men’s careers and women prioritizing caregiving.
16. What is the masculinity movement as it relates to families?
    1. A campaign to redefine masculinity for boys so that it is acceptable to be nurturing and show emotion
    2. A campaign to redefine masculinity for fathers so that it is acceptable to be nurturing and show emotion
    3. A movement promoting the notions that fathers should be providers and leaders of their families and have more control of child custody and child support payments
    4. Both a. and b. are correct.
17. Which of the following is NOT a tenet of the Motherhood Mystique?
    1. A mother’s intense devotion is good for her children.
    2. Mothers should be involved in every aspect of their children’s lives.
    3. Mothers should be a buffer to difficult things in the outside world.
    4. A mother should role model career ambition and having other personal interests.
18. Which of the following represents a fourth phase in the history of marriage in the United States?
    1. Coverture
    2. Marriage as a shared partnership in which spouses have overlapping responsibilities
    3. The recognition of gay and lesbian marriages
    4. The end of coverture and the legal recognition of husbands and wives as equal citizens
19. What proportion of the U.S. federal budget is devoted public welfare programs (like TANF and food stamps)?
    1. 1%
    2. 5%
    3. 10%
    4. 20%
20. Which of the following is the best description of a pro-natalist orientation to family policymaking?
    1. Policies which promote having children, for example by offering paid parental leave and stipends to families with children.
    2. Policies which promote women staying home with babies by providing a family wage to male breadwinners
    3. A lack of public policies supporting parents and children with the assumption that families should determine how to support themselves without government aid
    4. Policies which promote more equal sharing of childcare responsibilities by providing paid leave to parents where some of the time must be used by fathers