Challenges that Modern Families Have to Face

Abstract

In the recent years, mainstream culture is constantly and somewhat rapidly changing around the world, involving what should be regarded as a social institution and how does it work, specially the family. Due to the effect of social change such as the feminist movement and the Great Depression, the definition of the American family seems not to be consistent. This paper explores a published book that provides several detailed stories of intimates in different marginalized groups, which cover a wide range, from adoption to surrogacy to children of transgender. The book also shows how these families were shaped within and against legislations, social structures, and conventional moral values. This paper, based on the challenges that modern families have to face, aims to further demonstrate how has the myth of the “traditional” nuclear family made other kinship models deviant.

The Fight for Humanity

What is a family? No doubt, it is a really tough question to answer. Although "family" is a single term, it does have multiple different definitions and meanings. When America was founded, a family, or more accurate, an extended family, referred to all the relatives who live nearby or in one household. Few decades later, the nuclear family, a different-sex couple with their biological child or children, became the dominant family structure. Fast forward to present day, according to theories of modernity, the definition of family seems to depend on the individual choice instead of consanguinity and marital relation. As a result, more and more people, especially LGBTQ people, pursue parenthood by using nontraditional methods such as surrogacy and adoption, promoting the growth of new family forms, such as adoptive family, same-sex marriage and the family, and queer family.

In the meantime, however, a large number of critics use bioethics including reproductive justice as a society's constraint arm toward sexual minorities. Issues related to commercialization and exploitation of women are also big challenges that chosen families have to face. In addition, they can hardly shrug off legal hurdles, social stigma caused by cultural norms, and pressures from both traditional heteronormative society and LGBTQ community. This paper explores reasons why family creations in marginalized groups is so difficult and why there is a need for promotion of family diversity, in order to better understand the depth behind the definition of family.

Joshua Gamson reveals how self-determination expands and creates new models of kinship in the early twenty-first century. There are six different unconventional family creations in the book, those are, assisted reproduction including in vitro fertilization and surrogacy, and adoption; by same-sex couples, straight, transgenders, single, and multi-parent families. None of these families is the most common family pattern in contemporary society - nuclear family- a married different-sex couple with their biological child or children. Although the rapid growth of globalization, poverty in the third world country, advancing reproductive technologies provides possible pathways to parenthood, Joshua Gamson emphasizes how hard it can be to make a child or children become a part of those family due to social intolerance, stigma, current economic structures, legal hurdle, and the myths of the traditional family arrangement and pattern.

Discussion

According to The Evolution of American Families (2015), the nuclear family has already lost its dominant status in family forms because of the decline in marriage, the growth of working women and unstable economy since the middle of twentieth century. In recent years, the chosen family such as the adoptive family has expanded remarkably, forcing the public to rethink the diversity of family forms. However, the myth of traditional nuclear family is powerful enough to be regarded as a common ideology. Basically, one of the most significant accomplishments of In Modern Families: Stories of Extraordinary Journeys to Kinship is that Joshua Gamson attempts to revise what he calls the “One True Family myth,” which is similar to one of several widely held myths about the nuclear family mentioned in The Evolution of American Families.

It is an ideology of biological supremacy by claiming that “heterosexual coupling in marriage is the singular, correct way to make a family and that other ways of doing so don’t really count, are illegitimate or unnatural or shameful.” (Gamson, 2017, p158) This historical myth totally renders other kinship models such as blended families and single parents pathological and pushes them into secrecy, or stigmatized. The main reason why people like homosexual couples use non-biological reproduction is not to bypass traditions of different-sex family, but to shoulder the responsibility for carrying on the family line and cultural heritage. Although marriage or consanguinity is usually viewed as a significant aspect in the definition of family, it doesn't mean that marital relation of different-sex couple or blood relation is the only standard for setting up a family.

To some extent, children raising by a queer family or children adopted by a gay family can also gain sufficient emotional attachment and empirical support in their family. On the other hand, children in a nuclear family also bear a risk of raising in a bad living condition with insufficient social resources such as poor education. Just as what Annette Lareau, a sociologist who studies family life, states in Invisible Inequality: Social Class and Childrearing in Black Families and White Families (2002), social class has more influences on childrearing than race does. The key factor in parenting is the amount of social resources that parents can offer for their children, instead of ethnicity, and also family structure. In other word, the biggest danger to children is poverty.

Secondly, let’s focus on the commercialization of family formation. Based on the concept "outsourcing of intimacy" created by the sociologist Arlie Hochschild, almost everything involving a part of family and "care from the Third World" can be bought and sold in contemporary society. When people can hardly provide reliable care for their family members, they are inclined to find out several alternatives to maintain their intimacy, although love and care cannot be objectified. Hochschild offers a detailed account of how capitalism commodifies social life and family structures by linking individual issues with social phenomena, in order to demonstrate that the meaning of our lives is destroyed by the capitalism.

In comparison, Joshua Gamson doesn’t exaggerate the phenomenon that the First World despoils love from the Third World labor, even if he also thinks the market mentality is eroding human's daily life, by saying that it will be terrible commercialization gradually become a major means of family creation. However, it doesn't mean that Gamson completely reject the assisted reproduction. In fact, commercial surrogacy is banned in most places around the world. What's more important, only a few people can afford the unthinkable fees for adoption and paying egg donors. In the short run , childbirth cannot transfer into commercial exchanges. The most serious problem that people should worry about is that regulations for market-based family formation is not clear enough.

That is to say, there is a possibility for abuse and exploitation of women, especially women in third-world countries. We cannot deny that people with lower socioeconomic status or less power were too fragile to undertake the result of social changes and economic instability. Due to horrible financial situation, most ordinary people have no right to choose what their life will be. They can only be chosen. If the job security and social welfare become better in the Third World, there will be lower likelihood for the uterus of poor women being used for the wealth.

Finally, not only "family" can be viewed as a political concept created by diverse social forces, but also all the babies are "a creature of a particular political moment.” (Gamson, 2017, p47) Although governments have declared reproductive freedom, women cannot absolutely decide when, how, whether to have a baby. Things like abortion and contraception are shaped by the policy. Reproduction freedom seems to be a matter of social justice, instead of individual choice. Prejudices against marginalized groups which cover a wide range, from single parent to same-sex couples to multi-parent families, are the byproduct of political structures. Moreover, adopting a child internationally is also shaped by global economic inequalities. All the above things determine how we build a family. Maybe the chosen family, as a new family form, is a good counterattack to "reproductive justice."

Conclusion

There is no doubt that the viability of American families has eroded since most people devoted themselves to hold political correctness. Family structures, shaped by social change, were flexible enough to adapt to social and economic conditions in the past. Now, it is time to make it be more culturally diverse. The family should not only be “the family we live by,” but also be “the family we choose.” That is to say, the modern family, one of the most important sources of gaining happiness and satisfaction, should and must rely on individual choice and love. The more diverse kinship models we have, the more expansive understanding of kinship we can get. As a result, there will be more reproductive freedom.

References

1. Coontz, Stephanie. (2015). The Evolution of American Families. In Barbara Risman, ed., Families As They Really Are. New York: WW Norton.
2. Gamson, J. (2017). Modern families: Stories of extraordinary journeys to kinship. New York: New York University Press.
3. Hochschild, A. (2003). The commercialization of intimate life. Berkeley: University of California Press. 30-45
4. Lareau, Annette. (2002) Invisible inequality: Social class and childrearing in black families and white families. American Sociological Review: 747-776.