Changing Families, Changing Responsibilities: Family Obligations Following Divorce and Remarriage PDF
Preview Changing Families, Changing Responsibilities: Family Obligations Following Divorce and Remarriage
CHANGING FAMILIES, CHANGING RESPONSIBILITIES Family Obligations Following Divorce and Remarriage CHANGING FAMILIES, CHANGING RESPONSIBILITIES Family Obligations Following Divorce and Remarriage Lawrence H.Ganong Marilyn Coleman University of Missouri—Columbia LAWRENCE ERLBAUM ASSOCIATES, PUBLISHERS Mahwah, New Jersey London This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2009. To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk. Copyright © 1999 by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by photostat, microfilm, retrieval system, or any other means, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc., Publishers 10 Industrial Avenue Mahwah, New Jersey 07430 Cover design by Kathryn Houghtaling Lacey Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Ganong, Lawrence H. Changing families, changing responsibilities: family obligations following divorce and remarriage/Lawrence H.Ganong and Marilyn Coleman. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8058-2691-2 (alk. paper) 1. Divorce—United States. 2. Remarriage—United States. 3. Divorced parents—United States. 4. Children of divorced parents—United States. 5. Intergenerational relations—United States. I. Coleman, Marilyn. II. Title. HQ834.G375 1999 306.89—dc21 99–17930 CIP ISBN 1-4106-0255-9 Master e-book ISBN Contents Preface vii Chapter 1 Who is Responsible for Dependent Family Members? 1 Chapter 2 Parental Financial Support of Children Following Divorce 25 Chapter 3 Mom’s House? Dad’s House? Parents’ Responsibility to Assume Physical Custody of Children 45 Chapter 4 Older Family Members’ Financial Obligations to Younger Generations 62 Chapter 5 Adults’ Obligations to Parents, In-laws, and Stepparents: A Review of the Literature 87 Chapter 6 (Step) Filial Obligations 101 Chapter 7 Responsibilities to Elders After the Divorce of the Middle Generation 121 Chapter 8 Building Models of Intergenerational Obligations 138 Appendix A Vignettes Used in the Family Obligations Studies 164 Appendix B Methods 182 References 184 Author Index 197 Subject Index 202 v Preface The research presented in this book has been a labor of love (and responsibility) for several years. When we first embarked on a set of studies to assess intergenerational family obligations, we had no idea that the subject of family responsibilities following marital transitions would be so interesting, nor did we anticipate finding the issues surrounding intergenerational responsibilities so compelling. The more we discussed these ideas, the more we saw examples in newspapers and on television of how ambiguous and complex the issues of obligations to kin are, especially after divorce and remarriage. It is likely that everyone will encounter a dilemma surrounding the issue of intergenerational responsibilities sometime in their lives. We were surprised at the number of people we encountered whose families have grappled with some of the very issues of intergenerational assistance that we examined in our studies. During the last few years, friends and acquaintances to whom we explained our program of research eagerly offered to share with us, from their own lives and the lives of their family members, example after example of the various ways they were touched by questions regarding family obligations. We knew then, as we know now, that this is an exceedingly important topic to an aging society that is raising children in a multitude of family forms. Moreover, we began to understand how issues related to intergenerational obligations are relevant to many other important topics, such as kinship, moral values and beliefs, family relationships, economics, caregiving, domestic policy, and personal identities. These studies launched us on a pathway of examining new bodies of literature and new topics. We are learning, and have learned, new research methods so that we can address questions that cover the gamut from individual responsibilities to interpersonal relationships to cultural values. This book represents the culmination of one stage in what we envision as an ongoing exploration of family obligations. Several of the 13 studies discussed in this book have been reported in professional journals. Consequently, we tried not to merely repeat what we have written before about intergenerational obligations. We reexamined all of our data and reinterpreted what the results of earlier studies meant in light of the analyses of data from newer, unpublished studies. Moreover, we attempted to examine the responses of study participants as holistically as possible, comparing and contrasting results of similar investigations in pursuit of common underlying principles. One of our goals in writing this book was to make the findings as accessible as possible to people who are not social scientists; therefore, we avoid detailed explanations of statistical tests and statistical analyses in the text. Interested readers may refer to previously published journal articles or to Appendix vii viii Preface B, where more detailed explanations of our quantitative and qualitative analytic methods are presented. In the text, when we mention differences between study conditions or relations between variables, we are always referring to relations that are statistically significant. Qualitative data lack the advantage of statistical tests to help researchers draw inferences, so we followed some rules of our own; we did not report qualitative responses that represented less than 25% of the participants unless we noted otherwise. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS We have many people to thank. Many colleagues and graduate students have helped us in both tangible and intangible ways over the past few years. Among the colleagues are Mark Fine, Larry Kurdek, Steve Duck, Pat Noller, and Theresa Cooney. Among our former graduate students to whom we owe a debt are Deborah Mistina, Susan Cable, Monique Perricone-Wihlen, Cara Saling, Lee Ann Taylor, Tim Killian, Annette Kusgen McDaniel, Shannon Weaver, Ken Reed, Elizabeth Arnold, Art Schneider, and Annelle Weymuth. We owe Jane Johnson a debt for her assistance with the periodically tricky statistical and data management problems we encountered. Although we have never met them, we have been inspired by the creative scholarship and writing of Janet Finch and by the research of Peter and Alice Rossi. We want to express our appreciation to Judi Amsel, who allowed us some flexibility in meeting our responsibilities to her and to Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Of course, we also want to thank the more than 6,000 participants in our studies, who took time to share their beliefs with us. The University of Missouri (UM) financially supported some of the work reported in this book through a grant from the UM Research Board. Over the course of this program of research, the UM Cooperative Extension Service has underwritten much of the cost of several of the studies. Dick Dowdy and other administrators at our university have been nothing but supportive of us in this work, and we deeply appreciate their financial assistance and their cooperation. Finally, we want to acknowledge the importance of our families in these efforts. We are grateful both to our families of origin and to our extended kin as well as to the family that we have shared for two decades. The most profound lessons we have learned about family responsibilities have come from them. —Lawrence H.Ganong —Marilyn Coleman 1 Who Is Responsible for Dependent Family Members? There is enough guilt in every family to trip the responsibility wire, to push the button that says families should take care of their own. —Goodman (1996) We’re going to have to accept more personal responsibility in our own families for reading to our children and caring for our parents, and that’s going to be inconvenient and difficult. —Alexander (1996) No modern (and perhaps preliterate) society exists in which members do not mutually understand the demands associated with moral obligation. —Weiner (1995, p. 24) It is time to demand that people take responsibility for the children they bring into the world. —Clinton (1993) Issues surrounding family responsibilities are everywhere. For instance • In Oregon, parents are fined up to $1,000 and required to attend parenting classes under the state’s parental responsibility law if their children break the law (Jacobs, 1995). • In Washington, DC, a group of activists and politicians spearheaded a fatherhood initiative designed to increase father involvement in childrearing (National Fatherhood Initiative, 1998). • The Republican Party’s Contract with America contained a platform called the Personal Responsibility Act. This act, part of the Republicans’ 1
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