Family Size and Structure

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN family size and structure and poverty is one fraught with methodological considerations, cultural difference, and moral heat. Methodologically, problems arise in establishing a framework for family size given that understanding of the limits and boundaries of family changes over time and place.

In developed societies the trend over the modern and postmodern period has been toward smaller units defined on the basis of consanguinity and residence. During the mid-20th century, the societal norm (though whether it was the statistical norm may have been another matter) in Europe and the United States focused on the nuclear family, which was seen as the most rational unit for these societies. In its purest form, this was constituted by two spouses in a heterosexual relationship sharing a residence with a small number of biological children.

Despite the attempts of some scholars to show that the nuclear family was a universal feature of human societies, it is now widely regarded as a historically and culturally specific formulation connected to the [Page 345]parameters of the wider economy. The move away from a society based upon agrarian production and an increase in urban living meant that the preceding form of extended family no longer provided economic benefit.

In rural societies in the southern hemisphere, family structure is based on the needs of agrarian production and care for the elderly. In countries with high rates of infant mortality there has traditionally been pressure on families to have more children who contribute economically to the family unit, which allows the extended family to provide care for economically inactive older adults. This is also structured by the absence of formally organized care for the elderly provided by the state or market economy. This makes larger families a prerequisite for a more comfortable life.

Research by C. Portner has interpreted this within the framework of risk management, whereby children can act as a form of insurance from disasters that require labor power. This research supports the theory that family size and structure respond to material circumstances inversely by showing that the less a family in a developed country expects material hardship, the lower the number of births.

Returning to developed nations, family size has continued to fall over the last 30 years. However, by far the most significant trend has been in the parental structure of households, with increases in wealthier nations of households containing only one parent (most often the mother). The precise relationship between parental structure and poverty has been subject to moral debate in these societies.

These debates stem from the observed relationship between single-parent households and a range of outcomes for children, such as decreased educational attainment, increased delinquency, and earlier involvement in sexual activity that are more likely to reduce the labor market position of these children when adults. However, many researchers have argued that it is not family structure per se that influences such outcomes but the circumstances leading to separation or the experience of lone parenting (including reduced access to resources and discrimination against such families). Poverty may be associated with family disruption, but there is still debate over the direction of the relationship and that the nature of family disruption may be more important than the resultant family structure in causality, according to A. Acock and D. Demo.

...