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.
The main objective of the proposed research is to support the implementation and analysis of a nationally representative phone survey in which more than 800 adults from the continental United States are interviewed about their definitions of family and the lines that they draw around what they consider to be families, and as well as their stances regarding same-sex couples, cohabiting couples, same-sex marriage, same-sex adoption, and the extension of certain marital/familial rights to same-sex and cohabiting couples. These interviews, which will include both closed-end and open-ended questions, also will cover a variety of other family-related topics—among them, the relative influence of biological and social factors on children’s development and views regarding gender dynamics in familial relations. In addition, these interviews will solicit sociodemographic information (including a full family roster) and items regarding religious and political ideology. 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. This survey constitutes the third of the Constructing the Family Surveys, with the first two collected in 2003 (N=712) and 2006 (N=815). This first two waves of data are, to our knowledge, the first sociological surveys of this scope that tap into Americans’ definitions of family and their rationale behind these definitions. In 2010, our book, Family Counts: Contemporary Struggles over Same-Sex Relations and the Definition of Family, was published as part of the American Sociological Association’s Rose Series (Powell, Bolzendahl, Geist, and Steelman). The focal point of the book is Americans’ reactions to eleven living arrangements (e.g., married couple with children, childless lesbian couple, gay male couple with children, childless cohabiting heterosexual couple, and housemates)—more specifically, whether they personally believe that these arrangements count as family. In this book, we explore the degree of consensus or disagreement over the boundaries that Americans erect between "family" and "non-family," consider how they talk about the definition of family, and correspondingly how they interpret many contentious family issues—from gender relations to same-sex marriage. Upon completion of the data collection effort in 2006, we did not initially anticipate collecting another round of data—or at least not in the near future. Since 2006, however, there have been remarkable changes regarding the debate about the meaning of family and the legal status of same-sex couples. These changes, arguably, may be even more pronounced than those experienced between 2003 and 2006. Given the changes in Americans’ responses that occurred between 2003 and 2006 and the unprecedented changes in the political and social landscape that have occurred since 2006, we believed that the time (in 2010) was opportune to collect a third wave of interviews. The Constructing the Family Survey of 2010 replicated many of the items that were asked in the 2003 and 2006 surveys. It provided a rare opportunity to chronicle and analyze shifts in Americans’ delineation between "family" and "non-family" and in the explanations that they give for this delineation. he survey went beyond the original Constructing the Family Surveys by introducing new closed-ended and open-ended questions that address important concerns that naturally arose during the course of the interviews in 2003 and especially 2006—for example, expanding the roster of living arrangements for respondents to assess (e.g., whether married couples that do not reside together and gay couples that are legally married in a state that allows same-sex marriage count as family).
