Lala Steelman University of South Carolina
This collaborative project will conduct a nationally representative phone survey in which an estimated 800 adults from the continental United States will be interviewed about their definitions of family and the lines that they draw around what they consider to be families. This survey constitutes the third wave of a survey that was completed in 2003 and 2006. These data are the first sociological surveys of this scope that tap into Americans' definitions of family and their rationale behind these definitions. These data also are distinctive in their inclusion of both close-ended and open-ended questions on these topics. A comparison of the first two surveys suggests that between 2003 and 2006 there was a striking change in Americans? views regarding the meaning of family?one that move toward a more inclusive definition of family. The collection of data in 2010 would provide an opportunity to test whether this change in Americans views has continued, accelerated, stalled or reversed. The data also will enable the principal investigators to explore the potential influence of state legalization of same-sex marriage on Americans? views regarding same-sex couples. Closed-ended questions will be analyzed with multivariate statistical analyses, and open-ended questions will be explored with state-of-the-art qualitative analytical techniques. The inclusion of open-ended questions (e.g., why they believe that certain living arrangements do or do not count as family) also offers a unique glimpse into how people explain their views regarding family.
Broader Impacts
How others define ?family? has numerous public policy implications. Although public opinion is not the only factor that drives social policy, changes in public policy are responsive in part to public views. Recent ballot initiatives regarding same-sex adoption, foster care and marriage further accentuate the potential influence of public definitions. Transformation or continuity in Americans? views regarding family may be implicated in the extension of (or restriction of) familial rights and benefits?for example, insurance rights, access to health insurance, hospital visitation, child custody, and end-of-life decisions. In addition, a valuable feature of this project is the training of a large team of young scientists at two universities (estimated at over twenty graduate students and fifteen undergraduates) in the multiple aspects of the research process. Upon completion of the data collection, students also will be encouraged to analyze these data by themselves or in collaboration with the principal investigators. Finally, this project will result in a data set about family that also should be of great use to other scholars.
Who counts as a family? Do a single mother and her children count? Do an unmarried men and woman count? Do a same-sex couple and their children count? Do housemates count? To answer these questions, this project summarizes key patterns from a nationally representative phone survey in which more than 800 adults from the continental United States were interviewed in 2010 about their definitions of family and the lines that they draw around what they consider to be families. Interviewees were given a list of living arrangements—e.g., husband and wife with children, lesbian couple with children, heterosexual cohabiting couple with children, single man with foster children—and asked whether they personally believe that these arrangements count as family. Interviewees also were asked questions regarding the provision of various rights and benefits (e.g., health benefits) to these different living arrangements. This survey is the third of three cross-sectional panel surveys on these topics (the other two were conducted in 2003 and 2006), thereby enabling us to discern the extent to which views regarding the definition of family have changed, or have been constant, during the seven-year period Despite a great deal of theorizing about the meaning of family, social scientistis have mostly ignored public definitions of family. This, of course, does not mean that social scientists avoid defining family themselves. At least since the early 1900s, scholars have debated over the definition of family; however, these debates focus on academicians’ constructions of family and construction by the public. When scholars have written about public definitions, they have focused on how people think about and what they define as their own family. With the exception of some limited college student surveys (Ford et al. 1996; Weigel 2008), we have known very little about the boundaries that Americans set in defining other people’s families. The one key exception were interviews conducted in 2003 and 2006 by the PI, reported in the book, COUNTED OUT (Russell Sage Foundation, American Sociological Association, 2010). Given the notable change in the social and political landscape since 2006, the 2010 data enable us to determine how much has changed in terms of public definitions family. The data indicate: (1) a dramatic change in American’s definitions of family across all three years, with less than one-third of Americans endorsing a traditional definition of family and the remaining two-thirds of Americans endorsing a more inclusive definition of family. (2) the power of legal status in definitions of family, with legally married same-sex couples receiving greater recognition of family status and deserving of the rights of family than same-sex couples who are not legally married. The patterns from these data survey are very clear. They identify important change in the acceptance of particular living arrangements. More specifically, they show a striking movement away from a traditional definition of family that privileges married heterosexual couples, especially those with children. Instead, more Americans endorse a definition of family that includes at least some type of unmarried heterosexual couples and same-sex couples. These changes likely are due to a combination of factors—among them, Americans’ increasing contact with same-sex couples, increasing visibility of same-sex individuals in the public sphere (e.g., in media), and increasing endorsement of the position that sexuality is not a "choice" and instead is due to factors that are beyond the control of the individual (e.g., genetic factors). These factors—along with sociodemographic changes (e.g., the entrance each year of another cohort of young adults who are more supportive of same-sex issues than their older counterparts)—likely will continue to shape views regarding the meaning of family. In other words, change is indeed occurring. If there is continuity in views regarding family, it is reflected in the ongoing importance that Americans attribute to marital status—and parent status—when deciding whether a particular living arrangement is a family. Ironically, though, this continuity also suggests a change in future definitions of family. Our analysis demonstrates that marital status powerfully increases Americans’ willingness to view a same-sex couple as a family that is deserving of the rights of family. In other words, the legalization of same-sex marriage in some states may continue to reshape Americans’ willingness to define same-sex households as family. While conducting this research, we also fufilled another mission of the National Science Foundation: the training of the next generation of sociologists. At the Center for Survey Research, where the research was conducted, student interviewers and transcribers received extensive training in interviewing and transcribing techniques while graduate student supervisors also received rigorous training in data management and analysis and statistics. Upon the completion of the data collection, students were encouraged to analyze these data by themselves or in collaboration with the principal investigators.
