The outdated views on family structure and lesbian families

Congratulations to Brigette Sainsbury for being a winner in our recent IBSS blog competition! Brigette wrote an excellent blog entry on lesbian parent families.  In her blog she comments on society’s difficulties in accepting lesbian families who conceive through artificial insemination. Furthermore Brigette remarks on the impact this can have on the everyday life of young children. This blog makes for a thoroughly interesting read. Many thanks to Brigette Sainsbury.

Having watched the L Word (a programme about lesbian life in the USA), and seeing the prejudice towards lesbian couple Bette and Tina who conceived a child through a known sperm donor, my eyes were opened to how people perceive lesbian families. This led me to want to found out more about “what is best for the child” and the acceptance of this diverse type of beanpole family.

It is not very often you hear about lesbian families in today’s society. Being such a conservative country and government, the whole gay and lesbian taboo is often played down. The only time you really hear of homosexuality is when celebrities decide they are gay, Lindsay Lohan for example, in which case it is thrown in to the public eye. Other than that, all you hear are damning reports from closed-minded people stuck in the ways of the, ironically called, “New Right”.

For years, members of the New Right have promoted how family is the ‘cornerstone of society’, and yet they are only willing to accept nuclear families as valid ones. Another prominent message they put across is that homosexuality is bad and will be one of the reasons for society’s downfall. But surely if the family is really the ‘cornerstone of society’, should it really matter what it’s structure is as long as it is a healthy and happy one? Should it really matter whether parents are heterosexual or homosexual as long as the child is loved, well cared for and is growing up in a healthy environment? Is that not what is more important?

After searching the IBSS I came across an article called Families in transition: parents, children and grandparents in lesbian families give meaning to ‘doing family’. This article presents research into lesbian-parented families. It produces evidence which shows that ‘the outcomes of children in lesbian-parented families world wide demonstrate convincingly that children’s psychosocial adjustment and intellectual development is influenced more by family processes such as conflict between parents than it is by family structure’ (Bewaeys et al., 1997; Parks, 1998; Fitzgerald, 1999; Patterson and Chan, 1999; Clarke, 2000 Anderssen et al., 2002 and Golombok et al., 2003). This proves that it is better for a child’s development for it to be in a happy lesbian-parented family than it is in an unhappy, conflicting nuclear one. However, some people would argue that although this maybe true, the child would still lack having a male role model. But what most people don’t realize is that although both parents are female, most children still have regular contact with important men in their life, such as godfathers, grandfathers and uncles etc. These people also play an important part in the child’s socialization.

One part of the article is headed Being a child in a lesbian-parented family. It puts across a really poignant message to people that feel these children don’t have a normal life. Dempsey (2004) interviewed a 5-year-old girl who has lesbian parents. She knew she had been conceived through an unknown sperm donor. On her first day at school her new headmaster asked her about her father, she told him that she didn’t have one, just a donor. At this he argued with her and insisted that she must have a father, he was so closed to the ways of family diversity that he tried to suppress her knowledge with his own ideals of what a family “should” be. Ray and Gregory (2001) interviewed a group of children aged between 5 and 8 years old. They reported that many of the children they interviewed held firm on the simple fact that they have two mothers, despite curious and persistent questioning from their peers. The children were asked how they would define a family. They answered that a family was having two loving parents, they did not say having a mother and a father.

It seems to me that the only thing making lesbian families to be wrong are people with out dated ideals on how the family should be rather than caring whether it is really good for the child.

If you are interested in reading more on this topic a quick search on IBSS for articles relating to ‘lesbian*’ and ‘family’ pulls up 325 results. A search for ‘same-sex*’ yields 1,450 results while a narrowed search for ‘same-sex relationships’ comes up with 260 results. IBSS has an extensive number of indexed articles that focus on same-sex relationships and issues facing the gay community in today’s society across the globe.

How does social class affect socialisation within the family?

Congratulations to Tess Pearce, one of our blog competition winners! Tess used IBSS to explore the effect of class on the socialisation of children, and how this influences them as they move into adulthood.

The family is one of the most vital factors for primary socialisation and secondary socialisation for children. Class socialisation refers to the everyday experiences associated with a person’s class location and beliefs and attitudes. So does the family’s social class affect the child’s socialisation? Sociologists argue this matter some agreeing and suggesting that your social class does affect the norms and values you possess.

Children of the upper class and middle class have mannerisms and values that are distinct from those of other social classes. Upper class children are socialised into high culture, for example, being taken to the opera or playing a musical instrument. This contrasts to the popular culture of the working class who might watch celebrity television programs or have a McDonald’s meal. Even their speech has diversity as the middle class speak with an ‘elaborated code,’ in contrast to the ‘restricted code,’ the working class use according to Bernstein.

A social class research by Diana Kendall showed how the family continues to pass on cultural and economic capital. Kendall also showed that member of social classes have different lifestyle from and educational outcomes. From the IBSS website I found that the working class is associated with single parenthood, then it is likely that children within that class will also become a single parent. Recent surveys have also shown that Britain has the highest teenage pregnancy rates. These teenage pregnancies are often linked to the working class. In addition to this, the rising divorce rates in contemporary society are often related to poverty – to low income and reliance on state benefits.

A study by Joann Miller and Ted. M Brimeyer looks at class socialisation and how it effects student’s aspirations. The research showed how studying the past, present and anticipated or aspired future class locations is necessary for understanding the attitude and beliefs associated with class. Obviously, depending on whether you are born into a privileged class location or a working class network provides different material resources. These will directly and indirectly shape their ideas on beliefs and values. In 1996 a survey showed how a number of first-year students, coming from families with a modest income, didn’t feel the need to get a job to pay for college. Smith and Powell (1990) saw how students from advantaged families may inaccurately assume that they will be better off financially after college than what they are likely to experience. In comparison, only 22.3 percent of working class students said that feel secure about future employment. However, they tended to anticipate occupations that rank higher in status than their parents’ occupations.

With today’s economic crisis, it is likely that the working class family structure will move to extended. This supplies extra role models for children whilst also providing more emotional support. These additional members within the family are unlikely to appear in an upper class family unit.

There is often a very close relationship between social class and life chances. The higher the class position of a child’s parents, the more likely the child is to attain high educational qualifications and a well paid, high status job. Research from Reay shows how middle class mothers are able to influence their children’s primary schooling more than the working class mothers. This research shows how demands of the working class mothers affect their time to devote to the children. Therefore the children will miss out on important socialisation with their mothers.

In contemporary society it is clear to see that social class does affect the socialisation of children. The working class families often lack role models and quality time with their parents, creating a vicious circle of teenage pregnancies, which is a big issue today. The upper and middle class also create norms, values and expectations that pass down through generations. Even though class divisions are getting more blurred, socialisation between these families is still very much present.

Tess has found some really useful material in the IBSS database. It is also possible to generate more specific search results. For example, searching the database with the keywords ‘class’ and ‘ socialisation’ gives 231 results. You can specify which subject area you want your results to come from, so if you select ‘sociology’ you get 173 results, and if you select ‘anthropology’ you get 45 results. There are also 58 articles written from a ‘politics’ perspective. Another useful feature of IBSS is that you can narrow your searches by geographical area. For example, there are 17 articles about class and socialization in the United Kingdom, and 8 about the same topic in Germany.

IBSS blog competition – winners announced!

As part of the ESRC Festival of Social Science week (9^th-16^th March), IBSS organised a blog writing competition to demonstrate how IBSS online could be used effectively in social science research.  Entrants were required to write a post for the IBSS blog on a topical social science issue, using background information available in the IBSS database. 

 

The competition has now closed and we are pleased to announce the winning entries below.  We offer them our congratulations and would also like to thank all those who entered the competition.  You can check out the winning posts now on the IBSS blog site by clicking on the links below:

  

Katy Higgs – Is it hard for working class women to cope in higher education?

 

Diego de la Hoz – Mobilising computer models for policy

 

Tess Pearce – How does social class affect socialisation within the family?

 

Brigette Sainsbury – Outdated views on family structure and lesbian families

IBSS blog competition – enter for the chance to win one of five £100 prizes

Why not enter our  blog competition by writing a post for the IBSS blog? Five prizes of £100 each will be awarded for the contributions which are judged to demonstrate best how IBSS online has been used to find background information for a post on a topical social science issue. The winning entries will be posted on the IBSS blog. The competition is open to anyone interested in the social sciences and who studies at a school, college or university, or works for a governmental, not-for-profit or commercial organisation. Full entry details are given on the IBSS website. The closing date for applications is 10 April 2009.

This competition is being organised as part of the ESRC Festival of Social Science. Click here for details about other events taking place between 6 and 15 March 2009, or visit the ESRC’s Our Society Today blog.