Family Research and Theory: Emergent Topics in the 1970s and the Prospects for the 1980s

Abstract

The 1960 Decade Review did not include, or gave little attention to, sex roles, teenage parenthood, family stress and coping, and violence in the family. Interest in these topics grew during the seventies, and each will form an area of major investigation in the eighties. The dedication of individual scholars has helped to sustain the momentum of research in these areas, but there has also been generous support from federal funding agencies. For example, before 1970, very little research had been carried out concerning social and psychological factors in the lives of teenage parents and their children. This situation changed noticeably during the 1970s because of large-scale funding from the federal government. There was a dramatic rise in teenage childbearing in that same decade, pointing up the necessity for continued research and, of course, for continued funding. In the case of violence and the family, not one article on this subject appeared in the Journal of Marriage and the Family in its first 30 years of publication. The Special Issue, in 1971, may have been the first devoted to family violence by a scholarly journal. Interest in violence and knowledge about specific types of violence, such as child abuse, wife abuse, and ven husband abuse, grew markedly during the seventies, but much of our understanding is still rudimentary. Continued interest and funding will make it possible to develop the conceptual, methodological, and theoretical refinements needed to move the area beyond mere description. Sex-role research has moved from lowlevel empirical generalizations to a conceptual approach, in which sex roles are seen as variables, or as actual preferences that individuals hold regarding behavioral assignm nts. The preferences separate the sexes and generate decision-making processes, sometimes involving conflict and negotiation. This conceptual approach to sex roles as a gender-based, decision-making model serves as a theoretical umbrella to integrate research; it also provides a vehicle to relate macroand micro-level studies and emphasizes the reality of the dynamic relationship between the sexes. Future sex-role research should be designed to observe decisionmaking behavior by couples and to relate such behavior to the partners' sex-role preferences. Also, it is necessary to connect microand macro-level literature on sex roles. Such connections should reveal dynamic gender arrangements, which, in turn, will reflect differences between the sexes and how each sex balances tangible and intangible resources. Further specific research in the 1980s should include investigation of the effects of children on parents' traditional or egalitarian relationships. We have just begun to recognize that children are important determiners of their own behavior as well as the behavior of their *This paper is a condensed version of a presentation given at the plenary session, Prescriptive Analysis for the Family Field in the 1980s, at the annual meeting of the National Council on Family Relations, Portland, Oregon (October, 1980). A full-length version of the presentation can be obtained by writing the author.