Journal of Family Theory & Review最新文献

Researchers often assume that close interracial relationships, especially intermarriage, simultaneously reflect and cause a weakening of racial and ethnic boundaries and inequality between groups. In fact, interracial marriage is often used as a measure of social distance. We question those assumptions, noting the salient boundaries and durable inequalities that remain despite decades of increases in interracial relationships. We begin with historical examples, showing how, for much of US history, there was no expectation that interracial sexual encounters would reduce racial inequality or weaken boundaries. Incorporating critical race theory and intersectional perspectives, we describe how the impact of interracial intimate relationships is both gendered and classed. We argue that research on contemporary intimate interracial relationships (friendships, dating, and marriage) explains why such relationships may have little impact on attitudes, inequality, and the rigidity of boundaries and call for future research to consider dynamics within the family as well.

We review the literature to show why South Korea is witnessing a dramatic rise in young adults who opt into childless singlehood. We argue that social change occurred over a compressed amount of time in South Korea. Confucian familism and ideational factors specific to the Second Demographic Transition (SDT) coexist and collide. The demands of Confucian familism also tend to be incompatible with the socioeconomic realities facing young adults. Influenced by the ideational factors characterizing the SDT, young adults may feel that it is acceptable to forego marriage. However, due to the strong influence of Confucianism on the institution of marriage, they may perceive married life to be largely inflexible. Thus, when confronted with incompatibilities between married life and other life domains, growing shares of Korean young adults may avoid married life and opt for childless singlehood.

How do values, beliefs, and assumptions about femininity shape relational experiences? To answer this question, we critically feminize family science by applying femme theory to the field. Through this analysis, we present some of the ways that femmephobia (i.e., the systematic devaluation and regulation of femininity across all bodies and identities) is established in childhood and perpetuated throughout various relational contexts across the life course. Specifically, we examine how femmephobia is socialized via families, systematically normalized and perpetuated throughout childhood, and how it shapes gender-based violence risk, perpetration, and tactics. We demonstrate how femme theory illuminates the importance of disentangling the intersectional axes of gender, sexuality, and gender expression, thereby generating novel approaches for family and relationship science and interventions that promote systemic social change. Subordinating and regulating femininity affects all individuals, making its disruption of critical importance for the prevention of gender-based violence and the promotion of healthy families and relationships.

In this article, I employ a feminist perspective in examining the interconnections across my personal, professional, and political activities. Rather than smoothing out the inconsistencies, tensions, and difficult spots, I strive to engage with them as points of entry to deeper knowledge and understanding. I begin by discussing elements of my personal upbringing, and the ways that it shaped my lens on families and my interest in the hidden and less understood aspects of family life. I then examine my professional career and trajectory, and how it has shifted alongside changes in the sociopolitical landscape, the evolution of scholarship in LGBTQ+ families, and my own privilege. I also explore how I have grappled with but also leveraged the politicized and political nature of my research, and sought to be an agent of change beyond the four walls of the university. I end with my thoughts on the benefits of this type of reflexive exercise for new and seasoned scholars.

I use social exchange theory to contextualize relationship processes associated with relationship stability in asexual-allosexual couples and to propose directions for future research. Social exchange theory suggests that asexual-allosexual couples might experience varied relationship exchanges compared to other relationship types based on costs/benefits, equity, and available alternatives. These exchanges may also be influenced by differences in relationship commitment and power. I review literature on sexual desire, sexual frequency, willingness to engage in sexual behavior, asexual identity acceptance, and extradyadic behavior to examine how these relationship processes are associated with relationship maintenance for asexual-allosexual couples. Such relationship processes are not necessarily unique to asexual-allosexual couples, but partner expectations may be particularly different in asexual-allosexual couples, thus altering their relationship exchanges. Further research may provide a nuanced understanding of asexual-allosexual relationship maintenance, and recommendations for how to promote healthy interactions and relationship satisfaction in asexual-allosexual couples.

Singlehood is often framed as not being in a relationship and treated as the referent category in research on the impacts of romantic involvement. However, growing research illustrates the multifaceted and complex experience of singlehood. Within our own research on the interconnections between romantic and individual development during young adulthood, the diverse nature of singlehood has emerged despite not being an initial focus of our research. Specifically, we have observed the important roles being single plays in young adulthood and variations in singlehood depending on the individual and their context. In this article, we offer observations about the complexity and diversity of singlehood in the lives of young adults by drawing on our own qualitative and quantitative research on young adult romantic development. Framed by the Life Course Perspective, Developmental Task Theory, and Emerging Adulthood Theory, we describe insights we have gained about singlehood and provide suggestions for future research.

Justice-involved families in India are underserved despite concurrent challenges including inadequate penal systems and widespread poverty. Families provide emotional and financial support to incarcerated individuals—burdens that fall upon female kin who are underresourced. Women experiencing spousal incarceration in India are likely to be from marginalized sections of society, vulnerable to co-occurring forms of oppression, making intersectional feminism a suitable theoretical framework to contextualize their lives. Through consistent interactions with the carceral institution, these women become integrated in the prison culture, experiencing secondary prisonization. Intersectional feminism helps understand variations in secondary prisonization for women inhabiting different social locations. However, this population remains understudied. We bridge the gap by building a contextualized understanding of this population using intersectional feminism, by attending to scholarship that illustrates sources of marginalization including exploitive informal work, a minoritized caste identity, and a minoritized religious identity. We offer recommendations for theory and research.

Genograms have been an important tool for clinicians and therapists working with families; however, the use of genograms has not been extended beyond clinical settings. To address this gap in research, we developed qualitative genogram analysis (QGA), a three-step protocol for analyzing transcribed interviews using family systems theory, representing family systems relational concepts visually in genograms, and identifying common patterns of family dynamics that emerged from these visualizations across families. We present the QGA protocol using interviews with family members who experienced elder family financial exploitation. This innovative use of genograms as part of an analytical process allows researchers to theorize family systems in innovative ways and go beyond examining each family relationship as a “variable” and look at relationship dynamics systemically and wholistically across families.

The increase in the number of never-married and not-cohabiting singles, or “effective singles,” was first observed in Japan and Southern Europe. In Northern and Western Europe and North America, increased singlehood was due largely to increased cohabitation. Existing sociological theories of singlehood, however, are formulated based on the observations of the latter, and fall short in explaining why more individuals remain unpartnered. The wealth of data from singlehood research in Japan suggest that many singles desire marriage yet drift into singlehood, facing structural, cultural barriers in a rapidly changing social context. The impact of gender inequality is salient, but existing theories focus on women's advancement and egalitarianism. This paper proposes an alternative theoretical framework for explaining causes of singlehood, incorporating sociological and feminist perspectives and Emile Durkheim's theory of anomie, and calls for shifting the center to observations from non-Western societies for better theorization.