Western Nuclear Family Research Articles

Three generations on a holiday: Exploring the influence of Neo-Confucian values on Korean Multigenerational Family vacation decision making

Abstract Despite being recognised as a lucrative segment by the industry, multigenerational family vacation remains an under-researched area. This study explores Korean multigenerational family vacation decision making (FVDM). Using a neo-Confucian epistemology, this study contributes to the existing family tourism literature, which has mainly researched Western nuclear family holidays, by investigating how Korean multigenerational families resolve conflicts during the FVDM process. Data were collected from 14 Korean multigenerational families using focus groups, interviews and visual methods. The study reveals the influence of neo-Confucianism on FVDM communication and the conflict resolution strategies. The vertical communication across generations was guided by filial piety while the horizontal communication within the second generation demonstrates seniority- and male- oriented values. Given the communication patterns, each generation adopted conflict resolution strategies to maintain family harmony, which is a core value of neo-Confucianism. Recommendations are provided to tourism practitioners to develop tourism products and marketing strategies.

The Fall of the Family-State and Rise of the Enterprise Society: Family as Ideology and Site of Conservative Power in Modern Japan

Recent literature on the history of family in Japan reveals that what is commonly understood as the “traditional” Japanese family—called the ie family—is largely a political construct that was institutionalized in Japan’s Meiji period (1868–1912). While the ie model was effectively removed from the US-imposed postwar constitution and replaced with the western nuclear family as the new ideal, this historical analysis reveals that the neo-Confucian principles and social structures of the ie model were reintegrated into Japan’s company work culture, to the degree that the ie continued to shape Japan’s collectivist social structures and identities well beyond the end of the war. This analysis highlights key ideologies employed by the ruling elite in modern Japan as a means of social control and nation building. It demonstrates a continuation of the historically close relationship between family and the state in postwar Japan that challenges deterministic notions of westernization applied to the Japanese context; it highlights articulations of family that complicate culturally bound conceptions that see it as inherently separate from the state, and clarifies the modern history of collectivist society in Japan.

Explorer on the Trans-Canada: Cold War Tourism and the Early Years of the Canadian Highway

This article asks what happens when an image of the Canadian nation marketed to American tourists also simultaneously helps produce a vision of highway nationalism in Canada. Starting with a primary discursive analysis of Trans-Canada Highway tourist brochures, I then address three Canadian travelogues from the period—Edward McCourt’s The Road across Canada (1965), Walter Stewart’s series for Star Weekly magazine (1965), and John M. Mitchell’s Coast to Coast across Canada (1967). While the travelogues implicitly replicate the same visions of the colonial adventurer family attached to the brochures—which I contextualize according to Western Cold War middle-class presentations of freedom and consumption—simultaneously McCourt’s and Stewart’s texts foreground discomfort with the tourist industry’s Americanization of nation-space along the highway. By celebrating Western nuclear family values through the image of colonial exploration, while also questioning the integrity of an Americanizing tourist industry, McCourt’s and Stewart’s travelogues—published just a few years after the Trans-Canada Highway officially opened in 1962—realize the way early representations of the highway were marked by a co-opted nationalism where the means of nationalist differentiation simultaneously encouraged a feedback loop of American imperialism.

Living Arrangements and Conditions of Older Persons in Namibia

In Africa, ageing is a phenomenon that is just beginning to reveal its shape. Most governments, including the Namibian government, recognize the fact that the number of older persons is on the increase, however, discussing it is still a distant phenomenon and family matter. This paper examines the living arrangements of older adults in Namibia, identifying the existing structure of living arrangements and the nature of family relationships of older people, as well as provides some basic descriptive information on the housing conditions in which older persons live and how they are associated with their socioeconomic and demographic factors. The analysis is based on 1991, 2001 and 2011 Namibia Population and Housing Censuses. The study concluded that living arrangements is constantly changing from extended family pattern to western nuclear family, mainly due to urbanization and decreased fertility rate. Housing conditions had notably improved in rural areas while in urban areas the conditions are affected by the mushrooming of informal settlements. There is need to encourage or conduct focused research on ageing to help coin policies based on evidence and make communities sensitive towards ageing. The study further recommends Government to encourage old people to form organizations that would in turn focus on sensitizing and help championing issues of ageing and aged persons.

Close encounters: researching intimate lives in Europe

This research note aims to extend the discussion on the methodological implications of doing research on intimacy and personal life. Drawing on a comparative study concerned with the intimate lives of those who live outside the conventional, modern western nuclear family, it reflects on the processes of gaining access to often hard-to-reach populations which informed and influenced the empirical work that we carried out in four European countries.

European Somali Children Dumped? On families, parents, and children in a transnational context

Transnational familyhood is a challenge to western societies, whose implementation of legislation generally works with the assumption that families are nuclear and situated within a nation state. In the present case study, Somali transnational family organisation is juxtaposed with the western nuclear family model to illustrate the basic differences between the models. The mobility of children in the Somali family system is discussed in relation to child protection in European societies. Cultural variation in family organisation needs to be further discussed in societies that claim to be multicultural. The nature of child protection interventions by social workers will depend on whether society declares universalist or cultural-relativist values as more important.

Brand Choice Decision of Indian consumers

An understanding of consumer behavior based on the traditional Western nuclear family (husband, wife and unmarried children) model is not enough to handle marketing on a global scale or to interpret changes at home. The number of other factors influence purchase and who they are can vary as can the type of decision making, which may be allocable, stressing individual responsibility. This article re-examines our basic assumptions and then considers marketing under alternative family scenarios extended families, further familial shrinkage, and more participatory decision-making. Past research has presented conflicting evidence regarding the effect of time between purchases on consumer brand choice. This study investigates the time effect on brand purchase probabilities after homogenizing the data with respect to store switching, size of purchase, and frequency of the product purchase. Two exponential models have been proposed and their over-all effectiveness compared with a naive model. The contribution of the study is in building a realistic model of consumer purchase choice by incorporating the elements of the marketing environment. The project was given to determine the process of brand choice decision in Indian urban families. Research on family decision making has been largely confined to spouses, who have been considered as the relevant decision making unit in a family. However, the role of third party influences, such its children, on decision making strategies and negotiations is essential to taking a broader view of the relevant unit of analysis. Traditionally, women were seen to be the purchasing agents for the family. Nonetheless, increasing participation of women in the workforce has prompted a shift in this role as children are increasingly the “buyers” for the entire family. Corporate branding is a potentially strong tool for re-aligning a corporate strategy and ensures that the corporationbig or small is leveraging adequately on the untapped internal and external resources. From the research, I come across several interesting results about the brand choice decision in Indian urban families which include different sectors like FMCG, FMCD automobiles etc, about people’s perception and different strategies followed by different organization to promote their products and services. From the analysis, it is found that most of the families are in favor of the branded products and strongly believe in Customer Relationship management.

Surveying “Non-Heterosexual Orientation”: The Problems of Unstratified Sampling, Non-Inclusive Categorizations, and Implied Causality: Commentary on Wells, McGee, and Beautrais (2011)

In their article on sexuality in Aotearoa/New Zealand, Wells, McGee, and Beautrais (2011) presented estimates of the prevalence of various forms of ‘‘non-heterosexual orientation’’ and examined a number of correlates in adulthood and from recall of childhood. We would like to raise three concerns regarding the methodology of the study and the aims and language of the article. The article received considerable local media attention (e.g., Hipkiss, 2010; Rudd, 2010; Todd, 2010), including expressions of concern from members of the non-heterosexual communities that were ostensibly represented in the study (e.g., Hipkiss, 2010; Todd, 2010). Our concerns reflect and expand upon some of the concerns of those communities. Our first concern is the approach to sampling and the posthoc nature of the analysis to address aims that were not the primary aim of the main study. Embedded in the study’s methodology is an assumption that selecting one person per household facilitates a representative sample in a national survey. In reality, this approach may lead to under-sampling of minority groups living in shared households that diverge from the ‘‘traditional’’(Wells et al., 2011) Western nuclear family living arrangement. Examining the prevalence and correlates of sexuality was not the primary aim of the wider mental health study that Wells et al. drew their data from, and the post-hoc analyses appear to have been carried out simply because ‘‘it was possible’’ (Wells

El surgimiento de la familia nuclear en México

En la actualidad, la familia nuclear constituye la principal forma familiar en México. A pesar de esta presencia mayoritaria, conocemos poco sobre sus características y sobre su desarrollo histórico. Los historiadores han indicado que ya existía desde el periodo colonial, pero no se han identificado ni sus similitudes ni sus diferencias respecto de la familia nuclear contemporánea o de la familia nuclear occidental descrita en la sociología clásica. El objetivo de este artículo es analizar la emergencia de la familia nuclear en México y describir sus particularidades y diferencias en comparación con la familia nuclear occidental. Esta exploración se realiza a partir de tres dimensiones analíticas: la estructura familiar, las relaciones familiares y las relaciones de parentela. La tesis que se propone es que, contrariamente a lo que han afirmado algunos historiadores, la familia nuclear, desde un punto de vista sociocultural, no surgió durante el período colonial.

Sibship size and education in South Africa: Black–White variations

Recent studies suggest that the generally observed negative sibship size effect on education is much less consistent in developing nations. Using data from a national survey in the early 1990s, this study assesses the effect of number of siblings on education in South Africa for two major population groups with distinctive cultural customs, Whites and Blacks. A negative effect exists for Whites, who have adopted a Western nuclear family system, whereas no effect is shown for Blacks, whose family life operates under extended family arrangements. Several sensitivity analyses suggest that the lack of a sibship size effect for Blacks can be partly explained by their extended family arrangements, in which the responsibilities and financial costs of raising children are shared across a wide circle of relatives. The study further addresses the longstanding debate as to whether the link between sibship size and education is contaminated by endogeneity and a confounding birth order effect. Results suggest that the sibship size effect is not an artifact of the interactive birth order effect. However, the observed negative effect for Whites tends to be exaggerated by endogenous factors – mostly likely parental quality–quantity calculation – a pattern found in several other industrialized societies that conform to western values of childbearing.

FALLELL, Betty G., FAMILY: The Making of an Idea, an Institution, and a Controversy in American Culture

FALLELL, Betty G., FAMILY The Making of an Idea, an Institution, and a Controversy in American Culture. Boulder Colorado: Westview Press, 1999,199pp., $22.00 softcover / $69.00 hardcover. LAURIE WERMUTH* The Norman Rockwell portrait of a Thanksgiving dinner feast on the cover of Family reminds us of the promise of togetherness and fulfillment and other powerful emotions that families engender. That many Westerners become depressed at the holidays reminds us that the Western nuclear family is capable of bringing warmth and belonging, but also pain and grief. a concise 165 pages, Betty G. Farrell summarizes contemporary and historical data on the institution of the Western family. She weaves together analysis of social history, sociology, demography, health data, social policy and cultural politics with a vision of the promise of family ties and also their vulnerabilities. Mixed in with this review are analyses of the family as a cultural icon and a gauge of social well being. A central purpose of the book is to bring the social history of the family into the realm of public discussion in hopes of clearing up the illusions of mythic family stability and harmony. While the size and structure of Western families has remained fairly consistent over the past several centuries, change in the meanings, sentiments and values applied to family life have been ongoing since Colonial times. Farrell's analysis appreciates both the public and personal aspects of the politics of the family: In reconstructing some of the patterns of family life we can begin to understand why it has continued to play such a central role in American culture, as an organizing social institution, lived experience, and a powerful metaphor. (15) Farrell frames Family s social historical analysis in life course stages, with chapters devoted to childhood, adolescent sexuality, marriage and aging. Key patterns and watershed changes are identified. For example, the separation of the paid work from the domestic sphere that became widespread during the nineteenth century had major consequences in the domestication and privatization of the lives of women and children. Of course, working-- class and immigrant women have always worked, but increasingly the working and middle classes sought to achieve the status of middle class domestic life. During the second half of the twentieth century, the large-scale movement of middle-class women into the labor force and the frequent substitution of television for human interaction as child care were major changes, fundamentally altering the child's world and family life generally. 'Who cares for young children and who supervises adolescents when full-time mothers are no longer the norm, even in the two-parent household?' (43) Deep ambivalence towards adolescents - their sexual experimentation, youth culture, paid work-has historic roots and continues to send conflicting messages towards youth today. Farrell offers an excellent social history and analysis of this often overlooked issue. Upon it we could build a more positive relationship to youth in our communities, supported by more humane social policies. Farrell's chapter on marriage is familiar terrain to those of us who have followed the literature over the past couple of decades, but she does a fine job of bringing together the various strands of history, policy, and demographics, linking them to the cultural battles over what the family should look like. …

Rural African Family Structure in the Eastern Cape Province, South Africa

The article presents findings of a study of household arrangements in the Transkei subregion of the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa. The article begins by questioning persisting assumptions about African family and household structure. Households are viewed as “disorganized” and “disintegrating.” A parallel is drawn with the way the African American family has been characterized as “disorganized,” “deviant,” and “pathological” in the context of American society. Household arrangements of Africans and those in the diaspora, it is argued, are informed by a cultural value system based on the African philosophical view of life. While western nuclear family is based on the cultural value of individualism characteristic of western society, African “extended families” are based on a value system that emphasizes collectivity and interdependence. Households studied vary in household head and include a variety of kin. The household structure varies from time to time, depending on which kin are present as individuals go back and forth in their struggles to survive. The article concludes that there is no evidence that African families are going to evolve to nuclear families and calls for more systematic studies of African family and household arrangements based on the principles of social organization of the Africans, rather than some imagined universal household structure.

The Curious History of Theorizing about the History of the Western Nuclear Family

The history of the family lacks a history. Sociologists and historians rarely cite interpretative literature written before the last third of the twentieth century. Curiously, at least for the discipline of history, recent scholars have seemingly regarded older perceptions as relics of a prescientific past.This foray into intellectual history will demonstrate that ignoring the history of this field also distorts it. My case study considers what is widely regarded as the largest revision in thinking about the history of the family—the complete overthrow of what William J. Goode, the sociologist most credited with its rejection, has derisively called (1970: 6) “the classical family of Western nostalgia.” Kertzer and Hogan (1988: 84) have aptly summarized the chief elements of the interpretation overturned by the revisionists: “Until recently, the popular image of Western family history pictured people as living in large extended family units that had multiple functions. With the advent of industrialization, it was thought, this system was transformed into one characterized by small, nuclear family units having more specialized functions.”

The Curious History of Theorizing about the History of the Western Nuclear Family

The Curious History of Theorizing about the History of the Western Nuclear Family

A Patriarch of One's Own: Jane Eyre and Romantic Love

Jane Eyre has been a focus for feminist literary analysis from the first: early texts have subsequently become models of feminist criticism, like Elaine Showalter's A Literature of Their Own, Ellen Moers' Literary Women, Patricia Spacks' The Female Imagination, and Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar's A Madwoman in the Attic, all give Jane Eyre a central place. Gilbert and Gubar take their title from Jane Eyre because of its psychological relevance: they rightly point out its imagery of enclosure and escape and its doubling of the female self into the good girl Jane and the criminally passionate Bertha reflect the experiences and corresponding psychic pat? terns of women living under patriarchy.1 The note of self-recognition in many women's emotional responses to Jane Eyre seems to corroborate the critics' sense of its psychological significance. Harriet Martineau said, in her autobiography published in 1877, was convinced it was by friend of my own, who had portions of my childish experience in his or her mind.2 A century later, Adrienne Rich reported she was carried away as by a whirlwind when she read Jane Eyre as a child; she returned to it in her twenties, her thirties, and again in her forties, drawn by some nourishment I needed and still need today.3 Jane Lazarre found in that adored book of my childhood, Jane Eyre, self-validation, an affirmation of her own rebel identity; like Rich she reread it twenty years later to find a new perspective on her own problems.4 These women echo voices from my own experience: students in Women in Literature classes, as well as female colleagues a generation older, respond to Jane Eyre passionately, feel it has something important to say about their own lives. I want to explore the interaction between novels and female fantasy patterns by asking two related questions about reader response to Jane Eyre. First, how can we explain women widely separate in time and nation? ality share psychic patterns make them recognize in Jane Eyre hidden truths about their own inner lives? Second, since girls often read Jane Eyre at a formative time in their lives, what fantasies does it offer them? Does it reinforce fantasy patterns acquired from growing up female in the Western nuclear family, or does its appeal come from the pattern of resistance to

Transcultural issues in family therapy

Family therapists are influenced by the cultural conditioning of their groups. The cultural differences in shared assumptions and prescriptive rules sometimes lead to incongruent messages being given to families from a different culture. Some recurrent areas of difficulty in work with ‘ethnic’ families include the role of culture bound symptoms and family structures that do not conform to Western nuclear family norms. Case material is presented to illustrate practical guidelines in work with ‘ethnic’ families.

The family and consumer decision making: A cultural view

An understanding of consumer behavior based on the traditional Western nuclear family (husband, wife, and unmarried children) model is inadequate to handle marketing on a global scale or to interpret changes at home. The number of relatives influencing purchase—and who they are—can vary as can the type of decision making, which may be allocative, stressing individual responsibility, or consensual. This article re-examines our basic assumptions and then considers marketing under alternative family scenarios—extended families, further familial shrinkage, and more participatory decision-making.