Literature review
Many studies have been done on family issues. Different researchers mostly focused on different specific family issues related to earnings, marital outcomes, marital power, child care labor, law, policies, parents’ role reversal, equality, etc. First of all, in any case, the meaning of the family should be defined. The proper definition for this paper is the following one: “a group of persons who are connected by blood or by affinity or through law within two or three generations” (definitions.uslegal.com). The family law has its rules. Although many countries’ governments provide the same family law and rights, some of them introduce extra ideas based on developing the politic views or equality that lead to changes. Further we will discuss these subtopics:
General family policy
Family diversity: Recent changes
Specific Family Policies in different countries and people’s attitude on it
General Family Policy
A Soviet law “Approving the Principles of Legislation of the USSR and the Union Republic on Marriage and the Family” provides communistic ideas to family that based on Marxist Philosophy: consolidating and strengthening the Soviet family and calling for upbringing children according to moral principles of soviet society (Bolas, n.d.). This point made the soviet family law special from others, but the rest are similar to world standards. In general, civil unions, marriage, are legally recognized partnership and law distribute members of the unions their own rights, as members, also, as a group. Both of the members have his or her properties; although they get registered to be united. However, incomes acquired right after the registration of a member becomes common wealth and in case of divorce divides half-and-half (Bespalova & Ikhsanova, 1984). The partners are equal on child upbringing matters, also. These are common general points of a construction of the family law.
Ospanov (2007) marked spouses’ matters (decision) of law and divided it into two categories: single and joint. Choice of occupation and second name, place of residence are matters of single decision. Questions of motherhood and parenthood, child upbringing and education, and other family issues are matters of jointly solving. In practice, some of them may be ignored by individuals. This phenomenon differentiates family structures and becomes one of the many researchers’ goals to find out the reasons why. However, in communistic Soviet system no law was ignored. Thus, there is the diversity that created recently in our countries by the influence of global changes.
Family diversity: Recent changes
As global changes have happened in last decades, the diversity of family structure has increased. Notably, Leslie (2001) claims that uprising of special populations, “women, racial and ethnic minorities, and lesbians, gays, and bisexuals“, protested against hiding themselves and required getting same rights as “standard white heterosexual males (in US)”. These movements affected political and social arenas and have made revolutions. According to the author these revolutions have changed the way we think, the family structure once was thought of as unusual become normal. It includes female’s role as a breadwinner, respected values of different racial and ethnic families. The author researches how clinics work with these different structured families and shows that they are to count individual matters and characteristics of each family member. Earlier, creators of unusual structured families counted as not ordinary people or autistics. Nowadays, not all of those families’ members saved this association: especially, in our country ethnic, racial, and women-maintained families counted to be normal, too, but homosexuals usually not presented. Hopefully, in primary research of this paper there is no homosexual family: KIMEP university students con not have them or, at least, if there are any they cannot be faced with this project.
Another author Harris (2008) differentiates two types of researchers on family diversity: objective and interpretive. However, both of them use same terms and methods, the author claims that these studies are distinct. Objective family diversity uses the definition of the family in following way:
“We define family as any relatively stable group of people bound by ties of blood, marriage, adoption; or by any sexually expressive relationship; or who simply live together, and who are committed to and provide each other with economic and emotional support” (cited in Harris, 2008, p.14).
As seen from this definition, objective family diversity researches issues based on reality. Basically, the distinction between them is that objective family diversity scholars focus on entity and mostly gives accurate results, while interpretive family diversity scholars substantiate on meanings and ideologies and give mixed results. Many researches are based on interpretive way because they have designated purposes. This study is kind of a mix of both methods and may not have accurate results.
One of interpretive studies is Brennan, Barnett, and Gareis’s (2001) study. In this article the authors focus on dual-earner couples and their changing marital role quality and power. In their literature review they noted that early researchers have controversial results. Some researchers found that to save traditional marital quality and balance between pairs wife should be dependent on husband in economic meaning. Thus, they claim that optimistic family structure consists of market specialized male and householder female and that it leads to marriage stability. On the other hand, other authors have found that incomes of wife support family economic well-being, decrease partner’s depression, also. In their own research Brennan, Barnett, and Gareis found that in their population, white middle-class and dual-earner full-time employed Boston couples with 25-40 aged husbands, they got results that wives, who earn more than husbands, give, on average, 59% of common income. Especially, 31,5% of their sample couples have same earnings or female-maintained. These results show that the suggestion that women work to support family income is tend to be proved. In addition, the authors cite that single-earner families can’t reach the same economic level as dual-earners and it is predicted that many traditionally labor-divided families may change. The next article going to be reviewed is a proper supporter of this hypothesis.
Specific Family Policies in different countries
and people’s attitude on it
Chile’s government provides policy for female labor in order to reduce poverty. Buvinic and Gupta (1997) illustrate direct and indirect benefits not only to family, but to society, also. It became a national program and has perceived organizational support from the public and encouraged because it focused on increasing incomes, improving welfare, and fighting female gender discrimination. This phenomenon leads targeting female headship program to success. The article describes how the program is going to be implemented. Although the government spends more money for supporting on child care, transportation, and female security, the incomes by accounts are much more. There is one more optimistic hypothesis that males’ marital role quality and interactions between child and father can be increased.
There is another country focused on father-child interactions, namely on equality on parenting. Norway introduced two policies on child care (Brandth & Kvande, 2009). One of them is gendered, but it perceived as gender-neutral and another one is gender-neutral perceived as gendered, feminine. Gendered policy, father’s quota, gives six weeks (now ten weeks from July 1, 2009) of the parental leave period (either 29 weeks with 100percent or 39 weeks with 80 percent parental money) to fathers to care for the child. This policy does not mind parents’ choice whom to stay with the child because by stereotype the caring parent is mother, but gender-neutral policy does. Essentially, second policy gives more opportunities for equality, because the couple decides who is going to get the parental leave. However, mostly females get it as traditionally and that is why it is perceived as gendered. The optimized policy is now gendered one. 15 years of its existence the father’s quota recognized as a norm.
On the other hand, there are other countries where the government contributes less to family well-being. They are Australia, New Zealand, and Canada (Dulac, 2005). Dulac’s article reviews Baker’s book, where the author shows how family life of these countries changed in new century, the reasons why, and compares results. Baker analyzes almost every sphere related to family and these countries that has been mentioned in this review. She found that Australia and New Zealand have more similarities, but Canada differs on mothering at home. She explains that the results or similarities and differences between countries may or may not be caused by systematic reasons of countries, but participants’ dissimilarity. It is influential conclusion. Basically, as it have been mentioned from recent changes and revolutions there are many kinds of people. Every research should be done and analyzed based on its population’s feature.
In brief, the studies mentioned and discussed different issues on family. Although the general picture of family structure may be found by reviewing group of different countries’ studies, the specific population shows its own dissimilar construction. In addition, the results and analysis depends on researchers’ method and objectivity. There are no study found that conducted KIMEP university students and this study will fill the missing point.