2.0 Learning Outcomes and Introduction

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One Type of Family Includes Two Parents and Two Children

Introduction

Sociologists study many social phenomena. They use many research methods to obtain data, including fieldwork observations, in-depth interviews, and surveys. They analyze their data to test and refine sociological theory. Sociologists are skilled in collecting and analyzing quantitative and qualitative data. This chapter focuses the research tools used by sociologists and focuses a sociological eye on the subfield of family and relationships to introduce these tools.

Families are varied, making it difficult to define the term family precisely. Defining terms is an important part of sociological research because researchers need to identify what they want to study. In general, sociologists understand that family refers to people who share biological or legal ties such as marriage and adoption and who tend to share resources with and provide care to each other.

Sociologists argue that social change can permanently alter how families and relationships form and work. Consider a few examples. Ruggles (2015) contends that the Industrial Revolution’s (see Chapter 7) changes to work and wage labor effected family life. The rise of factory work, which provided wage labor, enabled young men to leave their fathers’ farms. They became less dependent on their families for employment. As a result, men could marry and start families earlier, in separate households. Then, throughout the 20th century, women’s rights expanded. Women gained control over their incomes and access to credit (such as through the Equal Credit Opportunity Act of 1974). Women were no longer dependent on men for economic security, which allowed more people to seek divorce. As a result, divorce became more common. Since the 1970s, wages for young men (and later also for women) have declined. Thus, fewer young people are marrying. That marriage rates are related to economic instability is an example of how macroeconomic factors affect family life.

Sociologists argue that inequality between families is one reason social stratification persists. Moreover, inequality in wealth and income is growing in the United States (see Chapter 7). As a result, children in the United States experience “diverging destinies” (McLanahan, 2004). That is, children in high-income households have access to even more resources to maintain their advantages. For example, the social class background of families is strongly associated with how much time parents spend with children and how they spend it. Specifically, college-educated mothers socialize their children differently than mothers without a college education, and their children fare better. For instance, college-educated mothers choose more developmentally appropriate books or toys for their children and read more with their children (Harding, Morris, & Hughes, 2015). These decisions support the academic development of children who go on to do better in school. Therefore, families reproduce stratification across generations.