Exploring Family Relationships With Other Social Contexts

Ross D. Parke, Sheppard G. Kellam, Ross D. Parke, Sheppard G. Kellam

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781134767694
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Mental Health in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

In the 1990s it is no longer "news" that families do not operate independently from other social organizations and institutions. Instead, it is generally recognized that families are embedded in a complex set of relationships with other institutions and contexts outside the family. In spite of this recognition, a great deal remains to be discovered about the ways in which families are influenced by these outside agencies or how families influence the functioning of children and adults in these extra-familial settings--school, work, day-care, or peer group contexts. Moreover, little is known about the nature of the processes that account for this mutual influence between families and other societal institutions and settings. The goal of this volume is to present examples from a series of ongoing research programs that are beginning to provide some tentative answers to these questions. The result of a summer workshop characterized by lively exchanges not only between speakers and the audience, but among participants in small group discussions as well, this volume attempts to communicate some of the dynamism and excitement that was evident at the conference. In the final analysis, this book should stimulate further theoretical and empirical advances in understanding how families relate to other contexts.

1

Processes Linking Families and Work: Implications for Behavior and Development in Both Settings

Ann C. Crouter

The Pennsylvania State University

About 200 years ago, industrialization began to revolutionize the nature of work and its place in society, gradually bringing about the geographic separation of work and family for most sectors of society (Hareven, 1982). The nature of work changed as new technologies lead to the segmentation of work activities into smaller, more routinized functions. The workplace changed as well, with many work settings becoming increasingly large, complex, and hierarchical.

Families adapted to the changes wrought by new means of economic subsistence. In the United States, as in virtually all industrialized countries, fertility rates dropped as families came to the realization that children represented a very different economic and emotional investment than they had in an agriculturally based economy (Zelizer, 1985). Roles and opportunities for women also shifted markedly. In particular, rates of labor force participation for women have increased steadily since the 1950s, both in the United States and in other industrialized countries. Smaller families, increased job and educational opportunities, and changing gender role norms about the “place” of women in society all contributed to this trend (Davis, 1984). Women’s participation in the paid labor force has also become increasingly continuous over the years, as fewer women have elected to stay home to care for young children. Indeed, the subgroup of women to experience the greatest increase in participation in the labor force in recent years has been mothers of children under 1 year of age (Hayghe, 1986).

As more women have entered the workplace, scholars have become increasingly interested in the interconnections between the workplace and families (Kanter, 1977). Researchers have approached this issue from several angles, three of which are discussed in this chapter. First, there has been increased interest in families in which both mother and father work outside the home (Hoffman, 1989). These studies have focused primarily on the psychosocial functioning of children experiencing maternal employment. A number of recent studies have gone beyond simply identifying similarities and differences between children as a function of their social address (i.e., dual-earner vs. single-earner family; Bronfenbrenner & Crouter, 1982) and begun detailing the processes within these contrasting family contexts that appear to impede or enhance children’s psychological well-being and development. A strength of this set of studies is that the studies illuminate the dynamics of family life. They pay little attention, however, to the nature of the work that parents do.

A second domain of research has focused on the emotional state of the worker/family member as he or she moves back and forth across the settings of work and home. The emphasis here is on short-term psychological processes operating within the individual who traverses the settings. In these studies, there is generally less attention to the properties of the settings themselves—to the roles, relationships, and activities therein—and to long-term processes of individual development.

The third set of studies revolve around work and family as settings for adult development. Both work and family are contexts that offer the kinds of activities that are likely to promote new skills and ways of looking at the world. To the extent that an individual’s work, for example, encourages the development of a set of new skills or perspectives, these new abilities or viewpoints are likely to be generalized to life at home as well. These issues lie at the heart of the ecological perspective on development (Bronfenbrenner, 1979, 1989), and represent a promising research frontier for those interested in the interrelationship between work and family life.

In all three areas of research, few studies have paid equal attention to both settings. All too often, one setting is the primary focus, whereas the other is treated as a status variable or as a general source of stress. As Kline and Cowan (1989) explained, “studies from the employment or family perspectives, like maps drawn from the viewpoints of inhabitants from particular regions, show one domain occupying the foreground, while the other is represented only in sketchy outline” (p. 62). In part, this distortion in perspective is due to the complexity of the issues. It is difficult to conceptualize and design research that does justice to both settings. The uneven conceptualization and examination of work and family is also a product of the way in which the scientific disciplines have carved up the social world. Developmental researchers are trained to conduct research in laboratories, schools, and families, but rarely factories and offices. Organizational behavior experts, however, seldom follow their subjects past the boundaries of the workplace. Moreover, interdisciplinary collaboration in this domain of study is rare.

Paying equal attention to both settings provides some valuable insights that can sometimes be too easily glossed over when, for example, family is in the foreground, with work simply seen as a background characteristic (e.g., dual-earner family). It is important to recognize, for example, that work and family are reciprocally interrelated. Although it is generally recognized that work has a powerful influence on family life, the workplace is not immune from effects emanating from workers’ family lives (Kanter, 1977). In addition, work and family are not simply settings in which individuals are located. There is a planfulness behind individuals’ choices of work and family roles that cannot be overlooked. Many people thoughtfully select a course of study to prepare themselves for a certain kind of job or career. Others turn down job opportunities for family reasons. Increasingly, women in fast-track occupations are postponing parenthood, and when they do have children, they tend to have smaller families than was the case for their mothers’ generation. The point here is that individuals actively sort themselves into work and family settings on the basis of their interests, preferences, resources, skills, values, interpretations of prevailing social norms, and best guess about how to maximize future opportunities (Gerson, 1985). This issue of selection adds another layer of complexity to this area inquiry. It forces us to realize, for example, that dual-earner families may differ from their single-earner pounterparts on a host of dimensions (e.g., gender role attitudes, educational background) in addition to the wife’s employment status. For the field to progress, we must, in Elder’s (1981) words, “discover the complexity.”

This chapter examines recent developments in the three areas just described: (a) processes through which work or family status influences behavior in the other setting, (b) influences of mood generated in one setting on interactions or behavior in the other setting, and (c) ways in which adult development is enhanced—or impeded—in one setting that generalize to behavior in the other setting. These issues are explored first from the perspective of work’s impact on the family and subsequently from the vantage point of studies on the influence of families and family life on the workplace. This structure is simply an organizational device, glossing over the fact that, in reality, the interrelationships between these primary settings of adult life are complex and reciprocal.

Influences of Work on Families and Children

Single- and Dual-Earner Families as Settings for Development

Since the 1930s, developmental researchers have been interested in how the paid employment of mothers influences the psychological well-being and development of their children. As Bronfenbrenner and Crouter (1982) explained, early studies in this area had a social problems focus; maternal employment was assumed to have negative effects on children. Research designs were quite simplistic, employing a “social address model” in which children in traditional, father breadwinner families were compared with children in dual-earner families on a host of outcomes such as school achievement and social adjustment. By the 1960s, studies had become somewhat more sophisticated, building social class and the child’s gender into their designs and, occasionally, whether the mother worked full or part time (Bronfenbrenner & Crouter, 1982). Even by the 1980s, however, when well over 50% of all mothers with children under 18 were in the paid labor force (Hayghe, 1986), little research had focused on the critical task of identifying the familial processes through which parents’ work situations influence their children.

Attention to processes within families is essential for understanding the conditions under which parental work influences children. For example, several studies conducted in the 1960s and 1970s (e.g., Banducci, 1967; Gold & Andres, 1978) reported that boys from middle-class families in which mothers worked outside the home performed less well in school than their peers whose mothers were homemakers. A process-oriented approach focuses on how a differential outcome like this one arises in the first place. Process questions require that one attend to the activities, roles, and relationships that occur within contrasting family contexts (Bronfenbrenner, 1979).

The Penn State Family Relationships Project. Elaborating processes within dual- and single-earner families with school-age children has been the central agenda of the Penn State Family Relationships Project, a longitudinal study that I co-direct with Susan McHale. Since 1987, we have been following approximately 150 families, charting the interconnections between parents’ work situations, patterns of daily family life (e.g., children’s involvement in various activities; parents’ monitoring of children’s daily experiences), and the psychological adjustment and development of children moving through the late school-age years. Identified through several school districts in central Pennsylvania, the sample was selected based on several criteria. We sought two-parent, intact families in which our “target child,” a fourth or fifth grader, was the oldest child with at least one younger sibling. All fathers were employed full time, but we allowed mothers’ work hours to vary. At the first phase of the project, in the winter of 1987, about one third of the mothers worked outside the home full time, one third worked part time, and one third were homemakers. The sample is predominately middle class. Families live in the small cities, towns, and rural areas that are characteristic of central Pennsylvania.

Two recent studies from the project reveal the extent to which a focus on family process illuminates the conditions under which parental work status influences school-age children. The first investigation examined the connections between children’s involvement in daily household tasks and their sense of competence, feelings of stress, and closeness to parents (McHale, Bartko, Crouter, & Perry-Jenkins, 1990); the second study focused on parental monitoring and its links to children’s school competence and conduct (Crouter, MacDermid, McHale, & Perry-Jenkins, 1990).

At each phase of the project, two different types of data were collected from participating families. In home interviews, mother, father, and target child were interviewed separately about work (e.g., parents’ work schedules, feelings of role strain, work preferences), family relationships (e.g., feelings of closeness to other family members, views on the parents’ marital relationship), and individual well-being (e.g., sense of competence, anxiety, depression). Through the eyes of the three family members, a triangulated portrait of work and family was developed. In the following several weeks, families were telephoned on 7 different evenings (5 week nights and 2 weekend nights) and asked in detail about a variety of activities that may have occurred on that specific day. Three of these calls were with mother and child, three were with father and child, and the final call was with all three family members. The telephone interviews with the child were designed to elaborate more specifically on children’s roles in household chores, their involvement in activities with parents (e.g., leisure activities, homework, clubs and organizations), patterns of activity alone and with peers, the tenor of parent-child interactions, and the extent to which parents were knowledgeable about the child’s experiences that particular day (i.e., monitoring). The telephone interview with the parent covered many of the same issues, allowing us to assess interrater agreement on shared activities. We also asked each parent about his or her involvement in household chores that day, as well as a variety of questions about that day’s work schedule, child-care arrangements, marital interactions, and other matters. These data provided a window into the dynamics of daily life for children and parents in single- and dual-earner family contexts.

Involvement in Household Chores as a Mediating Process. Children’s involvement in housework represents a family process with potentially quite different meanings in dual- and single-earner families. Although previous research has documented that children in dual-earner families perform more housework than their peers whose mothers are full-time homemakers (Hedges & Barnett, 1972; Propper, 1972), little is known about the links between involvement in housework and children’s psychosocial functioning. Our ongoing research specifically examines this issue. In addition, we have asked whether the family process in question (i.e., involvement in housework) has different consequences in single-earner than in dual-earner family contexts, an example of what Bronfenbrenner and Crouter (1983) referred to as the “person-process-context model.”

We reasoned that children’s contributions to the division of labor may be particularly valued in families in which both parents work outside the home. Elder (1974) argued that sons who experienced their adolescent years during the Great Depression actually flourished under conditions of economic deprivation because their involvement in paid work and household chores were valued by their parents as meaningful contributions to the family economy. Although contemporary dual-earner families are not experiencing the dire circumstances many Depression Era families faced, the involvement of children in family work may be particularly needed and valued in these “time-poor” environments. Families are also important settings for gender socialization (Huston, 1983). Thus, children probably take their cues about the appropriateness of being assigned household tasks from their parents, especially the parent of the same gender. We expected to see positive associations between involvement in housework and children’s sense of competence and closeness to parents in dual-earner households, particularly when the child’s level of involvement was congruent with the gender role attitudes and pattern of involvement in housework of the same-gender parent.

The results mirrored our expectations for boys, but not for girls (McHale et al., 1990). Boys from dual-earner families who were highly involved in household tasks saw themselves as more competent and rated their relationships with their parents more positively then did their counterparts who were less involved in housework. For the single-earner families, however, boys who were highly involved in housework saw themselves as less competent than their peers with fewer responsibilities. Interestingly, the boys who had the lowest scores on perceived competence were those whose level of involvement in housework was not congruent with their father’s gender role attitudes or their father’s own level of involvement in housework. Thus, boys in dual-earner families who performed few household chores and yet had less traditional fathers and boys in single-earner families who performed more tasks and had more traditional fathers had the lowest scores on perceived competence.

And what about girls? Perhaps because housework is such a pervasive theme in mothers’ lives, we found few significant differences among girls as a function of their involvement in household chores. Our findings suggested that, regardless of family context, girls who were highly involved tended to see themselves as more competent than other girls.

The central finding in the study is that, at least for boys, the same family process (i.e., the son’s level of involvement in the household economy) has quite different outcomes in single-earner and dual-earner family contexts. As we follow these families, we plan to elaborate on this theme, finding out more, for example, about the meaning fathers, mothers, and children attribute to doing household chores, including the extent to which children’s involvement in housework is seen as a valued contribution to family life. We are also interested in whether children increase their involvement in housework when mothers either return to work for the first time or increase their work hours. We expect that sons’ behavior will depend in part on how fathers respond to this change.

Parental Monitoring as a Mediating Process. Another family process of particular importance involves parental supervision and monitoring. As mentioned earlier, several previous studies found that middle-class boys with employed mothers performed less well in school than their peers whose mothers were homemakers. Scholars have speculated that middle-class boys in dual-earner families may not receive the level of parental supervision and monitoring that they need. Bronfenbrenner and Crouter (1982), for example, suggested that:

Sons of employed, middle-class mothers may receive less effective supervision than their peers in families in which mother remains home. The difference may be manifested in such areas as monitoring the boy’s homework activities, encouraging friendships that foster social behavior, showing an interest in the child’s school activities and progress, or overseeing meals, television watching, bedtime, and other routines, (p. 55)

We have explo...