This dissertation analyzes a black family's social, cultural, and educational experiences including factors related to their successes and failures during the past century in the United States. These experiences span the eras of segregation, desegregation, and integration. Specifically, the study examines what this family's members view as their strengths and weaknesses and how each has contributed to their high and low levels of achievement in school and society. Such data can be useful and applicable to black families and other cultural groups as they strive to achieve in school and society. This first-hand information can be valuable for identifying the specific issues and problems impacting the families being studied. Findings from these empirical data can contribute to the betterment of schools and society as families, educators, policy makers, and others focus on addressing these issues and seeking solutions to the problems. Sleeter's (1991) research includes varying theoretical views regarding the value of voice and empowerment for the betterment of individuals, education, and society. Ruiz (as cited in Sleeter, 1991) theorizes that having a voice implies not just that people can say things but that they are heard (that is, their words have status and influence), and Banks (as cited in Sleeter, 1991) suggests that "the position of the U.S. as a world leader demands that we deal more effectively and constructively with the enormous cultural differences in our society" (p. 297). Given the cultural diversity within the American population, it is deemed appropriate to include for this black family study an in-depth discussion regarding other families from various cultures, namely, Native Americans, Asians, Hispanics, and Jews. Chapter 2 examines each group's experiences since their initial contact with the Anglo or dominant cultural group. Findings from this family research study can contribute to the betterment of America by providing perspectives to enhance intra/intercultural relationships among various cultural groups in our society. Enhanced familial and cultural relationships can be valuable not only to my family but to other groups and their families as they seek success in school and society.

This study seeks to explore longitudinally the changing behaviors and meanings of the symbols bound to family creation, size and unity in order to understand why and how they changed. The research method fuses historical facts collected from historical literature, the data from the participant’s interviews, and the ethnology of the American family made by David Schneider (1980), using symbolic anthropology as the guiding theoretical framework. The imposed gender differentiation, religious precepts, the shifting economic models, economic recessions, World War I and World War II, intellectual and technological developments, and the ideologies accompanying these events caused changes of human behavior and the redefinition of main cultural meanings of the symbols bound to family creation, size and unity. These resulted over time in a systematic shrinking of family creation and size and caused the re-conceptualizing of family unit. Yet, numbers of American family creation and size did not reach negative extremes, as they did in other developed nations. The resisting behavior emerges from the rich ethnic diversity in the nation that offers behavioral alternatives, the people’s trust their government and the American identity rooted on the founding ideals of the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. / Includes bibliography. / Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2016. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

This thesis was designed to determine whether there are significant differences in family sitcoms between type of response and family type; between action and family type; between type of interaction and family type; and whether there are more positive than negative responses on both types of sitcoms.Seven nuclear and single-parent family situation comedies which are presently being shown on network prime-time television were compared to one another. A content analysis using a goodness-of-fit test was utilized to determine if parenting differences between the two types of family situation comedies existed.A chi-square showed that there is no difference between the number of negative and positive scenes in each type of sitcom. Finally, it was shown that no major parenting differences exist between single-parent and nuclear family sitcoms presently viewed on network prime-time television. / Department of Journalism

This study examined age span between children as a significant factor which affected the time use of wives and husbands in 1,983 two-parent, two-child families. Data were derived from the Northeastern Regional Project, NE 113, sponsored by the Science and Education Administration of the United States Department of Agriculture. Using a multiple regression technique to investigate the individual activities that comprised household work time, it was found that age of the younger child, age of the older child, and age span, the interaction between the ages of the children, were significantly related to and were responsible for 49% of the variation in wives’ and nearly 16% of the variation in husbands’ time devoted to the physical care of other family members. Age span was not related to travel time use for any activity but was significantly related to secondary time use for non-physical care of family members by both parents. Age span, the interaction variable, accounted for differences between the ages of the children and explained the variation in effects of the differences at various ages. Plotting the significant interactions revealed five patterns of time use. The most prevalent pattern was when the age of the younger child was very young and the age of the older child increased, the most time was used for the activity; as the age of the younger child approached school age, and the age of the older child increased, the amount of time used for the activity leveled off, or, neither increased or decreased. Then, as the age of the younger child increased still further, and the age of the older child increased, time used for the activity, increased. This pattern fit wives’ time used for total work, household work, and physical care of family members; husbands’ time used for physical care of family members; and both parents’ secondary time used for physical care of family members. Wives’ time used for paid work and volunteer work followed an opposite pattern. The data have show that spacing of children has a direct bearing on parents’ time use decisions. / Ph. D. / incomplete_metadata

The issue of "family values" was at the of political debate during 1992 president campaign. In this debate conflicting views over the conceptualization and understanding of just what constitutes a "family" were presented. This thesis examines how the "traditional family" model is used by the majority of Americans to marginalize and ignore the lives and needs of those whose family life does not conform to normative definitions of family. More specifically, it examines how the lives of inner-city racial and ethnic families have become a site around which a variety of discourses of danger about the erosion of "family values" are generated. In this analysis, relationship among space, race, gender and power in contemporary American is discussed. A major will be the representation and construction of racial and gendered identities. Using the Los Angeles riots and Dan Quayle's response, I will review the political discourse employed by Bush-Quayle administration on traditional family values to discuss how family is constructed by the dominant political culture group in U.S. Following an examination of these issues, I will then focus on community responses to Quayle's speech and discuss how these discursive practices are the process by which dominant scripts of the family are contested and resisted. / Master of Science

Ed. D.

The number of children from single-parent families has risen significantly since the 1970s. The stress associated with single-parent status not only places the parent in a precarious state, but also has the tendency to adversely affect the child's academic performance. The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship among stress, coping resources, and academic success in a group of children from single-parent families. The study also was designed to access what family factors including race, gender, income level, education level, employment status, and family composition contribute to the academic success of the child. Sixty-seven single-parent families and their oldest elementary school-age child participated in this study. The families' stress level was measured by using the Family Inventory of Life Changes and Events (FILE), while the Family Crisis Orientation Personal Evaluation Scales (F-COPES) were used to measure the families internal and external coping resources. A child's Resource Questionnaire was used to measure the child's coping resources. Academic success was measured using Grade Point Average (GPA) and Criterion Referenced Tests (CRTs) scores. The results indicated no significant relationship between stress and academic success as measured by GPAs when controlling for gender, race, and resources. However, the education level of the parent, child's gender, and the number of children in the family were family factors found to contribute to academic success when measured by GPAs. When measured by the CRTs, several factors contributed to academic success. In language arts, higher numbers of children in the family were associated with lower language arts scores. tended to score higher than boys. In addition, girls In math, only the child's gender was found to contribute to academic success, with girls tending to score higher than boys. In science, higher numbers of children in the family were linked with lower science CRT scores, while higher family coping resources were associated with higher science CRT scores. In social studies, single mothers were linked with higher CRT scores than single fathers. In addition, higher family stress was associated with lower social studies CRT scores, and white children tended to score higher than minorities. / Ed. D.

The stress process was examined for a sample of 94 dual-career women. The relationship between sources (role strain), mediators (coping responses, psychological resources of self-esteem and low self-denigration, number and age of children), and outcome (feelings associated with role strains) was quantitatively assessed via factor analysis to determine the efficacy of mediators in the stress process. Seven coping strategies were identified: Cognitive Restructuring, Delegating Responsibility, Limiting Responsibility, Integrating Work and Family, Avoiding Responsibility, and Using Social Support. Results indicated that strain accounts for a large portion of the variation in stress. Cognitive Restructuring was the most crucial coping response in the stress process, having the greatest effect in reducing not only strain, but also stress; low self-denigration was the most critical psychological resource, buffering both strain and stress levels. Limiting Responsibility was associated with higher levels of strain. In addition, stress was found to increase as number of children increased and as age of youngest child decreased. / Master of Science

This study examined the levels of collective and personal self-esteem as well as the relationships between parental communications and self-esteem in college students in Japan (N= 260) and the U.S. (N= 286). The results showed that the U.S. students reported significantly higher collective self-esteem and higher personal self-esteem than did the Japanese students. Parental communications related to self-esteem differently among Japanese and the U.S. students. Japanese students who had more open communications with their mothers had higher collective and personal self-esteem, whereas those who had more open communications with their fathers had higher personal self-esteem. In contrast, for the U.S. students, more open communications with either their mothers or fathers was associated with both higher personal and collective self-esteem. / Department of Psychological Science

This study looks to the social trends, needs, and definition of home for the single-mother household. People need strong families to provide them with the identity, belonging, discipline, and values that are essential for full individual development ("The American Family Crisis" 16). This requires the examination of the role that the physical home environment plays in the life of the single-parent household. Personal histories, a literary search, and research of existing examples of built facilities serve to produce a series of patterns formalized in a design matrix, investigating how architecture can foster a healthy and supportive environment for the single-parent household.The intent of this research is to define a process by which the singleparent household, headed by a single mother, may be able to become self-sufficient and empowered by their housing situation. The aim is to create More than Housing (Joan Forrester Sprague), while utilizing the architecture to foster relationships and encourage growth.A resulting programmatic guide and design development tool for supportive housing, adapted to the needs of the single-parent household, creates a framework of design ideas derived from this research. This compilation is used to define design strategies and recommendations for the form and program of support systems used to illustrate the definition, application and resolution of "home" for the single-mother household. / Department of Architecture