12 Stress and Anxiety
John Williams
Stress and anxiety is the number one mental health disorder for men in America (Infographic: Mental health for men). Anxiety disorder is defined as persistent anxiety that does not go away and interrupts daily life (Anxiety Disorders). Approximately 19.1 million American men ages 18-54 have some sort of anxiety disorder (Infographic: Mental health for men). As of recent, mental health awareness has exploded and has become a point of emphasis as societal opinions on the topic has shifted from intolerance to support. However, many men still find themselves unable to speak on the matter. Evidence shows that 77% of men have experienced negative mental health symptoms, but 40% of men have not spoken about their issues (40% of men won’t talk to anyone about their mental health). Ranked at the number one mental disorder in terms of prevalence, anxiety disorder causes the most issues for men in terms of their mental health. From a Public Health point of view, anxiety disorder is highly treatable (Bandelow et al., 2017). Therefore, finding solutions to increase the treatment rate is key to eliminating this disorder. However, in the United Kingdom, a cross-sectional survey found that it would require suicidal thoughts or self-harm to get them to see a mental health professional (40% of men won’t talk to anyone about their mental health). The resistance to medical treatment for mental health is created through social stigmas and norms that have been cultivated through the decades. In this past century, much has changed about how men interact with the world around them. However, the social norms surrounding their interaction have remained mostly unchanged. This can be seen clearly in the social norms surrounding men’s utilization of mental healthcare. Masculine social norms encompass the filling a specific role in the social unit such as the masculine provider mentality. This is a common trait exhibited by American males that often puts males as the sole provider for a family unit (Brown, 2021). This role puts large pressures on the male to provide, creating stress and anxiety among males financially. This means masculine roles contribute to increasing anxiety and stress among men.
“Anxiety” by Nick Youngson is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0
How Do These Factors Work?
Financial Stability
Financial instability and discomfort are areas often identified as a major trigger for men and anxiety disorders. Financial instability can be the precursor to mental and physical health problems such as the previously mentioned anxiety, stress, hypertension, and heart disease (Pogosova et al., 2021). However, financial instability just acts as a powerful stressor for men, and over time this stress creates anxiety and then anxiety disorders in men when they are financially unstable (Sareen, 2011). Therefore, we can connect men’s financial instability to bad health outcomes through anxiety disorders by further identifying how anxiety links to poor health outcomes. Looking at a comprehensive study done for half-of-a-million adults found that coronary heart disease and anxiety or anxiety disorders were positively correlated (Wu et al., 2022). Furthermore, the link between anxiety and low socioeconomic status was confirmed in a study published by Elsevier/North-Holland Biomedical Press, where low income and low socioeconomic status was highly correlated with anxiety (Nunes et al., 2022). A Priory Group’s cross-sectional survey of 1000 men in the United Kingdom gives us insight into this factor. These men outlined their largest causes for their mental health problems, and the study identified that the second most prevalent cause of negative mental health issues with men is financial issues at 31%, just behind work pressures at 32% (40% of men won’t talk to anyone about their mental health). While this study does not analyze American men, it gives us insight into how stresses affect men on a more general scale. These two major causes for negative mental health in men are connected through employment, showing that men and their jobs cause a combined 63% of mental distress.
Racialized Experiences Among Students
The notion that social or political inequalities for minorities cause anxiety and poor mental health outcomes for racial minorities is not a new idea. In a recent study conducted among undergraduate students, it was found that minority stress from microaggressions and discrimination was related to students’ status as racial minorities, meaning that their race created the anxiety symptoms they experienced (Manzo et al., 2022). We can infer from these findings that current minority members find themselves at a higher risk factor for anxiety than non-minority members in 2022. The relationship between a student’s racial or ethnic background and anxiety symptoms are explained by the authors through the lens of Minority Stress Theory or MST.  We can infer from these findings that minority populations may find themselves at a higher risk factor for anxiety than white populations.
Racialized Experiences Among Employees
Moving away from students and looking into the African American community, we see similar results. Poor African American men who are financially unstable due to unemployment may find themselves with increased anxiety on two levels. The first level being stress resulting from not paying the bills, and the second level being unable to fulfill the breadwinner social role that men perceive as their duty due to societal norms (Robinson et al., 2021). The perceived failure to adhere to the societally dominant ideas of manhood have more negative effects than being low income. This intimates a deeper struggle to men than just wealth and race. The connection shows that the lack of money creates an inability to fill male gender roles, creating psychological disparity among low income and minority males. Suggesting that employment status is leading to a situation where the male is generating massive amounts of anxiety over the cognitive dissonance experienced by the confliction of their social role and current role. Additionally, the male gender roles of perseverance and grit mask the symptoms of anxiety and stress, further reducing one’s ability to recognize anxiety disorders (Fisher et al., 2022). Those studied also made their employment status as employed or unemployed connected to their self-esteem as a man and a contributing member of their race. This create a heightened experience of anxiety that may lead to other mental challenges like depression and suicide.
“Man Stressed At Work Illustration” by Ciphr Connect is licensed under CC BY 2.0
The Intersection Between Race and Income
Refugees
There are various forms of racial inequality that can be formed at different populations. Refugees are an interesting population to examine as they can inherently be both at an income and racial disparity just through their existence as refugees in a foreign state. Researchers identified minority refugees, or non-white refugees, in high-income countries and surveyed their anxiety levels. Researchers found that 42% of refugees reported anxiety, which is outlined as substantially higher than those who lived in non-refugee populations or those living in a war or conflict zone (Henkelmann et al,. 2020). This study found astonishing results as to the elevated risk of anxiety at the intersection of income and race. Anxiety levels were much higher than comparable populations of minorities as well as populations that would be considered in high stress situations such as those outlined living in warzones. While the study was not conducted on men, the data found shows that in a population in which income and race are at a disparity, we see extreme stress. Similarly, through this study, we can clearly identify the drastic compounding effect that each of these factors have on anxiety.
Relieving the Pressure: Public Health Interventions
Current Public Health Interventions
The successful and efficient implementation of an intervention is the most difficult part of fixing a public health crisis. There are very few active public health interventions to address and prevent anxiety disorders and stress in men caused by income and race. There are several treatments and interventions used to treat anxiety and anxiety disorders as they arise. One treatment for anxiety disorder is psychotherapy. Psychotherapy is known as talk therapy as it uses a psychologist to talk through anxiety inducing situations. The gold standard of psychotherapy is cognitive behavioral therapy. CBT as it is known teaches patients to think and react differently to situations that would normally cause them anxiety. However, this follows a traditional path for disease treatment in the american healthcare system, meaning that this method only continues to treat the disease and not focus on its prevention. But without any form of treatment for men that prevents anxiety or stress related negative mental health outcomes, these interventions will do little to fix any problems American men face. Overall, with the lack of implemented interventions, we can only propose what could be done to correct this public health crisis.
Struggles Identifying Anxiety and What It Means For Suicide
Anxiety and stress are expressed differently among men. Due to the individual nature of mental health, each man facing stress and anxiety will respond differently. This becomes even more complex at the intersection of race. People of racially and culturally diverse backgrounds each express stress and anxiety differently given their adopted norms (Fisher et al., 2022). On top of this, cultural norms can also affect one’s willingness to see a mental health doctor, further creating problems for men’s treatment of anxiety and stress. This key inefficiency among highlighting anxiety and stress symptoms has made these mental health disorders a unique risk factor is male suicide (Fisher et al., 2022). There is little consideration of anxiety and stress in American as well as global suicide prevention, and understanding how anxiety disorder affects men and suicide could reduce suicide attempts in men across the country.
Recommendations
Starting by correcting this issue of race-based stress and anxiety. There have been studies created documenting stress and anxiety caused by discrimination in the African American population. A study published in The Journal of Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities showed a “strong” relationship between mistreatment due to race and levels of stress and anxiety (Williams et al., 2018). Research like this shows the need for support that minority men need to overcome and cope with current racial anxieties. With this in mind, I recommended an intervention strategy to improve the mental health outcomes of minority men who have been affected by racial anxiety and stress would be to create an intervention in the interpersonal and organizational levels of the ecological model of health. At the organizational level, an intervention to target race-based anxiety would be to create a program through the Men’s Mental Health Network that serves the minority community through counseling, group therapy, advocating for the community, awareness, and through connecting the community to medical resources to aid their anxieties and stresses.
At the interpersonal level, improving the utilization of healthcare services among men through targeted awareness campaigns to normalize mental health issues and to reduce the stigma surrounding men and mental healthcare. A study published by the American Journal of Men’s Health recommended interventions that would improve male help-seeking by incorporating the use of role models, motivating men to change the social norm to not see doctors for mental health crisis, and symptom management and recognition (Sagar-Ouriaghli et al., 2019). We would recommend a similar solution to change the social stigma of men and mental healthcare utilization through normalizing it. This can be done through targeted ads online or on television by using popular and traditional male role models such as professional athletes. An example of nne of these ads is “The Power of Okay” campaign by See Me. See Me is a Scottish based national mental health program dedicated to ending discrimination and mental health stigmas. The campaign targeted the Scottish workforce, asking people to check up on their peers (Power of Okay). This was in response to a survey that See Me conducted that showed that 48% of employees have anxiety of losing their jobs. While this is not an American based program, it shows the need for these campaigns in the workplace and in other places of the world.
Key Takeaways
- Income instability and race are factors that are both associated with anxiety disorders and stress in men. Additionally, income instability and race are risk factors for poor physical health outcomes such as hypertension and heart disease.
- For men, masculinity plays a large role in the anxiety and stress related response of men due to the social norm of being providers, workers, and breadwinners.
- Interventions for tackling anxiety disorders and stress caused by income inequality and race are not currently in effect. However, there are several programs attempting to help ease the stigma of men and mental healthcare utilization.
Chapter Review Questions
- Stress and Anxiety are precursors to which of the following physical health outcomes?
- A. Arthritis
- B. Hypertension
- C. Bipolar Disorder
- D. Carpal Tunnel Syndrome
- In a study by The Journal of Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities, what did they publish about race-based anxiety?
- A. Anxiety and stress are linked to genetics more so than experiences
- B. Discrimination is weak factor in race-based anxiety of African Americans
- C. That there was no correlation between discrimination and race-based anxiety
- D. Discrimination is a strong factor in race-based anxiety of African Americans
- What is the relationship between unemployment and anxiety in men?
- A. Men’s anxiety is increased due to unemployment
- B. Men experience no change in their anxiety levels due to their employment status
- C. Men’s anxiety is increased more when they are employed than when they are unemployed
- D. Men’s anxiety is decreased when they are unemployed
- How does masculinity effect a Man’s stress and anxiety level when faced with unemployment?
- A. Their social (masculine) role becomes conflicted with their current role, causing mental stress
- B. The man alters his social role to become more like his current role and experience little to no stress
- C. Masculinity has no effect on anxiety levels and unemployment
- D. None of the above
References
Anxiety and Depression Association of America. (2022, September 27). Anxiety Disorders – Facts & Statistics. ADAA. Retrieved October 5, 2022, from https://adaa.org/understanding-anxiety/facts-statistics
Bandelow, B., Michaelis, S., & Wedekind, D. (2017). Treatment of anxiety disorders. Dialogues in clinical neuroscience, 19(2), 93–107. https://doi.org/10.31887/DCNS.2017.19.2/bbandelow
Brown, B. (2021, October 16). The provider role indicates that masculinity is prosocial. The Centre for Male Psychology. Retrieved November 23, 2022, from https://www.centreformalepsychology.com/male-psychology-magazine-listings/the-provider-role-indicates-that-masculinity-is-prosocial#:~:text=Male%20provisioning%20stimulates%20paternal%20attachment,a%20father%20in%20the%20home.
Fisher, K., Seidler, Z. E., King, K., Oliffe, J. L., Robertson, S., & Rice, S. M. (2022). Men’s anxiety, why it matters, and what is needed to limit its risk for male suicide. Discover Psychology, 2(1), 18. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44202-022-00035-5
Henkelmann, J. R., de Best, S., Deckers, C., Jensen, K., Shahab, M., Elzinga, B., & Molendijk, M. (2020). Anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder in refugees resettling in high-income countries: systematic review and meta-analysis. BJPsych open, 6(4), e68. https://doi.org/10.1192/bjo.2020.54
Manzo, G., Piña-Watson, B., & Kim, S. Y. (2022). Minority stress and academic outcomes among ethnic minority college students: Anxiety as a mediating mechanism. Journal of American College Health : J of ACH, 1–8. https://doi-org.libproxy.clemson.edu/10.1080/07448481.2022.2128683
Mental Health America. (n.d.). Black and African American communities and Mental Health. Mental Health America. Retrieved December 6, 2022, from https://www.mhanational.org/issues/black-and-african-american-communities-and-mental-health
Mental Health America. (n.d.). Infographic: Mental health for men. Mental Health America. Retrieved October 5, 2022, from https://www.mhanational.org/infographic-mental-health-men
Nunes, J. C., Carroll, M. K., Mahaffey, K. W., Califf, R. M., Doraiswamy, P. M., Short, S., Shah, S. H., Swope, S., Williams, D., Hernandez, A. F., & Hong, D. S. (2022). General Anxiety Disorder-7 Questionnaire as a marker of low socioeconomic status and inequity. Journal of Affective Disorders, 317, 287–297. https://doi-org.libproxy.clemson.edu/10.1016/j.jad.2022.08.085
Pogosova, N., Boytsov, S., De Bacquer, D., Sokolova, O., Ausheva, A., Kursakov, A., & Saner, H. (2021). Factors Associated with Anxiety and Depressive Symptoms in 2775 Patients with Arterial Hypertension and Coronary Heart Disease: Results from the COMETA Multicenter Study. Global Heart, 16(1), 73. https://doi-org.libproxy.clemson.edu/10.5334/gh.1017
Priory. (n.d.). 40% of men won’t talk to anyone about their mental health. Priory. Retrieved October 3, 2022, from https://www.priorygroup.com/blog/40-of-men-wont-talk-to-anyone-about-their-mental-health
Robinson, D., Valdez, L., Scott, L., & Buchanan, D. (2021). The role of work in gender identity, stress and health in low-income, middle-aged African-American men. Health promotion international, 36(5), 1231–1242. https://doi.org/10.1093/heapro/daaa144
Sagar-Ouriaghli, I., Godfrey, E., Bridge, L., Meade, L., & Brown, J. (2019). Improving Mental Health Service Utilization Among Men: A Systematic Review and Synthesis of Behavior Change Techniques Within Interventions Targeting Help-Seeking. American journal of men’s health, 13(3),<PHONE_NUMBER>857009. https://doi.org/10.1177/1557988319857009
Sareen, J. (2011, April 4). Relationship between household income and mental disorders: Findings from a population-based longitudinal study. Archives of General Psychiatry. Retrieved October 31, 2022, from https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/fullarticle/211213
See Me. (n.d.). Power of Okay. See Me Scotland. Retrieved November 30, 2022, from https://www.seemescotland.org/seeus/campaigns/power-of-okay/#:~:text=The%20’Power%20of%20Okay’%20is,about%20mental%20health%20at%20work
Timmins, L., Schneider, J. A., Chen, Y.-T., Pagkas-Bather, J., Kim, B., Moody, R. L., Al-Ajlouni, Y. A., Lee, F., Koli, K., Durrell, M., Eavou, R., Hanson, H., Park, S. H., & Duncan, D. T. (2022). COVID-19 stressors and symptoms of depression and anxiety among Black cisgender sexual minority men and Black transgender women during the initial peak of the COVID-19 pandemic. Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology, 57(10), 1999–2011. https://doi-org.libproxy.clemson.edu/10.1007/s00127-022-02282-2
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. (n.d.). Anxiety disorders. National Institute of Mental Health. Retrieved November 27, 2022, from https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/anxiety-disorders
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. (n.d.). Any anxiety disorder. National Institute of Mental Health. Retrieved November 3, 2022, from https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/any-anxiety-disorder
Ward, E. C., Wiltshire, J. C., Detry, M. A., & Brown, R. L. (2013). African American men and women’s attitude toward mental illness, perceptions of stigma, and preferred coping behaviors. Nursing research, 62(3), 185–194. https://doi.org/10.1097/NNR.0b013e31827bf533
Williams, M.T., Kanter, J.W. & Ching, T.H.W. (2018). Anxiety, Stress, and Trauma Symptoms in African Americans: Negative Affectivity Does Not Explain the Relationship between Microaggressions and Psychopathology. J. Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities 5, 919–927. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40615-017-0440-3
Wu, M., Zhu, Y., Lv, J., Guo, Y., Yang, L., Chen, Y., Tang, W., Xiang, S., Sun, X., Chen, J., Chen, Z., Yu, C., & Li, L. (2022). Association of anxiety with cardiovascular disease in a Chinese cohort of 0.5 million adults. Journal of Affective Disorders, 315, 291–296. https://doi-org.libproxy.clemson.edu/10.1016/j.jad.2022.08.008


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Introduction
Kathlyn Palafox
1. Competency:Health and Caring
Provincial Health Care Assistant Core Competency Advisory
2. Competency: Plan of Care
3. Competency: Communication Skills
4. Competency: Interdisciplinary Team Care
5. Competency: Safety
6. Competency: Responsibility, Accountability and Ethical Behaviour
7. Self-Evaluation for Health and Caring Competencies
8. Self-Evaluation for the Plan of Care Competencies
9. Self-Evaluation for Communication Skills Competencies
10. Self-Evaluation for Interdisciplinary Care Team Competencies
11. Self-Evaluation for Safety Competencies
12. Self-Evaluation for Responsibility, Accountability and Ethical Behaviour Competencies
Appendix 1 BC Health Care Assistants Core Competency Profile
HCA Self-Evaluation of HCA Competencies
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Self-Evaluation for Safety Competencies Copyright © by Kathlyn Palafox is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.


A Review of Reverberations of Racial Violence
William O. Pate II
Edited by Sonia Hernández and John Morán González
University of Texas Press, 2021
9781477322680
328 pages
In the summer of 1975, doctoral student James A. Sandos happened upon carbon copies of the first two volumes of a three-volume report[2] from 1919 while conducting research at the U.S. National Archives in Maryland.<span id="nhk4of66lko" class="footnote" style="text-align: initial;font-size: 1em" data-node-type="footnote" data-value="
cite report
“>[3]The report was one result of a legislative inquiry led by Texas state Rep. Jose T. Canales, the state’s sole Mexican American legislator at the time, into the violence perpetrated by Texas Rangers along the U.S.-Mexico border in the state between 1910 and 1920. Later that summer, Sandos traveled to the Texas State Archives in Austin to review the original report — including the missing third volume. He discovered it had been sealed from public eyes by the Legislature for 50 years upon publication, an embargo that had expired six years before in 1969. The only person noted as having looked at the report between 1919 and 1975 was well-known historian Walter Prescott Webb in the 1930s while researching his hagiography, The Texas Rangers: A Century of Frontier Defense. It was then Sandos understood why the third volume hadn’t been copied and sent to Washington, D.C.:
The first two volumes documented raids, primarily from Mexico, on American citizens who were living and working in South Texas, across the river that served as a boundary called Rio Bravo by Mexicans and Rio Grande by Americans. The third volume had not been sent to the National Archives, I suspect, because it dealt mainly with Texas Ranger atrocities against Mexicans and Mexican Americans.[4]
“The finding of dead bodies of Mexicans . . . has reached the point where it creates little or no interest.”
— San Antonio Express, September 15, 1915
Since 2013, the Refusing to Forget project has pushed for the public acknowledgment of a largely forgotten era of illegal yet tacitly state-sanctioned killings of Mexican Americans living along the U.S.-Mexico border during the first quarter of the 20th century.[5] In less than a decade, the multidisciplinary group of scholars has worked to raise awareness of La Matanza, or “The Massacre,” through applying and advocating for historical markers,[6] sparking the organization of a groundbreaking and award-winning exhibit at the Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum in Austin in early 2016[7] and a National Endowment for the Humanities-sponsored Conference on the Centennial of the 1919 Canales Investigation of the Texas Rangers in 2019.[8] The group’s latest effort at collective anamnesis,[9] a result of the 2019 conference, is the University of Texas Press collection, Reverberations of Racial Violence: Critical Reflections on the History of the Border.[10] The book presents the work of members of the project alongside contributions from others who became involved over the course of its existence, including the current director of the Bullock Texas State History Museum and descendants of those directly impacted by the violence.
U.S. Rep. Louie Gohmert’s[11] and other Republicans’ recent denials[12] about and official rejection of the creation of a commission to investigate what has gone from being called “the insurrection” to “a riot” at the U.S. Capitol on January 6th provides an interesting juxtaposition to the Texas House’s investigation into the State Ranger Force a century ago.
While not necessarily a felt experience for Texas legislative leaders of the time, I think shame had to be among the motivations for hiding the third volume of the committee report from the federal government and wider public. But the shame and embarrassment that may have resulted from a real reckoning were instead prevented from ever occurring.
“Yeah, so? It was a metaphor for justice.”
— U.S. Rep. Chip Roy, Republican of Hays County, Texas, when asked about the racial connotations of lynching for African Americans after he defended lynching as “justice” during a U.S. House Judiciary Committee hearing on Discrimination and Violence Against Asian Americans days after the murder of six Asian Americans in Atlanta.
Arguments that (structures) “things are different now” and people have changed begin to ring hollow when we see Republican elected leaders attempt to erase the White Christian nationalist violence that happened only months ago without even supporting a search for its causes.[13]
Texas Republicans’ efforts to ban discussions of racism in Texas classrooms are a similar effort. As Reverberations on Racial Violence is subtitled Critical Reflections on the History of the Border, I’m going to emphasize “critical.”[14]
Much of the right’s argument with critical race theory, if we take their arguments on their face, is that it imputes inherent racism to individuals, which I’ve not found to be true. This can be clearly seen in the inclusion of “hard work” and “meritocracy” as concepts exempt from questioning in Texas classrooms in House Bill 3979 (87R). The bill, which Gov. Abbott simultaneously signed and indicated did too little to move the needle on ensuring a Christian nationalist indoctrination of Texas students, outlaws the teaching of the following concepts in Texas public schools:
- one race or sex is inherently superior to another race or sex;
- an individual, by virtue of the individual’s race or sex, is inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously
- an individual should be discriminated against or receive adverse treatment solely or partly because of the individual’s race or sex;
- an individual’s moral character, standing, or worth is necessarily determined by the individual’s race or sex;
- an individual, by virtue of the individual’s race or sex, bears responsibility for actions committed in the past by other members of the same race or sex;
- an individual should feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress on account of the individual’s race or sex;
- meritocracy or traits such as a hard work ethic are racist or sexist or were created by members of a particular race to oppress members of another race;
- the advent of slavery in the territory that is now the United States constituted the true founding of the United States; or
- with respect to their relationship to American values, slavery and racism are anything other than deviations from, betrayals of, or failures to live up to the authentic founding principles of the United States, which include liberty and equality; and
- the 1619 Project.
Skipping the Republicans’ enshrining a slight toward The New York Times in the Education Code, it’s probably noteworthy that ensuring the positive light on “meritocracy” and “hard work” are included across the various bills filed to ban the teaching of accurate U.S. and Texas history courses throughout this year’s regular and special legislative sessions. It may also be notable to some — certainly not Texas Republican legislators — that to teach the history of the concept of “meritocracy,” one would have to inform students:
Michael Young coined the term ‘meritocracy’ in a satirical tale called The Rise of Meritocracy 1870-2033. This satire was intended to inspire reflection upon the folly of meritocratic life.[15]
Granted, learning that would require a politician or staffer to perform a Google search and I hesitate to insist on such difficult background research . . . I shouldn’t be surprised, though. Such poorly considered and written legislation from Republicans isn’t unexpected — these are the people who accidentally decriminalized cannabis across the state in the 86th session.[16] In fact, slightly relatedly, upon reading Senate Bill 3, filed during the just-ended special session to finish the job poorly done by HB 3979 (remember: it included all those positive things the Democrats successfully amended onto it that Gov. Abbott couldn’t abide), included its own ill-thought-out section reading:
a school district, open-enrollment charter school, or teacher may not require, make part of a course, or award a grade or course credit, including extra credit, for a student’s:
(A) work for, affiliation with, or service learning in association with any organization engaged in:
(i) lobbying for legislation at the federal, state, or local level; or
(ii) social policy advocacy or public policy advocacy;
(B) political activism, lobbying, or efforts to persuade members of the legislative or executive branch at the federal, state, or local level to take specific actions by direct communication; or
(C) participation in any internship, practicum, or similar activity involving social policy advocacy or public policy advocacy;[17]
I do wonder about the effects on internships at corporations engaging in lobbying activities, though, should such language ever become law. Indeed, some school districts are already interpreting existing legislation this way:
In College Station, some government teachers won’t be asking students to take notes at city public meetings for a grade. Elementary school students in Leander won’t be asking students to write letters addressing lawmakers anymore. In Keller, some resources offered online to students, including ebooks and news articles have been temporarily removed.
Officials at a school district about 30 miles north of Dallas decided to stop offering course credit to middle school students participating in a renowned nationwide civil engagement program “out of an abundance of caution.”[18]
I digress.
If there are concepts the right is worried about being taught because they might undermine support for their policies, it’s more basic ones like “human” and “not human” or “rational” and “not rational” or “autonomous” and “dependent” and “interdependent” they should fear. “Meritocracy” and “hard work” are based on more fundamental (mis)understandings of what is considered normal and rational behavior — historically, defined by a White male default[19] — and, thus, human. Those categorized as inhuman (a category that, for most of human history, included women, Black and Brown and Indigenous people and often seems to still include unassimilated foreigners and immigrants and, of course, all not-human beings) had no inherent merit nor were they considered to have property rights to whatever merit they may have been incidentally afforded. In fact, it may be just that binary/dualistic/dichotomous thinking we need to work at transcending — in our classrooms and our daily lives. If I were to go further, I might suggest a more ecological and relational pedagogy and worldview.[20]
But their refusal to admit to even the possibility of “structural racism” that might mold and determine, to some degree, the attitudes and actions of individuals is tantamount to denying that any negative discrimination against non-White people possibly currently exists.[21]  Crazy? Mistaken? Stupid? And this goes as much for the White incel feeling dispossessed of his supposed privilege as it does for any other traditionally Othered individual. These are some of the illogical cognitive somersaults involved in modern-day White supremacy and right-wing thought. Unless, that is, you go back to scholar Shane Burley’s definition of fascism as a commitment to violently maintaining “inequalit[ies] through mythologized and essentialized identit[ies].”[22] Those on the right would like to pass off enduring racist structures as just the effects of people who don’t like some other folks.
Those on the right would like to have us believe and accept that it’s just individuals — bad apples.[23] The truth is revealed when they elect — and attempt to maintain in power through violence — rotten apples as world leaders.[24]
In fact, I think most people wonder what value these people find in making themselves look like fools when they claim an event that clearly occurred didn’t happen.
“How many lives were lost cannot be estimated fairly for hundreds of Mexicans were killed who had no part in any of the uprisings, their bodies concealed in the thick underbrush and no report ever made by the perpetrators of these crimes.”
— Virgil Lott, South Texas newspaperman
The answer is simple — if hardly believable because of its simplicity. History and common knowledge are written through repetition, erasure and dissimulation. If you say it enough, it becomes true. If you block out facts and overwrite them a million times with falsehoods, you can indeed fool a certain contingent. In fact, there are those, like fake historian David Barton, actively looking for well-crafted, believable lies (or disingenuous shadings of the truth, a favorite of National Review) they can peddle as justifications for their personal desires and profits.[25]If anything should be surprising, it might be the blatant lies forwarded by individuals so well-placed in the Republican elite.
I know it sounds stupid, but it’s true. History isn’t made by historians. History is made by those who leave a trace.  Reverberations includes reflections on the roles and responsibilities of museums to their communities. But the role of individuals, families and community groups in preserving memories for later retrieval and exposure is also highlighted. If the records don’t exist, if the stories aren’t passed down, if no one takes the time to make these sources accessible, critically important episodes from our histories can be lost forever.
“We must stop thinking as if the past were something foreign and strange compared to what we are now.”— Vela Castañeda[26]
It’s the reason people — politicians, especially — write books: to leave their version of events with their justifications and their perspectives. Of course, most people don’t write books. They’re banking on that.
The vigorous concern shown for the continued memorialization of Confederate statues is another demonstration of this work. Keeping those statues in public places are seemingly innocuous reminders and reiterations of the status quo.[27] They’re subtle. Which is part of the reason for Refusing to Forget’s work to install historical markers at the sites of significant state violence. It is not only an acknowledgment by the state and an educational site for those who happen to read it, it’s that subtle reminder that the way things are isn’t the result of false heroism but rather violence, dispossession and self-blindness. And the point of pointing that out is to make us remember that we choose whether to continue to operate in ways that produce those effects. That’s what reverberations are: the echoes of past acts that still impact our present and limit our futures, if we let them and even more if we don’t know about them.
The point isn’t to blame entire categories of living or dead people. There are many examples in the book of White individuals, like Kirby F. Warnock’s grandfather, who did the right thing because they recognized the basic humanity of someone with darker skin.[28] We’re not all guilty of those crimes. But you can be guilty of willfully ignoring them or trying to erase them. That’s called epistemic injustice — or even violence.[29] It’s been said that denying such murders is akin to recommitting them — indeed, makes the actual commission of them again more likely.For an excellent discussion of memory, forgetting and violence, see Hatcher, Rachel. The Power of Memory and Violence in Central America. Springer International Publishing, 2018. DOI.org (Crossref), https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-89785-1. And I want to highlight this statement: "The battle for memory is not waged against forgetting, but against the different memories different social groups understand as truth."[/footnote]
We have to refuse to forget in order to recognize that the acts we abhor in the past still continue today. The same violent dispossession and erasure along the U.S.-Mexico border helped along by the Texas Rangers and other state officials (to this day) continues to occur not only there but in the Occupied Territories of Palestine, the narcostates and Indigenous lands of Colombia, the "green" energy landgrabs in Morocco and elsewhere.
Who knows how long the 1919 Texas Ranger Investigation would have languished decaying and forgotten in the state archives had a graduate student not stumbled upon the (least interesting) parts of it in Washington, D.C.? Who knows how different history might have been were the truth more often told? In this case, we might, at a minimum, have prevented the ongoing Walker, Texas Ranger travesty. Certain Texas ranches might not encompass quite so many acres. It's that different history -- and different future -- that Texas Republicans and their allies really oppose. From 1919 to 2021, efforts to hide, erase, over-write, whitewash and otherwise falsify historical events that undermine their justifications for their positions remain the most effective way to maintain the status quo and ensure their continued dominance, control and profit. They don't care about the nation or history. They only care about themselves. And such self-satisfied narcissism is exactly what enables the devaluing of others to death. By refusing to acknowledge and recognize others' perspectives and sufferings, we increase the likelihood of not recognizing and, thus, resisting and stopping the repetition of past horrors.
That’s why it’s important we refuse to forget. One way to start is by reading this collection.
- Bruinius, Harry. "Respect: Is it the glue a polarized nation needs?" The Christian Science Monitor, https://www.csmonitor.com, June 14, 2021, page 27. ↵
- I am in the process of creating a machine-readable transcription of the entire report beginning with Volume 3. An excerpt is provided in this issue. Find the rest at 1919 Texas Ranger Investigation. 1st ed., San Antonio Review, 2021. DOI.org (Crossref), https://doi.org/10.21428/9b43cd98.858b0f1d. The facsimile PDFs being used can be found on the Texas State Library and Archives Commission's site at https://www.tsl.texas.gov/sites/default/files/public/tslac/treasures/. Rangers and Outlaws | TSLAC. https://www.tsl.texas.gov/treasures/law/index.html. Accessed 12 Sept. 2021. ↵
- James A. Sandos “Recovering the 1919 Canales Investigation of the Texas Ranger Force: Archival Investigation and Its Consequences, 1975-2010,” in Hernández, Sonia, et al., editors. Reverberations of Racial Violence: Critical Reflections on the History of the Border. First edition, University of Texas Press, 2021. ↵
- Ibid. ↵
- Learn more about the Refusing to Forget project at their website at https://refusingtoforget.org/. ↵
- “Historical Markers.” Refusing to Forget, 15 Feb. 2018, https://refusingtoforget.org/historical-markers/. ↵
- Life and Death on the Border 1910-1920 | Bullock Texas State History Museum. https://www.thestoryoftexas.com/visit/exhibits/life-and-death-on-the-border-1910-1920. Accessed 11 Sept. 2021. ↵
- Reverberations of Racial Violence – A Project Funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities. http://canalesconference.dh.tamu.edu/. Accessed 11 Sept. 2021. ↵
- Martinez, Monica Muñoz. The Injustice Never Leaves You: Anti-Mexican Violence in Texas. Harvard University Press, 2018, page 294 ↵
- Hernández, Sonia, et al., editors. Reverberations of Racial Violence: Critical Reflections on the History of the Border. First edition, University of Texas Press, 2021. ↵
- CPAC Notebook: Rep. Louie Gohmert Blames Jan. 6 Riot on Democrats and a Government Conspiracy. The Dallas Morning News. https://www.dallasnews.com/news/politics/2021/07/11/cpac-rep-louie-gohmert-blames-jan-6-riot-on-democrats-and-a-government-conspiracy/. Accessed 15 Sept. 2021. ↵
- What Insurrection? Growing Number in GOP Downplay Jan. 6. Associated Press.https://apnews.com/article/politics-michael-pence-donald-trump-election-2020-capitol-siege-549829098c84b9b8de3012673a104a4c. Accessed 15 Sept. 2021. ↵
- Which is really little different from their non-response to the many other catastrophes the nation and world have faced in the past two years. ↵
- While not a work of critical race theory specifically or disciplinarily, this is exactly the sort of work current Texas Republicans leaders are opposed to being discussed in Texas public school history and social studies classrooms. That it is a history book thus makes it all the more relevant to current debates. ↵
- Allen, Ansgar. “Michael Young’s The Rise of the Meritocracy : A Philosophical Critique.” British Journal of Educational Studies, vol. 59, no. 4, Dec. 2011, pp. 367–82. DOI.org (Crossref), https://doi.org/10.1080/00071005.2011.582852. ↵
- “How Texas Accidentally Decriminalized Cannabis.” Cannabis Now, 5 Mar. 2020, https://cannabisnow.com/how-texas-accidentally-decriminalized-cannabis/. ↵
- For Senate Bill 3(87-1), visit https://capitol.texas.gov/BillLookup/Text.aspx?LegSess=871&Bill=SB3 Indeed, one school district in North Texas has interpreted existing legislation this way already and canceled a popular elective with a civic engagement component. ↵
- McKinney Ends Youth and Government Class Due to New Texas Social Studies Law | The Texas Tribune. https://www.texastribune.org/2021/08/17/texas-social-studies-mckinney-youth-government/. Accessed 12 Sept. 2021. CNN, Nicole Chavez. “Confusion Reigns in Texas as New Law Aims to Restrict How Race and History Are Taught in Schools.” CNN, https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/01/us/texas-critical-race-theory-social-studies-law/index.html. Accessed 12 Sept. 2021. ↵
- As my longtime friend and SAR prose editor, Ash Lange, said regarding a former collective member's desire for absolute freedom in the content he published under the SAR banner, "Cock is not the default setting." ↵
- Along the lines discussed in Zúñiga, Didier. “Ecologizing Democratic Theory: Agency, Representation, Animacy.” Contemporary Political Theory, Aug. 2021. DOI.org (Crossref), https://doi.org/10.1057/s41296-021-00514-9. ↵
- Chris Cameron. “In a Speech to a New Hampshire G.O.P. Group, Pence Calls Systemic Racism a ‘Left-Wing Myth.’” The New York Times, 3 June 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/03/us/politics/pence-trump-systemic-racism.html. Pope Francis offers another view in Evangelii Gaudium: “Changing structures without generating new convictions and attitudes will only ensure that those same structures will become, sooner or later, corrupt, oppressive and ineffectual.” Evangelii Gaudium : Apostolic Exhortation on the Proclamation of the Gospel in Today’s World (24 November 2013) | Francis. https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/apost_exhortations/documents/papa-francesco_esortazione-ap_20131124_evangelii-gaudium.html. Accessed 8 Oct. 2021. ↵
- Burley, Shane. Fascism Today: What It Is and How to End It. AK Press, 2017. ↵
- Bob Smietana. “Former Trump Official’s God-and-Country Nonprofit Calls CRT a Threat to ‘Colorblind Society.’” Religion News Service, 7 July 2021, https://religionnews.com/2021/07/07/god-and-country-nonprofit-run-by-former-trump-official-sees-critical-race-theory-as-threat-to-colorblind-society-russ-vought-islam-racism/. ↵
- Belew, Kathleen. Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America. First paperback edition, Harvard University Press, 2019. Burley, Shane. Fascism Today: What It Is and How to End It. AK Press, 2017. ↵
- Author Amanda Ripley calls them “conflict entrepreneurs.” See Humphries , Stephen. “Is Any Conflict Unsolvable? This Author Doesn’t Think so.” Christian Science Monitor, May 2021. https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Society/2021/0519/Is-any-conflict-unsolvable-This-author-doesn-t-think-so. Accessed 19 August 2021. Ripley, Amanda.  United States, Simon & Schuster, 2021. ↵
- Hatcher, Rachel. The Power of Memory and Violence in Central America. Springer International Publishing, 2018. DOI.org (Crossref), https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-89785-1. ↵
- Ponce de León, Jennifer. Another Aesthetics Is Possible: Arts of Rebellion in the Fourth World War. Duke University Press, 2021. See especially pages 85-87. ↵
- Blumenthal, Ralph. “New Charges Tarnish Texas Rangers’ Image and Reopen Old Wounds.” The New York Times, 31 Oct. 2004. NYTimes.com, https://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/31/us/new-charges-tarnish-texas-rangers-image-and-reopen-old-wounds.html. Accessed 12 Sept. 2021. ↵
- For more on epistemic injustice, see Fricker, M. (2003), "Epistemic Justice and a Role for Virtue in the Politics of Knowing." Metaphilosophy, 34: 154-173. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9973.00266 ↵


Error Detection and Correction
Detecting errors in an ensemble is complicated. If you’re working from a notated score, then it uses both your sight reading and your listening skills. Not only that, but ensembles typically play multiple parts at once, giving us a lot to listen to.
Fortunately, we’ve already worked through the skills you will need—now you’re just putting them together! Here’s what we’ll be using:
- Perception of context (key, meter and tempo)
- Identifying rhythmic cells and other kinds of chunks to verify they are correct
- Sight reading, listening, and practicing internal hearing to compare the score to what we hear
- Directing our attention to different parts of the texture to assess where problems might be
Once we’ve found an error, then we can also use the principles in the previous section to help our fellow musicians (or ourselves!) correct it. As a reminder, those principles are: make sure you’re referencing the context, use the bass to help hear the chord progression and key, and think about which parts have natural relationships.
Activity: Error detection on your own
Goal: Integrate listening and reading skills by comparing sounding music to a notated score.
Before you start: You’ll need to find an error-detection exercise. You can find such activities on the internet with a search for “aural skills error detection practice”—results may include videos and websites. One example is the “find the flaw” exercises at Dr. Cynthia I. Gonzales’s listen-sing.com.
Instructions: Identify any discrepancies between the notated and performed music. If you have difficulty, it may be helpful to scan through the notated music and hear it in your head (or out loud) before listening through the performed version. Then use your “thinking ahead” sight-reading skills to anticipate each note based on the notation before it sounds.
Activity: Rehearse a sight-reading ensemble
Goal: Integrate error-detection skills into the rehearsal process (the director); practice sight reading in an ensemble (everyone else).
Before you start: You’ll need an ensemble; we recommend a 1- or 2-on-a-part choir; working with singers typically requires the highest level of thinking about context, since singers don’t have the aid of an external mechanism in finding pitches. You’ll also need some music to rehearse; we recommend notated choral or instrumental music with 3–5 independent parts. You may be able to find such music in a sight-singing anthology, but it’d be great if you can check some music out from a score library or find some on IMSLP or CPDL.
Instructions:
- Assign each member of the group to a different piece of music or section of a piece. Each person will act as ensemble director for their assigned excerpt. It will be helpful if everyone has some time to look over their section and hear it in their heads as much as possible. Many people struggle to hear a whole ensemble in their heads, but it is often helpful to work through at least the melody and the bass.
- Each person should take 10 minutes leading the ensemble in sight-reading and rehearsing their assigned excerpt. The director should concentrate on identifying errors in performance, and then offer advice. Since the group is not working towards a performance, you can focus on integrating aural skills into the process rather than teaching the music in the quickest way.
- Once everyone has taken a turn leading the ensemble, engage in self-evaluation or discuss how things went as a group. What skills did you need to bring to bear to identify errors? What were the most productive methods of fixing those errors?


19 Academic Integrity
Academic integrity speaks to the student’s and instructor’s responsibilities for scholarly honesty in all modalities of learning, including online learning. The University’s Office for Community Standards has developed guidelines for “Promoting Academic Integrity in your Course” including:
- Define the appropriate use of resources at the beginning of the course. Restate these expectations as exams and assignments come due.
- Include the recommended syllabus statement regarding scholastic dishonesty.
- Explicitly state expectations for collaboration and group work.
- Change exams routinely and reorder exam questions.
- Proctor exams carefully and closely monitor makeup test arrangements. (The University offers two options for online exam proctoring: Proctorio and ProctorU; see below)
- Discuss the importance of academic integrity with students.
For additional information about academic integrity at the University, see “Academic Integrity Resources for Instructors”
Honor Statements
Consider adding honor statements at the beginning of the quiz or exam or in their syllabus. An example of an honor statement from the University of Minnesota’s College of Pharmacy:
Each student is bound by the College of Pharmacy Honor Code, which states, ‘Academic misconduct’ is any unauthorized act which may give a student an unfair advantage over other students, including but not limited to: falsification, plagiarism, misuse of test materials, receiving unauthorized assistance and giving unauthorized assistance.
Plagiarism Detection
Turnitin is the centrally licensed plagiarism detection tool for the University, and it is integrated with Canvas. It creates a similarity score that is generated by comparing submitted work to other published material that it has in its databases, giving you an idea of how much material a student may have cited or borrowed from other sources.
Turnitin may be integrated with writing assignments at the point that students submit to Canvas. Note there is an option in Turnitin which stores submitted writing in a national database (in order to compare writing with other published work). You can turn this option on or off. If it is off, student writing is not stored by the vendor. If you choose to leave this option on, let students know their data will be stored by Turnitin. Storing student papers in Turnitin can cause issues if they plan to publish their papers. When publishers do a search on their papers, the Turnitin database may reference the student assignment as a publication. Students have objected to this setting at other universities, and we recommend you turn it off if you have any concerns.
Remote Proctoring
Remote proctoring helps ensure exam integrity when students are taking online exams. For online proctoring tool options, see OIT’s Exam security web page.
This same page also includes information on various topics that support online exam security such as:
- Requiring students to agree to an honor statement
- Using question sets to randomly generate quizzes or exams for each student.
- Making students aware of Moodle’s and Canvas’ tracking and logging abilities.
You might also want to consider adding a statement on your quiz, e.g.,
You are required to do your own work on this quiz, and any assistance you receive from another student, or any assistance you give to another student will be considered unauthorized, and subject to penalties to be determined by the Honor Council. By taking this quiz, I certify that I have neither given nor received unauthorized assistance.
For additional information, see the Teaching and Learning: Instructor and Unit Responsibilities policy which speaks to secure handling of examinations (see part “C” of the policy).
Limitations of Proctoring and Plagiarism Tools
There are known limitations and concerns with both remote proctoring and plagiarism detection tools. For example, TurnItIn may sometimes return a false positive plagiarism score on a student’s work who did properly cite their sources. ProctorU has also reportedly missed some issues where cheating-like behavior occurred but was not captured by the tool. Please be aware that technology tools to assist you in ensuring the academic integrity of your course may not be entirely reliable in all cases.
Ethics of Proctoring and Plagiarism Tools
It is recommended that you let students know when your course includes the use of a plagiarism detection tool like TurnItIn and that you yourself are aware of what it does. As mentioned above, if student work is being uploaded to a third-party vendor’s servers, students should be made aware that their work is stored on those servers so it can be compared against others’ work in order to arrive at the plagiarism score. Consider adjusting tool settings to not upload student papers.
Additional Resources
- Morris, S. M., Stommel, J., Smithers, M., Patenaude, M., Moon, J., Holt, T., Loomis, S. (2017, June 16). A Guide for Resisting Edtech: the Case against Turnitin.
- Weimer, M. (2015, November 6). Do Online Students Cheat More on Tests?


Main Body
Chapter 1 – Before I came to Paris
I was born in San Francisco, California. I have in consequence always preferred living in a temperate climate but it is difficult, on the continent of Europe or even in America, to find a temperate climate and live in it. My mother’s father was a pioneer, he came to California in ‘49, he married my grandmother who was very fond of music. She was a pupil of Clara Schumann’s father. My mother was a quiet charming woman named Emilie.
My father came of polish patriotic stock. His grand-uncle raised a regiment for Napoleon and was its colonel. His father left his mother just after their marriage, to fight at the barricades in Paris, but his wife having cut off his supplies, he soon returned and led the life of a conservative well to do land owner.
I myself have had no liking for violence and have always enjoyed the pleasures of needlework and gardening. I am fond of paintings, furniture, tapestry, houses and flowers and even vegetables and fruit-trees. I like a view but I like to sit with my back turned to it.
I led in my childhood and youth the gently bred existence of my class and kind. I had some intellectual adventures at this period but very quiet ones. When I was about nineteen years of age I was a great admirer of Henry James. I felt that The Awkward Age would make a very remarkable play and I wrote to Henry James suggesting that I dramatise it. I had from him a delightful letter on the subject and then, when I felt my inadequacy, rather blushed for myself and did not keep the letter. Perhaps at that time I did not feel that I was justified in preserving it, at any rate it no longer exists.
Up to my twentieth year I was seriously interested in music. I studied and practised assiduously but shortly then it seemed futile, my mother had died and there was no unconquerable sadness, but there was no real interest that led me on. In the story Ada in Geography and Plays Gertrude Stein has given a very good description of me as I was at that time.
From then on for about six years I was well occupied. I led a pleasant life, I had many friends, much amusement many interests, my life was reasonably full and I enjoyed it but I was not very ardent in it. This brings me to the San Francisco fire which had as a consequence that the elder brother of Gertrude Stein and his wife came back from Paris to San Francisco and this led to a complete change in my life.
I was at this time living with my father and brother. My father was a quiet man who took things quietly, although he felt them deeply. The first terrible morning of the San Francisco fire I woke him and told him, the city has been rocked by an earthquake and is now on fire. That will give us a black eye in the East, he replied turning and going to sleep again. I remember that once when my brother and a comrade had gone horse-back riding, one of the horses returned riderless to the hotel, the mother of the other boy began to make a terrible scene. Be calm madam, said my father, perhaps it is my son who has been killed. One of his axioms I always remember, if you must do a thing do it graciously. He also told me that a hostess should never apologise for any failure in her household arrangements, if there is a hostess there is insofar as there is a hostess no failure.
As I was saying we were all living comfortably together and there had been in my mind no active desire or thought of change. The disturbance of the routine of our lives by the fire followed by the coming of Gertrude Stein’s older brother and his wife made the difference.
Mrs. Stein brought with her three little Matisse paintings, the first modern things to cross the Atlantic. I made her acquaintance at this time of general upset and she showed them to me, she also told me many stories of her life in Paris. Gradually I told my father that perhaps I would leave San Francisco. He was not disturbed by this, after all there was at that time a great deal of going and coming and there were many friends of mine going. Within a year I also had gone and I had come to Paris. There I went to see Mrs. Stein who had in the meantime returned to Paris, and there at her house I met Gertrude Stein. I was impressed by the coral brooch she wore and by her voice. I may say that only three times in my life have I met a genius and each time a bell within me rang and I was not mistaken, and I may say in each case it was before there was any general recognition of the quality of genius in them. The three geniuses of whom I wish to speak are Gertrude Stein, Pablo Picasso and Alfred Whitehead. I have met many important people, I have met several great people but I have only known three first class geniuses and in each case on sight within me something rang. In no one of the three cases have I been mistaken. In this way my new full life began.


Chapter 14. Marriage and Family
14.2 Variations in Family Life
The combination of husband, wife, and children that 80% of Canadians believes constitutes a family is not representative of the majority of Canadian families. According to 2011 census data, only 31.9% of all census families consisted of a married couple with children, down from 37.4% in 2001. Sixty-three per cent of children under age 14 live in a household with two married parents. This is a decrease from almost 70% in 1981 (Statistics Canada, 2012a). As noted above, this two-parent family structure is known as a nuclear family, referring to married parents and children as the nucleus, or core, of the group. Recent years have seen a rise in variations of the nuclear family with the parents not being married. The proportion of children aged 14 and under who live with two unmarried cohabiting parents increased from 12.8% in 2001 to 16.3% in 2011 (Statistics Canada, 2012a).
Single Parents
Single-parent households are also on the rise. In 2011, 19.3% of children aged 14 and under lived with a single parent only, up slightly from 18% in 2001.
In some family structures a parent is not present at all. In 2016, 83,145 children (1.4 per cent of all children) lived with a guardian who was neither their biological nor adoptive parent. Of these children, about 4 in 10 lived with grandparents, less than 1 in 3 lived with other relatives, and 1 in 3 lived with non-relatives or foster parents (Statistics Canada, 2017). If families in which both parents and grandparents are present are included, (about 2.9 per cent of all private households), this family structure is referred to as the extended family, and may include aunts, uncles, and cousins living in the same home (Statistics Canada, 2019b). Foster children account for about 0.5 per cent of all children in private households.
In the United States, the practice of grandparents acting as parents, whether alone or in combination with the child’s parent, is becoming more common (about 9 per cent) among American families (De Toledo and Brown, 1995). A grandparent functioning as the primary care provider often results from parental drug abuse, incarceration, or abandonment. Events like these can render the parent incapable of caring for their child. However, in Canada, census evidence indicates that the percentage of children in these “skip-generation” families remained more or less unchanged between 2001 and 2016 at 0.6 per cent (Statistics Canada, 2012a; 2017).
Changes in the traditional family structure raise questions about how such societal shifts affect children. Research, mostly from American sources, has shown that children living in homes with both parents grow up with more financial and educational advantages than children who are raised in single-parent homes (U.S. Census Bureau, 2010). The Canadian data is not so clear. It is true that children growing up in single-parent families experience a lower economic standard of living than families with two parents. In 2008, female lone-parent households earned an average of $42,300 per year, male lone-parent households earned $60,400 per year, and two-parent families earned $100,200 per year (Williams, 2010). However, in the lowest 20% of families with children aged four to five years old, single-parent families made up 48.9% of households while intact or blended households made up 51.1% (based on 1998/99 data). Single-parent families do not make up a larger percentage of low-income families (Human Resources Development Canada, 2003). Moreover, both the income (Williams, 2010) and the educational attainment (Human Resources Development Canada, 2003) of single mothers in Canada has been increasing, which in turn is linked to higher levels of life satisfaction.
In research published from the National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth (a long-term study initiated in 1994 that is following the development of a large cohort of children from birth to the age of 25), the evidence is also ambiguous as to whether having single or dual parents has a significant effect on child development outcomes. For example, indicators of vocabulary ability of children aged four to five years old did not differ significantly between single- and dual-parent families. However, aggressive behaviour (reported by parents) in both girls and boys aged four to five years old was greater in single-parent families (Human Resources Development Canada, 2003). In fact, significant markers of poor developmental attainment were more related to the sex of the child (more pronounced in boys), maternal depression, low maternal education, maternal immigrant status, and low family income (To et al., 2004).
The data shows that the key factors in children’s quality of life are the educational levels and economic condition of the family, not whether children’s parents are married, common-law, or single. For example, young children in low-income families are more likely to have vocabulary problems, and young children in higher-income families have more opportunities to participate in recreational activities (Human Resources Development Canada, 2003). This is a matter related more to public policy decisions concerning the level of financial support and care services (like public child care) provided to families than different family structures per se. In Sweden, where the government provides generous paid parental leave after the birth of a child, free health care, temporary paid parental leave for parents with sick children, high-quality subsidized daycare, and substantial direct child-benefit payments for each child, indicators of child well-being (literacy, levels of child poverty, rates of suicide, etc.) score very high regardless of the difference between single- and dual-parent family structures (Houseknecht and Sastry, 1996).
Cohabitation
Living together before or in lieu of marriage is a growing option for many couples. Cohabitation, when a man and woman live together in a sexual relationship without being married, was practiced by an estimated 21.3% of all census families) in 2011, which shows an increase of 13.9% since 2006 (Statistics Canada, 2012a; Statistics Canada, 2019b). This surge in cohabitation is likely due to the decrease in social stigma pertaining to the practice. In Quebec in particular, researchers have noted that it is common for married couples under the age of 50 to describe themselves in terms used more in cohabiting relationships than marriage: mon conjoint (partner) or mon chum (intimate friend) rather than mon mari (my husband) (Le Bourdais and Juby, 2002). In fact, cohabitation or common-law marriage is much more prevalent in Quebec (39.9% of census families) and the Northern Territories (from 36.6% in Yukon to 50.3% in Nunavut) than in the rest of the country (an average of 15.7%, excluding Quebec and the three territories) (Statistics Canada, 2019b).
Cohabiting couples may choose to live together in an effort to spend more time together or to save money on living costs. Many couples view cohabitation as a “trial run” for marriage. In 2016, approximately 39% of men and women aged 25 to 64 cohabited before their first marriage (up from 25% in 2006). Those who had lived common law with their spouse had done so for an average of 3.6 years prior to marrying, up from 2.5 years in 2006 (Statistics Canada, 2019a).
While couples may use this time to “work out the kinks” of a relationship before they wed, research from 2006 showed that cohabitation has little effect on the success of a marriage. Of the 2 million Canadians who went through a breakup between 2001 and 2006, approximately half were ending a marriage and the other half were dissolving a common-law relationship. This was despite the fact that there were far fewer common-law couples than married couples in 2001 (Statistics Canada, 2012b). Those who do not cohabit before marriage have better rates of remaining married for more than 10 years. Those in common-law unions had lived together for an average of 4.3 years, whereas those in marriages had been together for an average of 14.3 years. Cohabitation may contribute to the increase in the number of men and women who delay marriage. The average age of first marriage has been steadily increasing. In 2008, the average age of first marriage was 29.6 for women and 31 for men, compared to 23 for women and 25 for men through most of the 1960s and 1970s (Milan, 2013). In the data for 2016, (which is not exactly comparable), the average age of entering into their current marriage was 28 for women and 30 for men, but 31 for women entering into their current common-law union and 32 for men (Statistics Canada, 2019a).
Blended Families
Stepparents are an additional family element in two-parent homes. A stepfamily or blended family is defined as “a couple family in which at least one child is the biological or adopted child of only one married spouse or common-law partner and whose birth or adoption preceded the current relationship” (Statistics Canada, 2012). Among children living in two parent households in 2011, 10% lived with a biological or adoptive parent and a stepparent (Statistics Canada, 2012). In 2011, 12.6% of all Canadian families with children under the age of 25 were stepfamilies (Vézina, 2012).
Historically, stepfamilies formed most often because of the death of a spouse, like in the 1970s TV sitcom The Brady Bunch. Contemporary stepfamilies are more commonly the result of the conjugal break down in previous relationships. The introduction of no fault divorce in Canada in the 1980s and the increasing prevalence of common-law relationships, which are more unstable than formal marriages, contributed to the growth in numbers of the stepfamily. But since 1995, the number of parents living in stepfamilies has remained relatively stable (Vézina, 2012).
Stepfamilies come in two forms: simple and complex (Vézina, 2012). In simple stepfamilies, only one spouse has a child or children from a previous union. In complex stepfamilies, both spouses have at least one child from a previous union, or else children are born into a family with at least one child from a previous union. In 2011, 49% of stepfamily parents were members of simple stepfamilies and 51% lived in complex stepfamilies.
The stepfamily form is interesting to sociologists because of its relative newness and the particular social, economic, legal and family issues it poses. As Judith Stacey (1990) noted in her research on divorce extended families (see above), blended families are trail blazers when it comes to figuring out new norms of family life. The division of household assets, the sharing of household expenses, the apportionment of parenting duties (and who parents whom), the public identity and status of the family group, and the complexity of visitation arrangements for exes and both sets of children are issues that blended parents have to negotiate. Children also have to deal with what to call their new stepparents, how to relate to new siblings, and how to manage time and emotional life between at least two different households. These are all elements of daily family life that symbolic interactionists would say require negotiation and interpretation, sometimes under duress when court proceedings and their financial aftermath are involved.
Same-Sex Couples
The number of same-sex couples has grown significantly in the past decade. The Civil Marriage Act (Bill C-38) legalized same sex marriage in Canada on July 20, 2005. Some provinces and territories had already adopted legal same-sex marriage, beginning with Ontario in June 2003. In 2011, Statistics Canada reported 64,575 same-sex couple households in Canada, up by 42% from 2006. Of these, about three in ten were same-sex married couples compared to 16.5% in 2006 (Statistics Canada, 2012a). These increases are a result of more coupling, the change in the marriage laws, growing social acceptance of homosexuality, and a subsequent increase in willingness to report it.
In Canada, same-sex couples make up 0.8 per cent of all couples. Unlike in the United States where the distribution of same-sex couples nationwide is very uneven, ranging from as low as 0.29 per cent in Wyoming to 4.01 per cent in the District of Columbia (U.S. Census Bureau, 2011), the distribution of same-sex couples in Canada by province or territory is similar to that of opposite-sex couples. However, same-sex couples are more highly concentrated in big cities. In 2011, 45.6% of all same-sex sex couples lived in Vancouver, Toronto, and Montreal, compared to 33.4% of opposite-sex couples (Statistics Canada, 2012). In terms of demographics, Canadian same-sex couples tended to be younger than opposite-sex couples. 25% of individuals in same-sex couples were under the age of 35 compared to 17.5% of individuals in opposite-sex couples. There were more male-male couples (54.5%) than female-female couples (Milan, 2013). Additionally, 9.4% of same-sex couples were raising children, 80% of whom were female-female couples (Statistics Canada, 2012a).
While there is some concern from socially conservative groups (especially in the United States) regarding the well-being of children who grow up in same-sex households, research reports that same-sex parents are as effective as opposite-sex parents. In an analysis of 81 parenting studies, sociologists found no quantifiable data to support the notion that opposite-sex parenting is any better than same-sex parenting. Children of lesbian couples, however, were shown to have slightly lower rates of behavioural problems and higher rates of self-esteem (Biblarz and Stacey, 2010).
Staying Single
Gay or straight, a new option for many Canadians is simply to stay single. In 2016, the most common type of household was the one-person households or single (28.2%).(Statistics Canada, 2019b). In 2011, never-married individuals accounted for 73.1% of young adults in the 25 to 29 age bracket, up from 26% in 1981 (Milan, 2013). More young men in this age bracket are single than young women — 78.8% to 67.4% — reflecting the tendency for men to marry at an older age and to marry women younger than themselves (Milan, 2013).
Although both single men and single women report social pressure to get married, women are subject to greater scrutiny. Single women have to deal with the stereotypes of the unhappy “spinster” or “old maid” who cannot find a man to marry them. Single men, on the other hand, are typically portrayed as lifetime bachelors who cannot settle down or simply “have not found the right girl.” Single women report feeling insecure and displaced in their families when their single status is disparaged (Roberts, 2007). However, single women older than 35 report feeling secure and happy with their unmarried status, as many women in this category have found success in their education and careers. In general, women feel more independent and more prepared to live a large portion of their adult lives without a spouse or domestic partner than they did in the 1960s (Roberts, 2007).
The decision to marry or not to marry can be based a variety of factors including religion and cultural expectations. In the United States, Asian individuals are the most likely to marry while Black North Americans are the least likely to marry (Venugopal, 2011). Additionally, individuals who place no value on religion are more likely to be unmarried than those who place a high value on religion. For Black women, however, the importance of religion made no difference in marital status (Bakalar, 2010). In general, being single is not a rejection of marriage; rather, it is a lifestyle that does not necessarily include marriage. By age 40, according to census figures, 20% of women and 14% of men will have never married (U.S. Census Bureau, 2011).
Theoretical Perspectives on Marriage and Family
Sociologists use a variety of theoretical perspectives to explain events that occur within and outside of the family. Structural functionalism, critical sociology, and symbolic interactionism have been prominent paradigms for gaining insight into the family.
Functionalism
When considering the role of family in society, functionalists uphold the notion that families continue to be an important social institution that plays a key role in stabilizing society. They also note that family members take on roles within a marriage or family, which are determined by the functions required to keep families operational and viable. The family and its members are functional components in a social system whose performance facilitates the continuity, prosperity and development of society.
Anthropologist George Murdock defined the family as “a social group characterized by common residence, economic cooperation, and reproduction,” which “includes adults of both sexes, at least two of whom maintain a socially approved sexual relationship, and one or more children” (Murdock, 1949). In a survey of 250 societies, Murdock determined that despite the wide variation and complexity of family forms, a nuclear family unit — two parents and their dependent children — was at the core of each kinship system. He further deduced that there were four universal functions of this nuclear family core: sexual, reproductive, educational, and economic. In each society, although the structure of the family varies, the family performs these four functions.
- According to Murdock (1949), the nuclear family (which for him includes the state of marriage) regulates sexual relations between individuals. He does not deny the existence or impact of premarital or extramarital sex, but states that the family offers a socially legitimate sexual outlet for adults (Lee, 1985).  The function of the family is to regulate sexual behaviour according to the stated norms around sexual gratification.
- This outlet for legitimate sexual relations gives way to reproduction, which is a necessary part of ensuring the survival of society. Each society needs to replace the older people with new generations of young people. Again, the institution of the nuclear family provides a socially legitimate and regulated form in which children are produced and given recognized status in society. Societies which practice celibacy, like the religious community of the Shakers — an offshoot of the Quakers who believed in the second appearance of Jesus Christ — were dysfunctional in this regard as they were unable to maintain sufficient population to remain viable. By the 1920s there were only 12 Shaker communities left in the United States.
- Once children are produced, the nuclear family plays a vital role in training them for adult life. As the primary agent of socialization, the family teaches young children the ways of thinking and behaving that follow social and cultural norms, values, beliefs, and attitudes. Parents teach their children manners and civility. A well-mannered child (presumably) reflects a well-mannered parent. In most societies, the family unit is responsible for establishing the emotional security and sense of personal self-worth of its members, which begins in childhood. When families fail to do this they are seen as dysfunctional.
- The fourth function of the nuclear family Murdock identified is economic. The family is understood as a primary economic unit where the economic well-being of family members is provided. In premodern family forms, the extended family itself is the basis of the economy. As a unit it produces the basic needs of its members including food, shelter, health care, and comfort in general. In modern society, some of these economic functions, like production and health care, are taken over by other social institutions, but the family remains the principle unit of consumption. Family members coordinate their incomes to provide economically for the rest of the family. In Canada, this is institutionalized in the taxation system for example. Revenue Canada taxes the family as a single unit, rather than recognizing that some blended families and “confluent couples” seek to maintain the financial independence of wage earners. When the family fails to perform its economic function, the effect ripples out into the rest of the economy.
One of the socialization functions of the family is to teach children gender roles. Gender roles are also an important part of the economic functioning of a family. The functionalist Talcott Parsons (1943) emphasized that in each family, there is a division of labour that consists of instrumental and expressive roles. Men tend to assume the instrumental or breadwinning roles in the family, which typically involve work outside of the family that provides financial support and establishes family status. Women tend to assume the expressive or nurturing roles, which typically involve work inside the family, including providing emotional support and physical care for children (Crano and Aronoff, 1978). According to functionalists, the differentiation of the roles on the basis of sex ensures that families are well-balanced and coordinated. Each family member is seen as performing a specific role and function to maintain the functioning of the family as a whole. Each family member has a socially recognized role that reduces internal competition for status within the family, and ambiguity about the status of the family in the external community.
When family members move outside of these roles, the family is thrown out of balance and must recalibrate in order to function properly. For example, if the father assumes an expressive role, such as providing daytime care for the children, the mother must take on an instrumental role such as gaining paid employment outside of the home. Stay-at-home dads are becoming more common today but their non-traditional role still produces ambiguity and uncertainty in their claim to status in the community. Women often find themselves pulled in different directions between expectations from work and expectations that they continue their homemaker roles within the family.
Parsons (1943) argued that in modern North American society, the differentiation between these roles created tension or strain on individuals as they tried to adapt to the conflicting norms or requirements of the North American occupational and kinship systems. There was an “asymmetrical relation of the marriage pair to the occupational structure” (Parsons, 1943). In the North American kinship system, based on bilateral descent, spouses are regarded as equal and their roles are of equal value to the survival of the family. But this role equality in the family system was undermined by the inequality of role status in the occupational system between paid employment outside the home and unpaid domestic work inside the home.The asymmetrical relation of the marriage pair to the occupational structure created a tension within the family that needed to be resolved.
One result of this division, argued Parsons, was strain in relation to the patterning of sex roles. While men became narrow instrumental specialists, incapable of a full expressive life, women “neurotically” over-emphasized expressive tasks. To compensate for the untenable inequality between the occupational roles, women created a functional equivalent to demonstrate their skills and fundamental equality to their husbands, leading to the “glamour girl” pattern, compulsive domesticity, or exaggerated interest in fashion or taste.
There is also, however, a good deal of direct evidence of tension in the feminine role. In the “glamour girl” pattern, use of specifically feminine devices as an instrument of compulsive search for power and exclusive attention are conspicuous. Many women succumb to their dependency cravings through such channels as neurotic illness or compulsive domesticity and thereby abdicate both their responsibilities and their opportunities for genuine independence. Many of the attempts to excel in approved channels of achievement are marred by garishness of taste, by instability in response to fad and fashion, by a seriousness in community or club activities which is out of proportion to the intrinsic importance of the task. In all these and other fields there are conspicuous signs of insecurity and ambivalence. Hence it may be concluded that the feminine role is a conspicuous focus of the strains inherent in our social structure, and not the least of the sources of these strains is to be found in the functional difficulties in the integration of our kinship system with the rest of the social structure (Parsons, 1949)
Critical Sociology
Critical sociologists adopt a historical perspective to examine the economic structures and power relationships that influence family forms and processes (Comacchio, 2000). Sociologists working in the Marxist tradition emphasize the ways in which family relationships are entwined with the changing structures of work. Firstly, until the 20th century families were the principle site of economic production and consumption. As economic activity separated from the home, families became dependent on the fluctuations of wage labour while still remaining a principle unit of consumption and economic collaboration. Secondly, families continued to play a key role in the reproduction of labour power — feeding, clothing, replenishing, raising, and socializing. The ability of family members to do work depends on the family, (see the discussion of Friedrich Engels’ The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (1884) in Chapter 4. Society and Modern Life). Dorothy Smith therefore described home and family as “integral parts of, and moments in, a mode of production” (Smith, 1985). For sociologists like Smith, the dynamics of home and family can not be analyzed independently of the capitalist economic and political structures that organize them and give them their particular forms.
For example, work does not structure family in the same way for all families, nor for all family members (Comacchio, 2000). Class is a key social division in determining the nature of family life. In the separation of family and work over the 20th century, middle class family strategies increasingly focused on maintaining life style, respectability, standards of living, cultural capital and children’s prospects rather than struggling for economic subsistence. By the mid-20th century, the middle class family became a prime candidate for various “technologies of normalcy” and the “cult of domesticity” that extolled the virtues of the single-breadwinner family. On the other hand, working class strategies of domestic management remained tied to subsistence and survival, “making do” and stretching resources during periods of joblessness and precarious employment. Their survival and reproduction depended on a family economy where all family members often had to work. The difficulties experienced by racialized families, who faced residential segregation and restrictions on where they could seek employment, impacted family structures even further. Black Caribbean families often adopted extended and matriarchal forms as they struggled to hold family units together (Christensen et al., 1993). Even as the concept of “the family” in the popular imagination and public policy came increasingly to resemble Parsons’ breadwinner-homemaker model, in working class culture “the continued importance of mutual assistance among kin, children’s contributions of wages or services, and the domestic production entailed in sewing, canning, vegetable and fruit growing and small animal husbandry, is notable even past the mid-point of the 20th century” (Comacchio, 2000).
Another development in the transition from the feudal family unit, as the basis of production and consumption, to the capitalist family, where economic life moves outside of the home, was the redefinition of public and private spheres. North American families came to be defined as private entities, the consequence of which (historically) has been to see family matters as issues concerning only those within the family. Serious issues including domestic violence and child abuse, inequality between the sexes, the right to dispose of family property equally, and so on, have been historically treated as being outside of state, legal, or police jurisdiction. The feminist slogan of the 1960s and 1970s — “the personal is the political” — indicates how feminists began to draw attention to the broad social or public implications of matters long considered private or inconsequential.
As women’s roles had long been relegated to the private sphere, issues of power that affected their lives most directly were largely invisible. Speaking about the lives of white middle-class women in mid-century North America, Betty Friedan (1963) described this problem as “the problem with no name”:
The problem lay buried, unspoken, for many years in the minds of American women. It was a strange stirring, a sense of dissatisfaction, a yearning that women suffered in the middle of the 20th century in the United States. Each suburban wife struggled with it alone. As she made the beds, shopped for groceries, matched slipcover material, ate peanut butter sandwiches with her children, chauffeured Cub Scouts and Brownies, lay beside her husband at night — she was afraid to ask even of herself the silent question — “Is this all?” (Friedan, 1963).
The problems were equally invisible but less vague for racialized women. Observing the current prevalence of lone parent families among Blacks in Canada for example, Livingstone and Weinfeld (2015) note that “many factors that militate against the formation and stability of unions may be at work: labour market inequalities; the pressures of racism; poverty and economic insecurity; immigrant stresses that lead to marital dissolution; the unequal sex ratio and inter-racial marriage patterns.”
The focus of critical sociology therefore is to highlight the political-economic context of the inequalities of power in family life. Families replicate the power relations of patriarchy and capitalism. The family is often not a haven but rather an arena where the effects of societal power struggles are felt. This exercise of power entails the differentiation and performance of family status roles. Why are women expected to perform the “expressive” roles in the family while the men perform “instrumental” roles, and what are the implications of this division of labour? Critical sociologists therefore study conflicts as simple as the enforcement of rules from parent to child, or more serious issues such as domestic violence (spousal and child), sexual assault, marital rape, and incest, as products of power structures in broader society. Blood and Wolfe’s classic (1960) study of marital power found that the person with the most access to value resources held the most power. As money is one of the most valuable resources, men who worked in paid labour outside of the home held more power than women who worked inside the home. Disputes over the division of household labour tend also to be a common source of marital discord. Household labour offers no wages and, therefore, no power. Studies indicate that when men do more housework, women experience more satisfaction in their marriages, reducing the incidence of conflict (Coltrane, 2000).
The political and economic context is also key to understanding changes in the family form over the 20th and 21st centuries. The debate between functionalist and critical sociologists on the rise of non-nuclear family forms is a case in point. Since the 1950s, the functionalist approach to the family has emphasized the importance of the nuclear family — a married man and woman in a socially approved sexual relationship with at least one child — as the basic unit of an orderly and functional society. Although only 39% of families conformed to this model in 2006, in functionalist approaches, it often operates as a model of the normal family, with the implication that non-normal family forms lead to a variety of society-wide dysfunctions.
On the other hand, critical perspectives emphasize that the diversity of family forms does not indicate the “decline of the family” (i.e., of the ideal of the nuclear family) so much as the diverse response of the family form to the tensions of gender inequality and historical changes in the economy and society. The nuclear family should be thought of less as a normative model for how families should be, and more as an historical anomaly that reflected the specific social and economic conditions of the two decades following World War II. Major determinants of the diversification of the family form include the shift from the Fordist high-wage economy to Post-Fordist precarious economy in which survival on a single breadwinner’s wage becomes increasingly difficult for working class and middle class families alike. Demographic changes brought about by urbanization and the birth control pill have affected the size of families as well as the delays in getting married or cohabiting. The feminist movement, changes in the socioeconomic status of women and the laws governing property and divorce have realigned power structures and gender roles within the family and economy. Changing relations between the private sphere, represented by “the family,” and the public interest represented by the state, also result in public policies like healthcare, fertility options, senior care, childcare, parental leave, employment insurance, etc. that affect family strategies, decisions and domestic arrangements.
Symbolic Interactionism
Interactionists view the world in terms of symbols and the meanings assigned to them (LaRossa and Reitzes, 1993). The family itself is a symbol. To some, it is a father, mother, and children; to others, it is any union that involves respect and compassion. Interactionists stress that family is not an objective, concrete reality. Like other social phenomena, it is a social construct that is subject to the ebb and flow of social norms and ever-changing meanings.
Consider the meaning of other elements of family: “parent” was a symbol of a biological and emotional connection to a child. With more parent-child relationships developing through adoption, remarriage, or change in guardianship, the word “parent” today is less likely to be associated with a biological connection than with whoever is socially recognized as having the responsibility for a child’s upbringing. Similarly, the terms “mother” and “father” are no longer rigidly associated with the meanings of caregiver and breadwinner. These meanings are more free-flowing through changing family roles.
Interactionists also recognize how the family status roles of each member are socially constructed, which plays an important part in how people perceive and interpret social behaviour. Interactionists view the family as a group of role players or “actors” that come together to act out their parts in an effort to construct a family. These roles are up for interpretation. In the late 19th and early 20th century, a “good father,” for example, was one who worked hard to provide financial security for his children. Today, a “good father” is one who takes the time outside of work to promote his children’s emotional well-being, social skills, and intellectual growth — in some ways, a much more daunting task.
Symbolic interactionism therefore draws our attention to how the norms that define what a “normal” family is, and how it should operate, come into existence. The rules and expectations that coordinate the behaviour of family members are products of social processes and joint agreement, even if the agreements are tacit or implicit. In this perspective, norms and social conventions are not regarded as permanently fixed by functional requirements or unequal power relationships. Rather, new norms and social conventions continually emerge from ongoing social interactions to make family structures intelligible in new situations, and to enable them to operate and sustain themselves.
Media Attributions
- Figure 14.14 File:The Loud Family 1973.JPG from the PBS-Public Broadcasting System, via Wikimedia Commons, is in the public domain.
- Figure 14.15 Mother and child by Ross Griff, via Flickr, is used under a CC BY 2.0 licence.
- Figure 14.16 Figure 1 Population pyramids of legal marital status by single year of age and sex, Canada, 1981 and 2011, in Marital status: Overview, 2011 [PDF] from Statistics Canada Catalogue no. 91-209-X (p.2), is used under the Statistics Canada Open Licence. [Population pyramids data source from Statistics Canada, censuses of population, 1981 and 2011.]
- Figure 14.17 my family tree on mom side 60s or 70s by Adam, via Flickr, is used under a CC BY ND 2.0 licence.
- Figure 14.18 Bar Friends by Glenn Harper, via Flickr, is used under a CC BY 2.0 licence.
- Figure 14.19 At Home Fashions for the Hostess or Homemaker by Adam, via Flickr, is used under a CC BY-SA 2.0 licence.


L. Hartsough
I HEAR Thy welcome voice,
That calls me, Lord, to Thee,
For cleansing in Thy precious blood
That flowed on Calvary.
I am coming, Lord,
Coming now to Thee;
Wash me, cleanse me in the blood
That flowed on Calvary.
2
Though coming weak and vile,
Thou dost my strength assure;
Thou dost my vileness fully cleanse,
Till spotless all, and pure.
3
’Tis Jesus calls me on
To perfect faith and love,
To perfect hope, and peace, and trust,
For earth and heaven above.
4
’Tis Jesus who confirms
The blessed work within,
By adding grace to welcomed grace,
Where reigned the power of sin.
5
And He the witness gives
To loyal hearts and free,
That every promise is fulfilled,
If faith but brings the plea.
6
All hail, atoning blood!
All hail, redeeming grace!
All hail, the gift of Christ our Lord,
Our strength and righteousness.