 |
Back
to The History of Private Life
The
Modern Family
By Steven Mintz
Does a father have the right to
give his children his last name even if his wife objects? Can
an expectant mother obtain an abortion without her husband's permission?
Should a teenager, unhappy with her parents' restrictions on her
smoking, dating, and choice of friends, be allowed to have herself
placed in a foster home? Should a childless couple be permitted
to hire a "surrogate mother" who will be artificially
inseminated and carry a child to delivery?
These are among the questions
that the nation's courts have had to wrestle with as the nature
of American family life has, in the course of a generation, been
revolutionized.
During the 1950s, the Cleavers
on the television show "Leave It to Beaver" epitomized
the American family. In 1960, over 70 percent of all American
households were like the Cleavers: made up of a breadwinner father,
a homemaker mother, and their kids. Today, "traditional"
families with a working husband, an unemployed wife, and one or
more children make up less than 15 percent of the nation's households.
And as America's families have changed, the image of the family
portrayed on television has changed accordingly. Today's television
families run the gamut from two-career families to two single
mothers and their children and an unmarried couples who cohabitate
in the same house.
Profound changes have reshaped
American family life in recent years. In a decade, divorce rates
doubled. The number of divorces today is twice as high as in 1966
and three times higher than in 1950. The rapid upsurge in the
divorce rates contributed to a dramatic increase in the number
of single-parent households or what used to be known as broken
homes. The number of households consisting of a single woman and
her children has tripled since 1960. A sharp increase in female-headed
homes has been accompanied by a startling increase in the number
of couples cohabitating outside of marriage. The number of unmarried
couples living together has quadrupled since 1970.
What accounts for these upheavals
in family life? One of the most far reaching forces for change
has been a sexual revolution far more radical than the early twentieth
century "revolution in morals and manners." Contemporary
Americans are much more likely than their predecessors to postpone
marriage, to live alone, and to engage in sexual intercourse outside
of marriage. Today, over 80 percent of all women say that they
were not virgins when they married, compared to less than a 20
percent a generation ago. Extramarital sex has also increased
sharply. Back in the 1940s, just eight percent of married women
under the age of 25 had committed adultery. Today the estimated
figure is 24 percent. Meanwhile, the proportion of children born
to unmarried mothers has climbed from just five percent in 1960
to over twenty percent today.
The roots of these developments
were planted during the early 1960s, when a new openness about
sexuality swept the nation's literature, movies, theater, advertising,
and fashion. In 1960, the birth control pill was introduced, offering
a highly effective method of contraception. Two years later, Grossinger's
resort in New York State's Catskills Mountains introduced the
first singles-only weekend, thereby acknowledging couples outside
marriage. In 1964, the first "singles bar" opened in
New York City; the musical "Hair" introduced nudity
to the Broadway state; California designer Rudi Gernreich created
the first topless bathing suit; and bars sprouted featuring topless
waitresses and dancers. Sexually-oriented magazines began to display
pubic hair and filmmakers began to show simulated sexual acts
on the screen. A new era of public sexuality was ushered in and
as a result it became far easier and more acceptable to have an
active social life and sex life outside of marriage.
At the same time, the nation's
courts and state legislatures liberalized laws governing sex and
contraception. In 1957, the Supreme Court narrowed the legal definition
of obscenity, ruling that the portrayal of sex in art, literature,
and film was entitled to constitutional protections of free speech,
unless the work was utterly without redeeming social value. In
1962, Illinois became the first state to decriminalize all forms
of private sexual conduct between consenting adults. In succeeding
years, the Supreme Court struck down a series of state statutes
that prohibited the prescription or distribution of contraceptives,
and in 1973, in the case of Roe v. Wade, the high court decriminalized
abortion. These legal decisions, to a large extent, took government
out of the business of regulating private sexual behavior and
defining the sexual norms according to which citizens were supposed
to live.
Another factor reshaping family
life has been a massive influx of mothers into the work force.
As late as 1940, less than 12 percent of white married women were
in the work force; today the figure is nearly 60 percent and over
half of all mothers of pre-schoolers work outside the home. The
major forces that have propelled women into the work force include
a rising cost of living, which spurred many families to seek a
second source of income; increased control over fertility through
contraception and abortion, which allows women to work without
interruption; and rising educational levels, which lead many women
to seek employment for intellectual stimulation and fulfillment.
As wives have assumed a larger
role in their family's financial support, they have felt justified
in demanding that husbands perform more child care and housework.
At the same time, fewer children have a full?time mother and as
a result an increasing number of young children are cared for
during the day by adults other than their own parent. Today, over
two-thirds of all three-to-five year olds take part in a day care,
nursery school, or pre-kindergarten program, compared to a fifth
in 1970.
Feminism has been another major
force that has transformed American family life. The women's liberation
movement attacked the societal expectation that women defer to
the needs of spouses and children as part of their roles as wives
and mothers. Militant feminist activists like Ti-Grace Atkinson
denounced marriage as "slavery" and "legalized
rape." The larger mainstream of the women's movement articulated
a powerful critique of the idea that child care and housework
were the apex of a woman's accomplishments or her sole means of
fulfillment.
The feminist movement awakened
American women to what many viewed as one of the worst form of
social and political oppression: sexism. The introduction of this
awareness would go far beyond the feminists themselves. Although
only a small minority of American women openly declared themselves
to be feminists, the arguments of the women's movement drastically
altered women's attitudes toward family roles, child care, and
housework. As a result of feminism, a substantial majority of
women now believe that both husband and wife should have jobs,
do housework, and take care of children.
The changes that have taken place
in family life have been disruptive and troubling and have transformed
the family into a major political battleground. Both liberals
and conservatives have offered their own proposals about how the
American family can best be strengthened. Conservative activists,
fearful that climbing rates of divorce, single parenthood, and
working mothers represent a breakdown of family values, launched
a politically influential "pro-family movement" during
the 1970s. They sought to restrict access to abortion, block ratification
of the proposed Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution, restrict
eroticism on television, and limit teenagers' access to contraceptive
information. Liberals have approached family issues from a different
tack. Unlike conservatives, they are more willing to use government
social policies to strengthen family life. Some of the proposals
they have made to strengthen families include expanded nutritional
and health programs for pregnant women, federal subsidies for
day are services for low-income families, uniform national standards
for child care centers, and a requirement that employers give
parents unpaid leave to take care of a newborn or seriously ill
child. Without a doubt, the family will remain one of the hottest
political issues in the years to come. |
|
