3 2. The Sociological Study Of The Family

Learning Outcomes

At the end of this chapter you will be able to do the following.

Compare pre- and post-industrial family patterns.

Define family structure.

Define the functions of the family.

Relate group complexity to number of members.

Compare and contrast types of statuses.

In all societies, the family is the premier institution for socialization of children, intimate adult relationships, economic support and cooperation, and continuity of relationships along the life-course. Sociologists have functioned in a core role for describing, explaining, and predicting family-based social patterns for the United States and other countries. Sociologists help others to understand the larger social and personal level trends in families.

FAMILY STRUCTURES

The family structures that were very common a century ago are not nearly as common today. In the U.S. around the year 1900, most families had three generations living in one home (e.g., children, parents, and uncles/aunts/grandparents) and most did manual labor. Today, very few families live with multiple generations. Most modern families fall into one of two types: nuclear or blended. The nuclear family is a family group consisting of parents and their biological or adopted children. This is the family type that is mostly preferred. One variation of this type is the single-parent family (one parent and his or her biological or adopted children), which can be created by unwed motherhood, divorce, or death of a spouse. The second most common family form is the blended family, which is a family created by remarriage and includes at least one child from a prior relationship. All of the cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents, and step relatives are considered extended family (one’s relatives beyond the nuclear and blended family level).

The U.S. Census Bureau conducts annual surveys of the U.S. population and publishes them as the Current Population Surveys. Table 1 represents U.S. family types. You will notice that married families comprised over half (52%) of the family types in 2008. Single never marrieds are the second largest type and include opposite sex and same sex cohabiters.¹ Figure 1 shows the trend (1950-2008) in family types, clearly illustrating that married families have always been the most common form.

Table 1. U.S. Family Types, 2008. 2
		Type	Number	Percentage
		Married	123,671,000	52
		Widowed	14,314,000	6
		Divorced	23,346,000	10
		Separated	5,183,000	2
		Never Married-Single	71,479,000	30
		Total Families 15 and over	237,993,000	100

Figure 1. United States Trends in Family Types (in Millions), 1950-2008.3

FAMILY FUNCTIONS

What are the functions of families? In studying the family, Functional Theorists have identified some common and nearly universal family functions. That means almost all families in all countries around the world have at least some of these functions in common.

Economic Support

By far, economic support is the most common function of today’s families. When your parents let you raid their pantry, do your laundry at their house, or replenish your checking account, that’s economic support. For another young adult, say in New Guinea, if she captures a wild animal and cooks it on an open fire and shares it with others, that’s also economic support in a different cultural context. Some families cooperate in business-like relationships. In Quebec, Montreal there is an established pattern of Italian immigrants who help family and friends emigrate from Italy to Canada. They subsidize each other’s travel costs, help each other find employment once in Canada, and even privately fund some mortgages for one another. Each participant is expected to support others in the same manner.

Emotional Support

Emotional relationships are also very common, but you must understand there is a tremendous amount of cultural diversity in how intimacy is experienced in various families around the world. Intimacy is the social, emotional, spiritual, intellectual, and physical trust that is mutually shared between family members. Family members share confidences, advice, trust, secrets, and ongoing mutual concern. Many family scientists believe that intimacy in family relationships functions as a strong buffer to the ongoing stresses experienced by family members outside of the home.

Socialization

Children are born humanoid and have the potential to be what we label as human, the ability to communicate, work cooperatively, and socialize each other. They will realize this potential if older family members or friends take the time to protect and nurture them into their cultural and societal roles. Today the family is the core of primary socialization. But many other societal institutions contribute to the process including schools, religion, workplace, and media. The family is where we learn the rules of our unique society.

From the first moments of life, children begin a process of socialization wherein parents, family, and friends transmit the culture of the mainstream society and the family to the newborn. They assist in the child’s development of his or her own social construction of reality, which is what people define as real because of their background assumptions and life experiences with others. An average U.S. child’s social construction of reality includes knowledge that he or she belongs, can depend on others to meet his needs, and has privileges and obligations that accompany membership in his family and community. In a typical set of social circumstances, children grow up through predictable life stages: infancy, preschool, school years, young adulthood, adulthood, middle adulthood, and finally later-life adulthood. Most will leave home as young adults, find a spouse or life partner in their mid-to-late 20s and work at a job for pay. To expect that of the average U.S. child is normal. But how about those who don’t fit into these predictable patterns? Might their reality be shaped differently? Is their reality any less “real” than the populations we discussed earlier? Our social constructions of reality may overlap or have vast similarities, but no two people will have identical social realities because no two people will have identical life experiences.

Also when discussing the average U.S. child, it’s safe to say that the most important socialization takes place early in life and in identifiable levels. Primary socialization typically begins at birth and moves forward until the beginning of the school years. Primary socialization includes all the ways the newborn is molded into a social being capable of interacting in and meeting the expectations of society. Most primary socialization is facilitated by family, friends, day care, and to a certain degree various forms of media. Children watch about three hours per day of TV (by the time the average child attends kindergarten he has watched about 5,000 hours of TV). They also play video games, surf the Internet, play with friends, and read.

Around age four to five pre-school and kindergarten are presented as expectations for children. Once they begin their schooling, they begin a different level of socialization. Secondary socialization occurs in later childhood and adolescence when children go to school and come under the influence of non-family members. This level runs concurrently with primary socialization. Children realize at school that they are judged for their performance now and are no longer accepted unconditionally. In fact, to obtain approval from teachers and school employees, a tremendous amount of conformity is required-this is in contrast to having been accepted at home for being “mommy’s little man or woman.”

As students, children have to learn to belong and cooperate in large groups. They learn a new culture that extends beyond their narrow family culture and that has complexities and challenges that require effort on their part. This creates stressors for the children. By the time of graduation from high school the average U.S. child has attended 15,000 hours of school away from home. They’ve also probably watched 15,000 hours of TV and spent 5-10,000 playing (video games, friends, Internet, text messaging, etc.).

Friends, classmates, and peers become increasingly important in the lives of children in their secondary educational stage of socialization. Most zero to five year olds yearn for affection and approval from their parents and family members. By the time of pre-teen years, the desire for family diminishes and the yearning now becomes for friends and peers. Parents often lament the loss of influence over their children once the teen years arrive. Studies show that parents preserve at least some of their influence over their children by influencing their children’s peers. Parents who host parties, excursions, and get-togethers find that their relationship with their children’s friends keeps them better connected to their children. They learn that they can persuade their children at times through the peers.

The third level of socialization includes college, work, marriage and significant relationships, and a variety of adult roles and adventures. Adult socialization occurs as we assume adult roles such as wife/husband/employee/etc. We adapt to new roles which meet our needs and wants throughout the adult life course. Freshmen in college, new recruits in the military, volunteers for Peace Corps, employees, missionaries, travelers, and others find themselves following the same game plan that lead to their success during their primary and secondary socialization years. This success help them to find out what’s expected and strive to reach those expectations during their adult socializations.

Sexuality and Reproductive Control

The family has traditionally asserted control of sexuality and reproduction. A few centuries ago the father and mother even selected the spouses for many of their children (they still do in many countries). American parents want their adult children to select their own spouses. Older family members tend to encourage pregnancy and childbirth only in marriage or a long-term relationship. Unwed mothers are mothers who are not legally married at the time of the child’s birth. Being unwed brings up concerns of economic, emotional, social, and other forms of support for the mother and child that may or may not be present from the father. When an unwed mother delivers the baby, it is often the older female family members who end up providing the functions of support for that child rather than the birth father. Table 3 shows unwed mother births in the U.S. in 2000 and 2006. Most of the over four million live births in 2006 were to married mothers. But about 1/10 of teen mothers and over 1/3 of all mothers were unwed.⁴ From 2000 to 2006 teen births declined slightly while unwed births to older (non-teen) women increased. This trend of increasing unwed birth rates suggests that more and more families have less control by sanctioning childbirth within marriage.

Table 3. Percentage of All Births that were to Unwed Teens and Mothers of All Ages Years 2000 and 2006.5

		Year			Births to			Births to All
					Unwed			Unwed
					Teens			Mothers
		2000			11.8%			33.2%
	2006			10.4%			35.8%

Status

With your friends, have you noticed that one or two tend to be informally in charge of the details? You might be the one who calls everyone and makes reservations or buys the tickets for the others. If so, you would have the informal status of “group organizer.” Status is a socially defined position. There are three types of status considerations. Ascribed status is present at birth and is said to be unchangeable (race, sex, or class). Achieved status is attained through one’s choices and efforts (college student, movie star, teacher, or athlete). Master Status is a status which stands out above our other statuses and which distracts others from seeing who we really are (to you, your father’s master status is dad).

You were born into your racial, cultural-ethnic, religious and economic statuses. That shaped to some degree the way you grew up and were socialized. In modern societies achieved status is more important than ascribed status for most members of society. Although the degree of achievement one attains often depends heavily on the level of support families provide. While a status is the social position within a group, role is how we enact that status. For example, you as a student (status) need to attend class, study for exams, write papers, do homework, etc. Each status has many roles associated with it and each person has many statuses. You are probably a child, maybe a sibling, perhaps a spouse or parent, and likely an employee as well as a student. You have many roles to fulfill in your varied statuses.

Another consideration about groups and our roles in them is the fact that one single role can place a rather heavy burden on a person. Role strain is the burden one feels due to the varied roles within any given status and role conflict is when the roles in one status come into conflict with the roles in another status. For example, your role of studying for a midterm (status of student), your role of getting to work on time (status of employee), and your role of socializing (status of single person) conflict because you had planned to study for that midterm on Saturday afternoon, but then your boss calls and asks you to come in to work, and just as you’re getting into your Hotdog-On-A-Stick uniform your friend stops by to ask you to go to the beach.

GROUPS

The first and most important unit of measure in sociology is the group, which is a set of two or more people who share a common identity, interact regularly, have shared expectations, and function in their mutually agreed upon roles. Most people use the word “group” differently from the sociological use. They say group even if the cluster of people they are referring to don’t even know each other (like six people standing at the same bus stop). Sociologists use aggregate to denote a number of people in the same place at the same time. So, people in the same movie theater, people at the same bus stop, and even people at a university football game are considered aggregates rather than groups. Sociologists also discuss categories. A category is a number of people who share common characteristics. Brown-eyed people, people who wear hats, and people who vote independent are categories-they don’t necessarily share the same space, nor do they have shared expectations. In this text we mostly discuss trends and patterns in family groups and in large categories of family types.

Family groups are crucial to society and are what most of you will form in your own adult lives. Groups come in varying sizes. Dyads are groups with two people and triads are groups with three people. The number of people in a group plays an important structural role in the nature of the group’s functioning. Dyads are the simplest groups because two people have only one relationship between them. Triads have four relationships (1-persons A and B, 2-persons A and C, 3-persons B and C, 4-persons A, B, and C). A group of four has ten relationships. Each additional person adds multiple new relationships. Think about how the interaction you share with your mother (or someone else) changes when your little sister (or someone else) is present. A newly married couple experiences great freedoms and opportunities to nurture their marital relationship. A triad forms when their first child is born. Then they experience a tremendous incursion upon their marital relationship from the child and the care demanded by the child. As Bill Cosby said in his book Fatherhood, “Children by their very nature are designed to ruin your marriage.”6

As sociologists further study the nature of the group’s relationships they realize that there are two broad types of groups: primary groups, which tend to be small, informal, and intimate (e.g., families, friends), and secondary groups, which tend to be larger, more formal, and much less personal (e.g., you and your doctor, this class). Typically with your primary groups, say with your family, you can be much more spontaneous and informal. On Friday night you can hang out wherever you want, change your plans as you want, and experience fun as much as you want. Contrast that to the relationship with this class. You have to come to class at the scheduled time and complete assignments and exams.

SOCIOLOGICAL IMAGINATION

The average person lives too narrow a life to get a clear and concise understanding of today’s complex social world. Our daily lives are spent among friends and family, at work and at play, and watching TV and surfing the Internet. There is no way one person can grasp the big picture from their relatively isolated lives. There’s just not enough time or capacity to be exposed to the complexities of a society of 310 million people. There are thousands of communities, millions of interpersonal interaction, billions of Internet information sources, and countless trends that transpire without many of us even knowing they exist. What can we do to make sense of it all?

Psychology gave us the understanding of self-esteem, economics gave us the understanding of supply and demand, and physics gave us the Einstein theory of E=MC2. The sociological imagination by Mills, gives us a framework for understanding our social world that far surpasses any common sense notion we might derive from our limited social experiences. C. Wright Mills (1916-1962), a contemporary sociologist, suggested that when we study the family we can gain valuable insight by approaching it at two core societal levels. He stated, “neither the life of an individual nor the history of a society can be understood without understanding both.”⁷ Mills identified personal troubles and public issues as key principles for wrapping our minds around many of the hidden social processes that transpire in an almost invisible manner in today’s societies. Personal troubles are private problems experienced within the character of the individual and the range of their immediate relation to others. Mills identified the fact that we function in our personal lives as actors who make choices about our friends, family, groups, work, school, and other issues within our control. We have a degree of influence in the outcome of matters within the personal level. A college student who parties four nights a week, who rarely attends class, and who never does his homework has a personal trouble that interferes with his odds of success in college. But, when 50% of all college students in the country never graduate we call it a public issue.

Public issues lie beyond one’s personal control and the range of one’s inner life. These pertain to society’s organization and processes. To better understand larger social issues, let us define social facts. Social facts are social processes rooted in society rather than in the individual. Émile Durkheim (1858-1917, France) studied the science of social facts in an effort to identify social correlations and ultimately social laws designed to make sense of how modern societies worked given that they became increasingly diverse and complex.8

The national cost of a gallon of gas, the War in the Middle East, the repressed economy, the trend of having too few females in the 18-24 year old singles market, and the ever-increasing demand for plastic surgery are just a few of the social facts at play today. Social facts are typically outside of the control of average people. They occur in the complexities of modern society and impact us, but we rarely find a way to significantly impact them back. This is because, as Mills taught, we live much of our lives on the personal level and much of society happens at the larger social level. Without a knowledge of the larger social and personal levels of social experience, we live in what Mills called a false social conscious, which is an ignorance of social facts and the larger social picture.

A larger social issue is illustrated in the fact that nationwide, students come to college as freshmen ill-prepared to understand the rigors of college life. They haven’t often been challenged enough in high school to make the necessary adjustments required to succeed as college students.

Nationwide, the average teenager text messages, surfs the Net, plays video or online games, hangs out at the mall, watches TV and movies, spends hours each day with friends, and works at least part-time. Where and when would he or she get experience focusing attention on college studies and the rigors of self-discipline required to transition into college?

In a survey conducted each year by the U.S. Census Bureau, findings suggest that in 2006 the U.S. had about an 84% high school graduation rate.⁹ They also found that only 27% had a Bachelor’s degree.¹⁰ Given the numbers of freshman students enrolling in college, the percentage with a Bachelor’s degree should be closer to 50%.

The majority of college first year students drop out, because nationwide we have a deficit in the preparation and readiness of Freshmen attending college and a real disconnect in their ability to connect to college in such a way that they feel they belong to it. In fact college dropouts are an example of both a larger social issue and a personal trouble. Thousands of studies and millions of dollars have been spent on how to increase a freshman student’s odds of success in college (graduating with a 4-year degree). There are millions of dollars in grant monies awarded each year to help retain college students.

The real power of the sociological imagination is found in how you and I learn to distinguish between the personal and social levels in our own lives. Once we do that we can make personal choices that serve us the best given the larger social forces that we face. There are larger social trends that will be identified in this course. Some of them can teach you lessons to use in your own choices. Others simply provide a broad understanding of the context of the family in our complicated society.

In this textbook you will find larger social evidences of many current United States family trends. Some changes were initiated in the Industrial Revolution where husbands were called upon to leave the home and venture into the factory as breadwinners. Women became homemakers and many eventually ended up in the labor force as well. The trend of having fewer children and having fewer of them die in or immediately after birth is directly related to medical technology and the value of having smaller families in our current service-based economy. The trend of lowering our standards of what exactly a “clean house” means is an adjustment that arguably needed to be made; post-World War II marketing campaigns had convinced women that a spotless house equaled a good woman. Today, good women have varying levels of a clean house.

Of concern to many are the continuing high rates of divorce. By studying divorced people we can learn how to prevent divorce and enhance the quality and satisfaction of marriage. Simply studying something does not imply that you agree with it or support it for yourself or others. Learning about something makes us better able to understand and defend our own views and values.

As mentioned above, the Industrial Revolution changed societies and their families in an unprecedented way, such that Sociology as a discipline emerged as an answer to many of the new-found societal challenges. Societies had change in unprecedented ways and had formed a new collective of social complexities that the world had never witnessed before. The Industrial Revolution transformed society at every level. Look at Table 4 to see pre- and post-Industrial Revolution social patterns and how different they were.

Prior to the Industrial Revolution, families lived on smaller farms and every able member of the family did work to support and sustain the family economy. Towns were small and very similar (homogamous) and families were large (more children=more workers). There was a lower standard of living and because of poor sanitation people died earlier. After the Industrial Revolution, farm work was replaced by factory work. Men left their homes and became breadwinners earning money to buy many of the goods that used to be made by hand at home (or bartered for by trading one’s own homemade goods with another’s). Women became the supervisors of homework. Much was still done by families to develop their own home goods while many women and children also went to the factories to work. Cities became larger and more diverse (heterogamous). Families became smaller (less farm work required fewer children). Eventually, standards of living increased and death rates declined.

Table 4. Pre-Industrial and Post-Industrial Revolution Social Patterns.¹¹

	Pre-Industrial Revolution	Post-Industrial Revolution
	Farm/ Cottage	Factories
	Family Work	Breadwinners /Homemakers
	Small Towns	Large Cities
	Large Families	Small Families
	Homogenous Towns	Heterogamous Cities
	Lower Standards of Living	Higher Standards of Living
	People Died Younger	People Die Older

It is important to note the value of women’s work before and after the Industrial Revolution. Hard work was the norm and still is today for most women. Homemaking included much unpaid work which is not as valued as paid work. These pre and post-industrial changes impacted all of Western civilization because the Industrial Revolution hit all of these countries about the same way, Western Europe, United States, Canada, and later Japan and Australia. The Industrial Revolution brought some rather severe social conditions which included deplorable city living conditions, crowding, crime, extensive poverty, inadequate water and sewage, early death, frequent accidents, extreme pressures on families, and high illness rates. Today, sociology continues to rise to the call of finding solutions and answers to complex social problems, especially in the family.

FAMILY RESEARCH

The American Sociological Association is the largest professional sociology organization in the world. There is a section of ASA members that focuses its studies specifically on the family. Here is an excerpt from their mission statement: Many of society’s most pressing problems — teenage childbearing, juvenile delinquency, substance abuse, domestic violence, child and elder abuse, divorce — are related to or rooted in the family. The Section on Family was founded to provide a home for sociologists who are interested in exploring these issues in greater depth.¹²

Many family sociologists also belong to the National Council on Family Relations.¹³ Their mission statement reads as follows: The National Council on Family Relations (NCFR) provides an educational forum for family researchers, educators, and practitioners to share in the development and dissemination of knowledge about families and family relationships, establishes professional standards, and works to promote family well-being.¹⁴ Research is important because if the results of a study are made public individuals can use the information to make better choices.

For example, studies have shown that the leading factor of divorce is not sex problems, failure to communicate, money mismanagement, or even in-law troubles. What is the leading cause of divorce? It is marrying too young. Specifically, if you marry at 17, 18, or 19 you are far more likely to divorce than if you wait to marry in your 20s. This was discovered and confirmed over decades of studying who divorced and which factors contributed more to divorce than others.

FAMILY CULTURE

Another key point in studying the family is to understand that all families share some cultural traits in common, but all also have their own family culture uniqueness. Culture is the shared values, norms, symbols, language, objects, and way of life that is passed on from one generation to the next.

Culture is what we learn from our parents, family, friends, peers, and schools. It is shared, not biologically determined. Most families in a society have similar family cultural traits. But, when a couple marries they learn that the success of their marriage is often based on how well they merge their unique family cultures into a new version of a culture that is their own.

Even though family cultures tend to be universal and desirable, we often judge other cultures as being good, bad, or evil, with our own culture typically being judged good. Ethnocentrism is the tendency to judge others based on our own experiences. In this perspective, our culture is right, while cultures which differ from our own are wrong. Another more valuable and helpful perspective about differing cultures is the perspective called cultural relativism, the tendency to look for the cultural context in which differences in cultures occur. If you’ve eaten a meal with your friend’s family you have probably noticed a difference in subtle things like the food that is served and how it is prepared. You may have noticed that that family communicates in different ways from your own. You might also notice that their values of fun and relaxation also vary from your own. To dismiss your friend’s family as being wrong because they aren’t exactly like yours is being ethnocentric. Cultural relativists like all the ice-cream flavors, if you will. They respect and appreciate cultural differences even if only from the spectators’ point of view.

OPPORTUNITY

In the U.S. and throughout the world there are rich and poor families. Your social class has a great deal to do with who you were born to or adopted by. Where you end up in your economic standing has a great deal to do with how you act, given your own set of life chances. As identified by Max Weber, life chances are access to basic opportunities and resources in the marketplace. Some of you are paying for college on your own and take the bus to school while others have a new car, the latest cell phone, and don’t have to worry how much your books cost because your parents are footing the bill. Life chances can also be applied to the quality of your own marriage and family. If you came from a highly shaming family culture, then you are more likely to develop an addiction. If you came from a family where the parents divorced, then you are more likely to divorce. If you were born to a single mother you are more likely to become a single mother or father. These are known correlates but not causes. In other words you may be slightly disadvantaged because of the difficult family circumstances you were born in, but you are by no means doomed to repeat the patterns of your family of origin (the family into which you were born) in your family of procreation (the family you create by marriage, child birth, adoption).

Understanding life chances simply raises your awareness by demonstrating trends from the larger social picture that might well apply to you in your personal level.

DEMOGRAPHY

Finally, the U.S. family today has an important underpinning that influences the family in the larger social and personal levels. Demography is the scientific study of population growth and change. 

Everything in society influences demography and demography conversely influences everything in society. After World War II, the United States began to recover from the long-term negative effects of the war. Families had been separated, relatives had died or were injured, and women who had gone to the factories then returned home at war’s end. The year 1946 reflected the impact of that upheaval in its very atypical demographic statistics. Starting in 1946 people married younger, had more children per woman, divorced and remarried, and kept having one child after another. From 1946 to 1956 the birth rate rose and peaked, then began to decline again. By 1964 the national high birth rate was finally back to the level it was at before 1946. All those children born from 1946-1964 were called the Baby Boom Generation (there are about 78 million of them alive today). Why was there such a change in family-related rates? The millions of deaths caused by the war, the long-term separation of family members from one another, and the deep shifts toward conservative values all contributed. The Baby Boom had landed and after the Baby Boom Generation was in place, it conversely affected personal and larger social levels of society in every conceivable way.

The Baby Boomers are most likely your parents or grandparents. Their societal influence on the family changed the U.S. forever. The earliest cohort of Baby Boomers (1946-51) has the world record for highest divorce rates. Collectively Baby Boomers are still divorcing more than their parents ever divorced. They had their own children and many of you belong to Generations X or Y (X born 1965-1984 and Y born 1985-present). There are many of you because there were many Baby Boomers. The demographic processes of this country include these Baby Boomers, their legacy, and their offspring. To understand the U.S. family, you must understand the Baby Boomers and underlying demographic forces.

The core of demographic studies has three component concerns: births, deaths, and migration. All of demography can be reduced to this very simple formula:

(Births-Deaths) +/- ((In-Migration)-(Out Migration)) = Population Change.

This part of the formula, (Births-Deaths) is called natural increase, which is all births minus all deaths in a given population over a given time period. The other part of the formula, ((In-Migration)-(Out Migration)) is called net migration, which is all in-migration minus all out-migration in a given population over a given time period. The Industrial Revolution set into motion a surge of births and a lowering of deaths which changed U.S. society and families forever.

1. Table UC1. Opposite Sex Unmarried Couples by Labor Force Status of Both Partners: 2008 retrieved 30 March 2009 from http://www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/hh-fam/cps2008.html
2. Taken from Internet on 30 March 2009 from Table A1. Marital Status of People 15 Years and Over, by Age, Sex, Personal Earnings, Race, and Hispanic Origin/1, 2008
3. http://www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/hh-fam/cps2008.html
4. Taken from Internet on 30 March 2009 from Table A1. Marital Status of People 15 Years and Over, by Age, Sex, Personal Earnings, Race, and Hispanic Origin/1, 2008 http://www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/hh-fam/cps2008.html
5. retrieved 30 March 2009 from http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/tables/09s0077.pdf
6. Taken from Statistical Abstracts of the US on 30 March 2009 from Table 87. Births to Teenage Mothers and Unmarried Women and Births With Low Birth Weight-States and Island Areas: 2000 to 2006 http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/tables/09s0087.pdf
7. Cosby, B. (1987). Fatherhood. New York: Doubleday.
8. Mills, C. W. 1959. The Sociological Imagination page ii; Oxford U. Press
9. Durkheim, E. (1982) The rules of the sociological method. (Steven Lukes, Ed.; Halls, W.D., translator) New York: Free Press.
10. http:// www.factfinder.uscensus.gov; see table R1501 at http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/GRTTable?_bm=y&-geo_id=01000US&-_box_head_nbr=R1501&-ds_name=ACS_2006_EST_G00_&-format=US-30
11. http:// www.factfinder.uscensus.gov; see table R1502 at http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/GRTTable?_bm=y&-geo_id=01000US&-_box_head_nbr=R1502&-ds_name=ACS_2006_EST_G00_&-redoLog=false&-format=US-30&-mt_name=ACS_2006_EST_G00_R1501_US30
12. © 2005 Ron J. Hammond, Ph.D.
13. retrieved 18 May, 2010 from http://www.asanet.org/sections/family.cfm
14. www.ncfr.org
15. retrieved 18 May, 2010 from http://ncfr.org/about/mission.asp