Family, Race, and Poverty in the Eighties

Zinn, Maxine Baca

doi:10.1086/494547

Cited by 105 publications

(33 citation statements)

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“…Theoretical and empirical work on women of color's location in work and family not only challenges the traditional family ideal, but paves the way for the more general question of family as a privileged site of intersectionality. For work in this tradition, see Dill 1988, Zinn 1989, and Glenn 1992 5. In this section, I emphasize land as literal space.…”

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confidence: 99%

It's All In the Family: Intersections of Gender, Race, and Nation

Collins¹

1998

Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy

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Intersectionality has attracted substantial scholarly attention in the 1990s. Rather than examining gender, race, class, and nation as distinctive social hierarchies, intersectionality examines how they mutually constrmct one another. I explore how the traditional family ideal functions as a privileged exemplar of intersectionality in the United States. Each of its six dimensions demonstrates specific connections between family as agendered system of social organization, racial ideas and practices, and constructions of U.S. national identity.When former vice president Dan Quayle used the term family values near the end of a speech at a political fundraiser in 1992, he apparently touched a national nerve. Following Quayle's speech, close to threc hundred articles using the term family values in their titles appeared in the popular press. Despite the range of political perspectives expressed on "family values," one thing remained clear-"family values," however defined, seemed central to national well-being. The term family values constituted a touchstone, a phrase that apparently tapped much deeper feelings about the significance of ideas of family, if not actual families themselves, in the United States.Situated in the center of "family values" debates is an imagined traditional family ideal. Formed through a combination of marital and blood ties, ideal families consist of heterosexual couples that produce their own biological children. Such families have a specific authority structure; namely, a fatherhead earning an adequate family wage, a stay-at-home wife, and children. Those who idealize the traditional family as a private haven from a public world see family as held together by primary emotional bonds of love and caring. Assuming a relatively fixed sexual division of labor, wherein women's roles are defined as primarily in the home and men's in the public world of work, the traditional family ideal also assumes the separation of work and Hypatia vol. 13, no. 3 (Summer 1998) 0 by Patricia Hill Collins

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confidence: 99%

It's All In the Family: Intersections of Gender, Race, and Nation

Collins¹

1998

Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy

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“…In this regard, the culture-of-poverty thesis (see, for example, Lewis, 1959;Moynihan, 1965) makes causal connections among poverty, the disintegration of the traditional family structure, reliance on public welfare, low aspirations, and female-headed households as a way of life. Of course, the visible weaknesses of this thesis are not only that it is a deficiency model but also that it casts culture, the family, and welfare in villainous roles (Zinn, 1989). Consequently, the model unintentionally deprives poor people of human dignity and worth.…”

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confidence: 99%

Childbearing Among Unwed African American Adolescents: A Critique of Theories

Stevens¹

1996

Affilia

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Although nonmarital births are on the rise for all women, they are disproportionately high for adolescents, especially those who are poor and African American. Scholars agree that adolescent childbearing results in negative outcomes. This critique of the problem of adolescent pregnancy from various theoretical paradigms argues that the alternate-lifestyle paradigm is a rational explanatory model for the analysis of adolescent pregnancy. That is, some female adolescents, regardless of race, see childbearing as a rite of passage to adulthood.

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“…The assumption is that African-American women's socio-economic status will improve if they replicate the male-provider arrangement of White middle class families. No attention is paid to the racist and sexist barriers preventing African American women from making a "family" salary (Collins, 1989;Zinn, 1992).…”

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confidence: 99%

What is a normal family? Common assumptions and current evidence

Canetto

1996

J Primary Prevent

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The social and applied human sciences have been built upon the assumption that the "normal" family consists of a first-marriage conjugal couple cohabiting with biological children. It is taken for granted that the wife should be responsible for child and domestic work, and that the husband should be the family's economic provider and ultimate authority. In the professional literature such "traditional" family structure is often described as normal in the sense of most common, as well as normal in the sense of well-functioning. Current psychological, sociological, anthropological and historical studies, however, do not support the assumption that the "traditional" nuclear family is the most "natural," "common," and/or "healthy" form of family arrangement. The idealization of the "traditional" nuclear family has had implications for theory, research, mental health practice, and social policy. Scientists and practitioners have been slow to recognize pathology in "traditional" nuclear families. Families other than "traditional" nuclear ones have been rendered invisible or pathologized. It is time for contemporary social and applied human sciences to recognize that the "traditional" nuclear family is a culturally- and historically-specific construct. It is also time for contemporary social and applied human sciences to develop an account of, and a research agenda about, families that take into consideration their variations across time, place, social class, ethnicity, and culture.

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Family, Race, and Poverty in the Eighties

Cited by 105 publications

References 0 publications

It's All In the Family: Intersections of Gender, Race, and Nation

It's All In the Family: Intersections of Gender, Race, and Nation

Childbearing Among Unwed African American Adolescents: A Critique of Theories

What is a normal family? Common assumptions and current evidence

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