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Family Division

2008
Cheryl Boudreaux
Chair, Family Division (2007-2009)


Vision of a Just World:


A just world for families is a just world for everyone. The family is the institution that nurtures and socializes, that takes care of the elderly and the disabled. The family makes a tremendous contribution toward or away from a just world. All children and adults in a just world are allowed to be a part of a loving, nurturing family supported by the society as an important social institution worthy of taxpayer support.

In a just world we have, promote and work for equal access to medical care, food, clothing, shelter, and the pursuit of happiness. A just world has harmony based on mutual respect and dignity. We would not have to spend a great deal of time pursuing individual rights because all rights would be the same rights for everyone.

A just world encourages and maintains the well-being and health of all groups, without regard to the socio-economic and political gains sought by a privileged few. A just world is a humane world that disempowers tools of injustice such as inequality, poverty, abuse of any kind, violence, rape, incest, alcoholism, homophobia, racism, and sexism.

Two Examples of Projects That Address Family Division’s Just World Mission

Marriage Equality

Canada, Belgium, Spain, South Africa, Norway, the Netherlands, as well as two states in the United States (California and Massachusetts), have changed their laws to include marriage between same-sex partners, as well as heterosexual partners.

Parental Leave and Gender Equality

Norwegian parents can choose to take either 44 weeks leave at full pay, or 54 weeks leave at 80% pay for parental leave. They promote equality between the sexes and early bonding between fathers and children by providing that the father must take six weeks of the total benefit or they will be lost. This policy signals the importance of the father in childcare. Provisions apply to the adoption of children under 15 as well.

Some Key Difficulties Family Scholars Face While Working Toward A Better World

o We face difficulties getting people to believe that research can point to answers that cannot be seen with their own eyes.

o We face difficulties related to diversity, pluralism and individualism. A key challenge our division’s mission faces is the popular myth that we have achieved equality for women and people of color. This is a hindrance to the pursuit of a just world in which all families are nurtured and valued by the state and its peoples to realize and offer their best to the world.

Because sexism is still an entrenched problem in our society, we face an immense challenge as scholars in The Family division, an area of study considered to be women’s work.

o A just world is hampered by the promotion and maintenance of fear creating a culture of fear, which feeds the feeling that each individual family must be protected from any individual or group different from itself.

We are hampered in our pursuit of a just world by the perpetuation of strong beliefs by individuals that “my children should come first and I should be willing to sacrifice anything including other people’s children so that mine can have the power, privilege, and freedom to do and have anything they want in life.”

Spanking children undermines the promotion of a just world for the family.

The promotion of violence in popular culture as entertaining and “sexy” is a key tool that works against the creation of a just world.


Key Articles and Books for Learning More:

Coontz, S. (2001). Historical Perspectives on Family Diversity. In S. J. Ferguson (Ed.), Shifting the Center: Understanding Contemporary Families (2nd ed., pp. 59-76). Mountain View: Mayfield.

Ehrenreich, Barbara (May 1, 2002) Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America, Holt Paperbacks

Rosanna Hertz, (2006) Single by Chance, Mothers by Choice: How Women are Choosing Parenthood Without Marriage and Creating the New American Family, Oxford

Loseke, Donileen R., Gelles, Richard J., and Cavanaugh, Mary M., editors. 2nd ed., (2005) Current Controversies on Family Violence Sage Publications, Inc.

Szasz, Andrew (2007) Shopping Our Way to Safety: How We Changed from Protecting the Environment to Protecting Ourselves. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.

Sudhir A. Venkatesh, (2006) Off the Books: The Underground Economy of the Urban Poor, Harvard University Press

Giddens, A. (1992). The Transformation of Intimacy: Sexuality, Love & Eroticism in Modern Societies. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Hochschild, A. R. (1989). The Second Shift: Working Parents and the Revolution at Home. New York: Viking.

Journal of Marriage and the Family, Decade Review: The current one is Journal of Marriage and the Family, Vol. 62, No. 4 (Nov., 2000)

Lappegard, Trude (2008). "Changing the Gender Balance in Caring: Fatherhood and the Division of Parental Leave in Norway". Population research and policy review (0167-5923), 27 (2), p. 139.