Arquivo da tag: family

What Cellphone Calls Say About Parent-Teenager Relations

Deixe uma resposta

[By Roni Caryn Rabin, NYT Well Blog, jul 1, 2011] Poor communication is a common complaint when it comes to parents and teenagers. What happens when you throw a cellphone into the mix?

At least 75 percent of American teenagers today have a cellphone, often purchased by their parents so they can stay in closer touch. And parents are more likely than other adults to have a cellphone, for the same reason.

“The phone is now a huge part of parenting. It’s how you reach your kids,” said Amanda Lenhart, a senior research specialist with the Pew Research Center Internet and American Life project. In a survey conducted in the summer of 2009, nearly 70 percent of teenagers said they talked on the phone with their parents at least once a day.

Now researchers are starting to zero in on how cellphone use affects the dynamic of the parent-child relationship. A paper published online on Monday in the journal Cyberpsychology, Behavior and Social Networking suggests that both the nature of the calls and who initiates the calls may affect relations.

Robert S. Weisskirch, a professor of human development at California State University in Monterey Bay, asked 196 parent-teenager pairs to tell him how frequently they made different types of calls. The teenagers were asked about 18 different types of situations or circumstances in which they might call parents and to rank them from “never” to “often.” Continue lendo →

Is marriage becoming obsolete in America?

Deixe uma resposta

Nearly one in three American children is living with a parent who is divorced, separated or never-married. More people are accepting the view that wedding bells aren’t needed to have a family.

A study by the Pew Research Centre highlights rapidly changing notions of the American family. And the Census Bureau, too, is planning to incorporate broader definitions of family when measuring poverty, a shift caused partly by recent jumps in unmarried couples living together.

About 29% of children under 18 now live with a parent or parents who are unwed or no longer married, a fivefold increase from 1960, according to the Pew report being released Thursday. Broken down further, about 15% have parents who are divorced or separated and 14% who were never married. Within those two groups, a sizable chunk — 6% — have parents who are live-in couples who opted to raise kids together without getting married.

Indeed, about 39% of Americans said marriage was becoming obsolete. And that sentiment follows United States census data released in September that showed marriages hit an all-time low of 52% for adults 18 and over.

In 1978, just 28% believed marriage was becoming obsolete.

When asked what constitutes a family, the vast majority of Americans agree that a married couple, with or without children, fits that description. But four of five surveyed pointed also to an unmarried, opposite-sex couple with children or a single parent. Three of five people said a same-sex couple with children was a family.
Continue lendo →