Literature review

Many studies have been done on family issues. Different researchers mostly focused on specific family issues related to earnings, marital outcomes, marital power, child care, law, policies, parents’ role reversal, and equality. 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 political views or equality that lead to changes. Further we will discuss these subtopics:

• General Family Policy in Kazakhstan: Past (Soviet time) and now

• Family diversity: Recent changes

• Specific Family Policies in different countries and people’s attitude to it

General Family Policy in Kazakhstan: Past (Soviet time) and now

A  Soviet law “Approving the Principles of Legislation of the USSR and the Union Republic on Marriage and the Family” provides communistic ideas of family that are based on Marxist Philosophy: consolidating and strengthening the Soviet family and calling for bringing up 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. After marriage both of the members get their rights by the law. Both of the members has his or her properties, although they get registered to be united. However, incomes acquired after the registration of a member becomes common wealth and in case of divorce is divided 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 in Kazakhstan now. According to this law, family members have to be equal and united.

However, there are some categories where their unity states differently. Ospanov (2007) describes 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 joint matters. In practice, some of them may be ignored by individuals. This phenomenon differentiates family structures and becomes some researchers’ goals to find out the reasons why. However, in communistic Soviet system no law was ignored. Thus, by the influence of global changes there is diversity that has been created recently in our countries.

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 being hidden and required the same rights as standard white heterosexual males (in United States). These movements affected political and social arenas and have sparked revolutions. According to the author, these revolutions have changed the way we think: the family structure once was thought of as unusual has become normal. It includes female’s role as a breadwinner and some different racial and ethnic families. The author researched how clinics work with these different structured families and shows that they are to mention individual matters and characteristics of each family member. Earlier, creators of unusually structured families counted as not ordinary people. Nowadays, not all of those families’ members linked to this association: especially, in our country ethnic, racial, and women-maintained families counted to be normal, too, but homosexuals are usually not represented.

Another author Harris (2008) differentiates two types of researchers on family diversity: objective and interpretive. Although, both of them use same terms and methods, the author claims that these studies are distinct. Objective family diversity presents the definition of the family in following way:

…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 researchers’ aims 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 studies are based on interpretive way because they have designated purposes. This study is kind of a mix of both methods.

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 equality 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, a wife should be dependent on a husband economically. Thus, they claim that perspective family structure consists of market specialized male and householder female and that this leads to marriage stability. On the other hand, other authors have found that incomes of wife support the family’s economic well-being and decrease partner’s depression, also. In their own research Brennan, Barnett, and Gareis found that wives, who earn more than husbands, give, on average, 59% of common income. Their research’s population was white middle-class and dual-earner full-time employed Boston couples with 25-40 aged husbands. Especially, 31,5% of their sample couples have same earnings or are female-maintained. These results show that the suggestion that women work to support family income is 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 to be reviewed is a proper supporter of this hypothesis.