Family in the Lives of Adults: 3 Creative Lines of Thought

I think the thing that gets me most is that you would expect the most bias to be in the civilization or in politics. However, it is in Science; it is in an area where specialists are supposed to know how to take an un-biased example of the population.

I've been reading a lot of the specialized books and journals, and for the best part, I've been annoyed by how neglected this group of people has been in the large investigation literature on people. Joyfully, I've had four exceptions.

In 2008, the Journal of Family Issues devoted all of the November and November issues to research and theory about people who have no children. The topic was called, "Multiple meanings of childlessness in late life: Findings from 7 societies."

"This issue is about a sizable category of older people those who have no children. Even though they currently represent around one in five persons older than age 66 years, and even though 31% of the U.S. population age 71 to 86 years in 2031 will be without a spouse and without children, they have been rendered invisible, relegated to the dark corners of the literature on adult development, aging, life course, and family. Pick up handbooks, textbooks, and journals in these fields and chances are high that you will not find childless in the index."

"It is common to hear young adults being asked, ‘Do you have a family?' and responding,‘not yet.' Seldom does the person who posed the question follow up with the query,‘So you have no parents, no brothers and sisters, no aunts and uncles, and no cousins?' We tend to disregard the fact that everyone is someone's child, and the parent-child ties from the family of orientation may last for more than 60 years!"

Along with other students who worked on the 7-nation study, take on the belief that adults without children "don't have anyone" and attack it with data.

The second source of unconventional thinking about what counts as family are some of the students of gay and lesbian life. A number of them were on the vanguard of recognizing that mainstream family scholars have been going nuclear way too long, and that we need to think beyond the unit of mom, dad, and the kids to understand the important people in our lives.

A related point of view has been offered by feminist students studying lone moms. Relatives, they suggest, is not about who we are but what we do. "Doing family" is doing the types of things that family members do, regardless of your biological or lawful relationship with the folks involved.

What I concern about is that it seems as if people avoid introducing me to their children. They really have an consciousness that people outside the baby cult may be delay by people who push their children on other people. And, I had really told one of the more aware and considerate moms that I wasn't averse to children and would fine with partaking in the child-holding ritual. My not putting on the baby-obsessed display does not mean that I'm against them; I'm just not interested in joining the baby cult. And, I am happy to play the role of an uncle who adores his nieces and nephews, even though it looks like I tend to do it from a distance.