Culture of American Families a National Survey

Culture of AmeriCAn Families A National Survey Carl Desportes Bowman Culture of AmeriCAn Families A National Survey Carl Desportes Bowman A publication from Culture of American families: A national survey © 2012 Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture. Published by the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture. This project was made possible through the support of a grant from the John Templeton Foundation. The opin- ions expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the John Templeton Foundation. Cover painting “Young Family” by Ulysse Desportes, Staunton, Virginia. Used with permission. To obtain additional copies of this report, contact: Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture P.O. Box 400816 University of Virginia Charlottesville, VA 22904-4816 (434) 924-7705 www.iasc-culture.org [email protected] Project statement 5 introduction 6 Prologue: families in a fog 8 The Received Wisdom 8 Another Take 10 1 the state of the family 12 Parental Worries and Uncertainties 12 Technological Infusion 14 Diverse Family Forms 18 Diverse Support Networks 19 Diverse Schools 22 Diverse Moral Structures 23 2 the Gilded nest 26 Harmony at Home 26 The Power of Positive Parenting 26 Practically Perfect in Every Way 27 “All the Children Are Above Average” 28 Timelessly and Intimately Tethered 29 3 Close Parenting 31 They Say They Are “Strict” 31 Yet It’s a Benign Strictness 32 When Is It First Appropriate? 34 Arenas of Conflict 36 On Normality, Diagnosis, and Medication 36 4 Hopes, sources, and moral Contradictions 39 Concerning Character 39 The Asymmetries of Faith 42 Moral Character Reconsidered 44 Incoherent Moral Foundations 45 5 four family Cultures 48 The Faithful 49 Engaged Progressives 53 The Detached 58 American Dreamers 62 Postscript: Beyond responsiveness and High expectations 68 Appendix A: methods and sample 72 Appendix B: survey Questionnaire with Percentage Distributions of response 75 endnotes 109 ABout tHe Culture of AmeriCAn Families ProjeCt TheCulture of American Families Project is a three-year the good child. Interview questions explore the investigation into the family cultures that are impact- kinds of people that parents want their children ing the next generation of American adults. Designed to become and attempt to elicit the explicit and conducted by the University of Virginia’s Institute and implicit strategies parents employ in their for Advanced Studies in Culture and funded by the habits and practices of scheduling, disciplining, John Templeton Foundation, this project adapts the motivating, and communicating with their tools of contemporary social science to an investiga- children. tion that is broadly interpretive and contextual. Our goal is to distinguish the cultural frameworks and Principal findings from the survey and interviews diverse moral narratives that both inform and are are being released in two separate reports—Culture informed by American family life. Specifically, this of American Families: A National Survey and Culture involves telling the complex story of parents’ habits, of American Families: Interview Report—along with dispositions, hopes, fears, assumptions, and expecta- Culture of American Families: Executive Report that tions for their children. includes thoughts for practitioners working with American families. For more information, or to access The data for this project was collected in two stages: other reports, please visit the project website: iasc- culture.org/caf. 1. A web-based survey of a nationally representative sample of 3,000 parents of school-aged children. Research Team This one-hour survey, fielded by Knowledge Carl Desportes Bowman, PhD Networks, examines a broad range of parental Project Director priorities, aspirations, challenges, and practices, James Davison Hunter, PhD as well as a variety of other cultural and socio- Project Director demographic indicators. Data for the survey, Jeffrey S. Dill, PhD and an accompanying non-response follow-up Director of Interviews survey, were collected from September 2011 Ashley Rogers Berner, DPhil through January 2012. Director of Public Engagement 2. Follow-up, in-person interviews were Joseph E. Davis, PhD conducted with 101 of the survey respondents. Project Consultant These 90-minute, semi-structured interviews Tony Tian-Ren Lin, PhD complement the survey with open-ended Research Fellow questions designed to explore how respondents Megan Juelfs-Swanson, MA articulate their visions of the good parent and Research Assistant 6 Culture of AmeriCAn Families Introduction I envy those who stay at home, enjoying the society of their friendly neighbors, blessed with their firesides, and employed in doing something every day which looks useful to futurity. Thomas Jefferson Nothing sparks more hand-wringing and controversy In the mid-1990s, Democratic First Lady Hillary than the future of our nation’s children. Educators and Clinton wrote a book on childhood formation enti- developmental psychologists build careers upon it. tled It Takes a Village, shorthand for “it takes a village Faith communities and their followers pray about it. to raise a child.”1 Her point was not that parents don’t Politicians make political capital of it. And American matter; quite the contrary, they were seen as the most parents exhaust every last flicker of their daily flame important influences upon children. Her point was trying to kindle a brighter tomorrow for the children that no family operates in a vacuum—that parents under their constant care. Their children represent need support from neighbors, communities, and pub- hope, a window upon the future, in a way that noth- lic institutions in part because not all children have ing else does. parents who can, or will, act as their champions. So the book stressed the responsibility of faith commu- Efforts to understand children—what makes them nities, law enforcement officials, schools, preschools, tick, what nurtures habits of hard work, what con- service opportunities, employers, and the media to tributes to financial success and independence, what cultivate an institutional and moral climate that sup- promotes happiness, emotional well-being and warm ports parenting in America. relationships, and what contributes to moral character—are ubiquitous. Indeed, the problem of “the A decade later, Republican Senator Rick Santorum child” and what works in the child’s best interest is the answered with a book entitled It Takes a Family: stuff of which dissertations, faith tracts, government Conservatism and the Common Good. Convinced that reports, and psychological assessments are made. It welfare state policies of the type endorsed by Clinton is not surprising that a search in the books section undermined, rather than helped, the situation of on Amazon.com for “child” or “children” yields America’s families, Santorum issued a call to restrain 2,363,000 hits. Although the quantity of material is the “Bigs” (big government and bureaucracy) and impressive, the quality is mixed. And the outcome of the “village elders” (liberal elites). The focus, he said, all of the work, all too often, is confusion. needed to shift back from the metaphorical “village”— from institutions beyond the family—to the family Consider this contrast. itself. The very best thing for children, he argued, was A NAtioNAl Survey 7 a strong family consisting of a man and a woman who not that developmental psychology is disinterested in set standards and demands for their children while the family—nothing could be further from the truth; offering a unique mixture of unconditional love, life- it is just that the family is seen through a foggy win- long commitment, and support.2 In Santorum’s view, dow when the child’s autonomous self takes center the focus of liberals upon the “village” had backfired, stage. Consider the fact that the word “individual”3 elevating individuals and individual preferences above is invoked 23 times in the Wikipedia article on Child committed relationships, thereby jeopardizing the Development; “cognitive” appears 18 times; “genetic,” future of America’s children. 15 times; “experience,” 13 times; and “plasticity,” 10 times. Most closely associated with “child” are concepts Contrasting arguments such as these leave those who such as human, mental emotional, role, experience, work on behalf of children in a quandary. To whom social, plasticity, ability, milestone, change, learn, and should they listen? Which of the two million odd language. But even though the Wikipedia topic is books on Amazon is the place to begin? “child development,” and much of that development occurs within families, the word “family” appears only One strategy is to focus upon the last several decades three times, one being a reference to family “genetic of research from developmental psychology. There is factors” and another to a demographic classification certainly much there to absorb. New findings in the of “middle-class families.” In short, there is little in area of psychogenetics, the physiological development the article to suggest that the family is at all pivotal of the brain, and the impact of such factors upon chil- to the entire “child development” process the article dren’s social and emotional development, to name a purports to describe. few, have been particularly fruitful lines of

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