On this page we discuss a variety of social problems related to the institution of family, including the impact of divorce, multiple forms of family violence, gendered disparities in domestic work, and the lack of belonging. The latter two problems particularly reflect larger social inequalities, though there are ways that divorce and violence also connect to social inequalities such as how women are disproportionately impacted financially by divorce and disproportionately victimized in intimate partner violence. Use your sociological imagination as you read, keeping in mind the larger social forces that shape people's experiences within families. Below we discuss consequences of these problems within each section rather than all together as in prior chapters.
Divorce
Much research exists on the effects of divorce on spouses and their children, and scholars often disagree on what these effects are. Divorce can be considered problematic because of the negative effects it has on adults, children, and society. Divorce plunges some women into poverty or near-poverty (Arendell 2023; Gadalla 2008; Wilcox 2010). Among heterosexual families, divorce removes their husband’s economic support. Women working full-time may have trouble making ends meet, because many are in low-paying jobs. One-parent families headed by women are poorer ($35,400 in 2016 median annual income) than those headed by a man ($55,580 in 2016 median annual income). Meanwhile, the median income of married-couple families is much higher ($85,300 in 2016). Almost 32% of all single-parent families headed by women are officially poor, compared to only about 16% of single-parent families headed by men and six percent of married-couple families (DeNavas-Walt, Proctor, & Smith 2011).
Although the economic consequences of divorce seem clear, what are the psychological consequences for spouses and their children? Are they better off if a divorce occurs, worse off, or about the same? The research evidence for spouses is conflicting. Many studies find that divorced spouses are, on average, less happy and have poorer mental health after their divorce, but some studies find that happiness and mental health often improve after divorce (Cherlin 2009; Waite, Luo, & Lewin 2009). The postdivorce time period that is studied may affect what results are found: For some people psychological well-being may decline in the immediate aftermath of a divorce, given how difficult the divorce process often is, but rise over the next few years. The contentiousness of the marriage also matters. Some marriages ending in divorce have been filled with hostility, conflict, and sometimes violence, while other marriages ending in divorce have not been very contentious at all, even if they have failed. Individuals seem to fare better psychologically after ending a very contentious marriage but fare worse after ending a less contentious marriage (Amato & Hohmann-Marriott 2007).
What about the children? Parents used to stay together “for the sake of the children,” thinking that divorce would cause their children more harm than good. Studies of this issue generally find that children in divorced families are indeed more likely, on average, to do worse in school, to use drugs and alcohol, to engage in riskier sexual behavior, to exhibit other behavioral problems, and to experience emotional distress and other psychological problems (D’Onofrio & Emery 2019; Wilcox 2010). The experience of parental divorce and the difficulties that single parents encounter in caring for children are thought to account for these effects.
However, two considerations suggest that children of divorce may fare worse for reasons other than divorce trauma and the resulting single-parent situation. First, most children whose parents divorce end up living with their mothers. As we just noted, many divorced women and their children live in poverty or near poverty. To the extent that these children fare worse in many ways, their mothers’ low incomes may be a contributing factor. Studies of this issue find that divorced mothers’ low incomes do, in fact, help explain some of the difficulties that their children experience (Demo & Fine 2010). Divorce trauma and single-parenthood still matter for children’s well-being in many of these studies, but the worsened financial situation of divorced women and their children also makes a difference.
Second, it is possible that children do worse after a divorce because of the parental conflict that led to the divorce, not because of the divorce itself. It is well known that the quality of the relationship between a child’s parents affects the child’s behavior and emotional well-being (Moore, Kinghorn, & Bandy 2011). This fact raises the possibility that children may fare better if their parents end a troubled marriage than if their parents stay married. Recent studies have investigated this issue, and their findings generally mirror the evidence for spouses just cited: Children generally fare better if their parents end a highly contentious marriage, but they fare worse if their parents end a marriage that has not been highly contentious (Hull et al. 2012). In general, research that indicates that marital separation is beneficial to the well-being of children include that children from divorced homes become more mature, have more self-esteem, and more empathy (Brooks Conway et al. 2003). As one researcher summarizes this body of research, “All these new studies have discovered the same thing: The average impact of divorce in society at large is to neither increase nor decrease the behavior problems of children. They suggest that divorce, in and of itself, is not the cause of the elevated behavior problems we see in children of divorce” (Li 2010: 174). Commenting on divorces from highly contentious marriages, sociologist Virginia E. Rutter (2010: 169) bluntly concludes, “There are times and situations when divorce is beneficial to the people who divorce and to their children.”
Caution
We discuss family violence next.
Family Violence
Although family violence has received much attention since the 1970s, families were violent long before scholars began studying family violence and the public began hearing about it. We can divide family violence into three types: Violence against intimates (spouses, cohabiting partners, non-cohabiting partners), violence against children, and violence against elders.
Violence against Intimate Partners
Intimate partners commit violence against each other in many ways, both physical (e.g., hitting, throwing objects at, or pushing a partner or date) and emotional (e.g., intimidating, threatening, or insulting a partner or date). When all these acts and others are combined, we find that much intimate partner violence (IPV) occurs. While we can never be certain of the exact number of IPV incidents, the US Department of Justice estimates from its 2023 National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) that there were 629,820 incidents of intimate partner violence, and 1,165,890 incidents of domestic violence overall (Tapp & Cohen 2024). Research also indicates that 80% of these crimes are committed by men against women (Truman 2011). Another national survey found that 22% of US women had been physically assaulted by a spouse or partner at some point in their lives (Tjaden & Thoennes 1998). This figure, if still true, translates to more than 20 million women. A national survey of Canadian women found that 29% had been attacked by a spouse or partner (Randall & Haskell 1995). Taken together, these different figures all indicate that intimate partner violence is very common and affects millions of people.
Some observers claim that men are as likely as women to be beaten by a spouse or partner or that there is evidence that men experience an act of violence from their women partners about as often as the reverse. Yet this “gender equivalence” argument has been roundly criticized. Although women do commit violence against men partners, women's violence is often in self-defense to the men's violence and is less harsh (e.g., a slap compared to a punch) – though the lesser severity in no way negates the violence. Additionally, studies find more violence committed by men partners than by women partners (Fanslow et al. 2023; Johnson 2006). It's important to note that although women are more likely to be victimized, people of any gender could be victimized by intimate partner violence.
Why are people, particularly men, violent toward their partners? As with sexual assault (see the Crime chapter), sociologists answer this question by citing both structural and cultural factors. Structurally, women are the subordinate gender in a patriarchal society and, as such, are more likely to be victims of violence. Intimate violence is more common in poor families, and economic inequality thus may lead men to take out their frustration over their poverty or low status on their partners (Martin, Vieraitis, & Britto 2006). Culturally, boys are often socialized into hegemonic masculinity, a form of masculinity that emphasizes dominance and aggression, and is the most praised and normalized form of masculinity in US culture. Boys and men are taught to 'man up' and be tough, never show emotion (except anger), and prove their physical dominance and (hetero)sexual prowess. This form of masculinity has an array of adverse consequences for boys and men, though it targets girls and women, dehumanizing them and normalizing violence against them.
Cultural myths also help explain gendered partner violence (Gosselin 2010). Many men continue to believe that their wives should not only love and honor them but also obey them, as the traditional marriage vow says. Viewing their wives in this way is thought to cognitively (but not in reality) justify the violence. In another myth, people ask why women do not leave home if the abuse they suffer is really that bad; the implication is that the violence cannot be that bad because they do not leave home. This reasoning ignores the fact that many women do try to leave home, which often angers their men partners and puts the women more at risk for being abused, or they do not leave home because they have nowhere to go (Kim & Gray 2008). Women's shelters are few in number in relation to the need and likely cannot accommodate a woman and her children for the time needed. Many survivors also have little money of their own and simply cannot afford to leave home. The belief that violence cannot be that bad if women abused by their partners do not leave home ignores all these factors.
People Making a Difference
The Founder of the First "Battered Women’s Shelter"
Sandra Ramos founded the first known shelter for "battered women" in North America back in the late 1970s.
Her life changed one night in 1970 when she was only 28 years old and working as a waitress at a jazz club. One night a woman from her church in New Jersey came to her home seeking refuge from a man who was abusing her. Ramos took in the woman and her children and soon did the same with other abused women and their children. Within a few months, twenty-two women and children were living inside her house. “It was kind of chaotic,” recalls Maria, 47, the oldest of Ramos’s three children. “It was a small house; we didn’t have a lot of room. But she reaches out to people she sees suffering. She does everything in her power to help them.”
When authorities threatened to arrest Ramos if she did not remove all these people from her home, she conducted sit-ins and engaged in other actions to call attention to the women’s plight. She eventually won county funding to start the first women’s shelter.
Today Ramos leads a New Jersey nonprofit organization, Strengthen Our Sisters, that operates several shelters and halfway houses for abused women. Her first shelter and these later ones have housed thousands of women and children since the late 1970s, and at any one time today they house about 180 women and their children.
One woman whom Ramos helped was Geraldine Wright, who was born in the Dominican Republic. Wright says she owes Ramos a great debt. “Sandy makes you feel like, OK, you’re going through this, but it’s going to get better,” she says. “One of the best things I did for myself and my children was come to the shelter. She helped me feel strong, which I usually wasn’t. She helped me get a job here at the shelter so that I could find a place and pay the rent.”
Since that first woman knocked on her door in 1970, Sandra Ramos has worked unceasingly for the rights and welfare of abused women. She has fittingly been called “one of the nation’s most well-known and tireless advocates on behalf of battered women.” For more than forty years, Sandra Ramos has made a considerable difference.
Source: Llorente 2009
Violence against Children
Child abuse takes many forms, including physical violence, sexual assault, emotional abuse, and neglect. Whatever form it takes, child abuse is a serious national problem.
It is especially difficult to know how much child abuse occurs. Infants obviously cannot talk, and toddlers and older children who are abused usually do not tell anyone about the abuse. They might not define it as 'abuse,' they might be scared to tell on their parents, they might blame themselves for being abused, or they might not know whom they could talk to about their abuse. Whatever the reason, they usually remain silent, thus making it very difficult to know how much abuse takes place.
Using information from child protective agencies throughout the country, the US Department of Health and Human Services estimates that almost 800,000 children (2008 data) are victims of child abuse and neglect annually (Administration on Children Youth and Families 2010). This figure includes some 122,000 cases of physical abuse; 69,000 cases of sexual abuse; 539,000 cases of neglect; 55,000 cases of psychological maltreatment; and 17,000 cases of medical neglect. The total figure represents about one percent of all children under the age of 18. Obviously this is just the tip of the iceberg, as many cases of child abuse never become known. A 1994 Gallup poll asked adult respondents about physical abuse they suffered as children. Twelve percent said they had been abused (punched, kicked, or choked), yielding an estimate of 23 million adults in the US who were physically abused as children (Moore 1994). Some studies estimate that about 25% of girls and 10% of boys are sexually abused at least once before turning 18 (Garbarino 1989). In a study of a random sample of women in Toronto, Canada, 42% said they had been sexually abused before turning 16 (Randall & Haskell 1995). Whatever the true figure is, most child abuse is committed by parents, stepparents, and other people the children know, not by strangers.
Children and Our Future
Is Spanking a Good Idea?
As the text discusses, spanking underlies many episodes of child abuse. Nonetheless, many Americans approve of spanking. In the 2010 General Social Survey, 69% of respondents agreed that “it is sometimes necessary to discipline a child with a good, hard, spanking.” Reflecting this “spare the rod and spoil the child” belief, most parents have spanked their children. National survey evidence finds that two-thirds of parents of toddlers ages 19–35 months have spanked their child at least once, and one-fourth spank their child sometimes or often.
The reason that many people approve of spanking and that many parents spank is clear: They believe that spanking will teach a child a lesson and improve a child’s behavior and/or attitude. However, most child and parenting experts believe the opposite is true. When children are spanked, they say, and especially when they are spanked regularly, they are more likely to misbehave as a result. If so, spanking ironically produces the opposite result from what a parent intends.
Spanking has this effect for several reasons. First, it teaches children that they should behave to avoid being punished. This lesson makes children more likely to misbehave if they think they will not get caught, as they’d not learn to behave for its own sake. Second, spanking also teaches children that it is okay to hit someone to solve an interpersonal dispute and even to hit someone if you love her or him, because that is what spanking is all about. Third, children who are spanked may come to resent their parents and thus be more likely to misbehave because their bond with their parents weakens.
This harmful effect of spanking is especially likely when spanking is frequent. As Alan Kazin, a former president of the American Psychological Association (APA) explains, “Corporal punishment has really serious side effects. Children who are hit become more aggressive.” When spanking is rare, this effect may or may not occur, according to research on this issue, but this research also finds that other forms of discipline are as effective as a rare spanking in teaching a child to behave. This fact leads Kazin to say that even rare spanking should be avoided. “It suppresses [misbehavior] momentarily. But you haven’t really changed its probability of occurring. Physical punishment is not needed to change behavior. It’s just not needed.”
Why does child abuse occur? Structurally speaking, children are another powerless group and, as such, are easy targets of violence. Moreover, the best evidence indicates that child abuse is more common in poorer families. The stress these families suffer from their poverty is thought to be a major reason for the child abuse occurring within them (Gosselin, 2010). As with spousal violence, then, economic inequality is partly to blame for child abuse. Cultural values and practices also matter. In a nation where spanking is common, it is inevitable that physical child abuse will occur, because there is a very thin line between a hard spanking and physical abuse: Not everyone defines a good, hard spanking in the same way. As two family violence scholars once noted, “Although most physical punishment [of children] does not turn into physical abuse, most physical abuse begins as ordinary physical punishment” (Wauchope & Straus 1990: 147).
Abused children are much more likely than children who are not abused to end up with various developmental, psychological, and behavioral problems throughout their life course. In particular, they are more likely to be aggressive, to use alcohol and other drugs, to be anxious and depressed, and to get divorced if they marry (Trickett, Noll, & Putnam 2011).
Violence against Elders
Some seniors are victimized by relatives who commit elder abuse against them. Such abuse may involve physical or sexual violence, emotional abuse, neglect of care, or financial exploitation (Novak 2012). Accurate data are hard to come by since few elders report their abuse, but estimates say that at least 10% of older Americans have suffered at least one form of abuse, amounting to hundreds of thousands of cases annually. However, few of these cases come to the attention of the police or other authorities (National Center on Elder Abuse 2010).
Although we may never know the actual extent of elder abuse, it poses a serious health problem for the elders who are physically, sexually, and/or psychologically abused or neglected, and it may even raise their chances of dying. One study of more than 2,800 elders found that those who were abused or neglected were three times more likely than those who were not mistreated to die during the next 13 years. This difference was found even after injury and chronic illness were taken into account (Horn 1998).
A major reason for elder abuse seems to be stress. The adult children and other relatives who care for elders often find it an exhausting, emotionally trying experience, especially if the person they are helping needs extensive help with daily activities. Faced with this stress, elders’ caregivers can easily snap and take out their frustrations with physical violence, emotional abuse, or neglect of care. This highlights the need for more support for adults who care for aging parents and stronger protections for the elderly.
Domestic Work
Gender inequality is present within the institution of family, particularly in heterosexual families. One significant dimension of gender-based household inequality is domestic work. Housework and childcare are necessary to family life, and women spend more time in both. It takes many hours a week to clean, cook, shop at the grocery store, plan birthday parties, send out holiday cards, pack kids' lunches, and everything else that needs to be done related to the household and family.
Research consistently indicates that women married to or living with men spend two to three times as many hours per week on housework as men spend (Gupta & Ash 2008). This gender divide in domestic work is called the gendered division of labor, or the disparity between women and men in time in domestic work. This disparity holds true even when women work outside the home, leading sociologist Arlie Hochschild (1989) to observe in a widely cited book that women engage in a second shift of unpaid work when they come home from a shift of their paid work.
Using data from the 2022 American Time Use Survey, the Gender Equity Policy Institute (GEPI 2024) found that "women consistently spend more time than men taking care of children and doing household work like cooking, laundry, and cleaning." Among their key findings are that women overall and working women spend twice as much time as men overall and working men on domestic work, on average, married women spent far more time than married men even when they weren't raising children, and among Latinx families mothers spend 3.4 times as much time as fathers engaging in domestic work. The image below visualizes this last point, that the gendered disparity is largest in Latinx families with children.
Recent analysis of the American Time Use Survey, which measures time in domestic work, found that women spend far more hours than men in domestic work but that the gender gap is more pronounced in Latinx families.
Source: Gender Equity Policy Institute 2024
Even though women still do the majority of childcare and housework, men are increasing their participation in these tasks, and women are doing less than they were before entering the workforce en masse, which helped narrow the gender gap. However, the mild increase in men's domestic work and substantial decline in women's domestic work from the 1960s-1980s stalled out, leading Hochschild (1989) to name this phenomenon the stalled revolution. In other words, the gender revolution occurring within the institution of family was never fully realized, as men never caught up with women for time in domestic work.
However, men today are doing much more domestic work than half a century ago. For instance, as of 2016 dads were 16% of all stay-at-home parents (Livingston and Parker 2019). Recent research found that the gender gap has closed more in recent years, suggesting that we may be moving beyond the 'stalled' period. Milkie and colleagues (2025) found that among married persons the "shrinking of the gender gap was concentrated in traditionally feminine core housework (decreasing by 40 percent, from 4.2:1 to 2.5:1), particularly housecleaning and laundry," suggesting that "with men taking on more female-typed domestic activities, the gendered norms associated with different forms of unpaid labor may be becoming redefined." The change in involvement partially depends on individual families making daily choices about how to do the work of a family, including men being more comfortable with or more willing to take on 'feminine' tasks, and reflects that most heterosexual couples have egalitarian ideals, that is they believe that domestic work should be somewhat equal. However, the gendered division of labor remains even after these shifts toward more egalitarian practices.
Why does this matter, apart from that it reveals continued gender inequality? When women engage in more domestic work than men, they conversely have less free time than men, which means less time to relax and recharge and to engage in enjoyable activities. The GEPI (2024) study mentioned above also found "a free-time gender gap; women across almost every group studied have less free time than men to socialize, relax, and pursue their interests and hobbies." More specifically, the data analysis revealed that women had 13% less free time than men, on average, and young women (18-24) had 20% less free time than men their age. Additionally, having a gendered division of labor in heterosexual families can lead to stress, resentment, and relationship strain, particularly when women have egalitarian views (Hochschild 1989).
The gendered division of labor illustrates how something so seemingly personal and private as family is in fact tied to social inequalities. Gender inequality is not only present in public institutions such as work or media (as we will see in upcoming chapters), but also characterizes the institution of family.
Belonging
Where do you come from? Where do you belong? On the surface, these questions may sound simple. You might answer that your family comes from Ireland, and you belong right here, in your hometown. Or your answers may be much more complicated. Your parents are from Honduras, but you are American. Your family was here before the United States was formed, either because your family is Indigenous or descended from the Spanish and Portuguese that colonized in the 1500s and 1600s. These answers are as complex and nuanced as each one of us is different; however, how you belong depends on how you are treated by others, including by the institution of the state.
As defined on the Overview page, belonging is a feeling of deep connection. Belonging connects to larger social inequalities such as nativism, xenophobia, heterosexism, and homophobia, as these systems of power can interfere with our ability to develop or maintain a sense of belonging. As we covered in the last chapter, immigrants experience stereotyping, mistreatment, and racialized social control. These experiences may cause immigrant families to feel that they are unwelcome and do not belong. We explore this issue further below.
Immigrant Families
Politicians today have politicized the topic of immigration in ways that relate to cultural, national, and individuals ideas of belonging. Most Latinx people who live in the US are citizens and most Latinx immigrants to the US immigrate legally, despite what some politicians claim. More specifically, as of 2019 two-thirds of all Latinx people were born in the US and have citizenship, and only one-third of the Latinx population are immigrants.
Undocumented people are anyone residing in a given country without legal documentation. It includes people who entered the US without inspection and proper permission from the government and those who entered with a legal visa that is no longer valid (Immigrants Rising 2023). Only approximately 12% of Latinx people in the US are undocumented. This is a much smaller number than some politicians would have you believe.
The binary of documented/undocumented hides a more complicated truth. Immigration exists on a spectrum. Many families are mixed-status families, as illustrated in the infographic below.
This infographic describes possible immigration statuses from undocumented to full citizenship. The amount of protection and risk change as you move through this spectrum. Some families are completely undocumented, others are completely permanent residents or citizens, and others fall in the middle.
“Immigration Status Exists on a Spectrum” by Monica Olvera from Open Education for Equity (slide 30) is licensed under CC BY 4.0
A mixed-status family is a family whose members include people with different citizenship or immigration statuses. Please take a few minutes to learn about the experiences of mixed-status families by watching the video below. One example of a mixed-status family is one in which the parents are undocumented, and the children are US-born citizens. The number of mixed-status families is growing. Between 2010 and 2019, the number of children aged 17 and under with immigrant parents grew by 5%. As of 2019, more than a quarter of young children in the US were children of immigrants, and nearly 90% of these children were US citizens (National Immigration Law Center 2022).
Mixed-status families experience social, economic, legal, and health challenges unique to their family configuration. These families are often multigenerational extended families with grandparents, parents, and children in the same house.
“Just come here legally,” is a misleading comment because the process to do so is not as easy as the general public thinks, as shown the figure below. Immigrants, just like everyone else, move because where they currently are isn’t providing them what is needed to succeed, or because they are being subject to persecution, violence, hunger, war, or other factors.
Some people have the time and money needed to try and apply for a visa or have a family member who is a United States citizen or legal permanent resident (LPR) sponsor them to become an LPR and can come to the United States that way. This could take anywhere from six to 28 years and will cost anywhere from $750 to $1,225 per person (US Citizenship and Immigration Services 2022), so it’s obvious that there could be a lack of money needed to take this route. It is even worse for others if their current situation might be more urgent and they don’t have the time to wait, such as in the case of persecution or violence in their home nation. If legal immigration was easy, accessible, and fast, it’s very unlikely that people wouldn’t risk their lives entering and living in the United States without documentation.
Government social control of immigrant families goes beyond courts and laws. It also includes breaking families apart. Under the first Trump Administration, the US government forcibly separated 5,000 children from their families, in two years alone (2017-2018). In the application of this “zero-tolerance” policy, undocumented parents were deported. Because children can’t be imprisoned, they were handed over to the Department of Health and Human Services. These children were cared for in refugee resettlement shelters. However, 'cared for' aren't the right words. They were held in cages. Some caretakers raped or assaulted the children. Some children died because of illness and neglect. President Trump rescinded the zero tolerance policy in June 2018, but separations continue to occur. As of late 2021 – more than three years after the policy was rescinded –most children had not been reunited with their families (Southern Poverty Law Center 2022). Resistance to this action is shown in the figure below.
As of 2025, the work of reuniting families continues. Some sources estimate that 1,000 children still need to be reconnected with their families. Some children haven’t seen their families in well over five years. The trauma that families experienced their home countries and the trauma they experienced during forced separation continues. Unsurprisingly, a recent study finds that parents and children who have been separated need significant mental health support even after family reunification occurs (Hampton et al. 2021).
These challenges to immigration and the political rhetoric that supports limiting immigration is based on a particular kind of prejudice known as nativism. Nativism is an intense opposition to an internal minority that is seen as a national threat on the grounds of its foreignness (Kešić and Duyvendak 2019: 445). Nativism is an underlying cause of the inequality that immigrant families face.
Personal Profile
My mom came to the United States accompanied by her aunt and uncle at the age of 14. She and her parents (my grandparents) decided that it would be best for her to leave Mexico because she was no longer attending school, as they could not afford it, and she was more than likely going to be stuck working at my grandpa’s small farm for the rest of her life.
Once in the United States, she was able to return to school and soon became the first in the family to graduate from high school. She found it impossible to further her education as there were no scholarships or loans available to undocumented folks at the time, so she went to work. She worked at a potato factory, met my dad, and had kids, including me. Right around this time, DACA* came around, which was huge. She applied for DACA, was approved, and soon after was able to quit her factory job for a much better-paying job.
Now that myself and my siblings are a little older, she is considering going back to school and even buying a house, but she finds herself constantly second-guessing that decision as her future here in the United States is uncertain.
*See the supporting information below that explains what DACA is.
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Carla Mendel is a Latinx woman and daughter of immigrants. She was a community college student when she wrote the information below, about DACA and Dreamers, as an open pedagogy project for Open Oregon. This information has been updated slightly to include more current data.
Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) is a policy created under the Obama administration on June 15, 2012. Key criteria for DACA eligibility are:
- are under 31 years of age as of June 15, 2012
- came to the US while under the age of 16
- have continuously resided in the US from June 15, 2007, to the present
- More criteria are listed at the US Citizenship and Immigration DACA Website.
An applicant granted DACA is not considered to have legal status but will not be deemed to be accruing unlawful presence in the US during the time period when their DACA is in effect. DACA allows individuals to live in the US without fear of deportation and with work authorization. DACA is temporary. Every two years the individual will need to reapply, which means submitting an application, getting biometrics done, and paying a fee of $495.
At its peak, there were up to about 800,000 DACA recipients, but those numbers dramatically declined during the first Trump Administration due to fear of what would happen to the DACA program. The number of people on DACA as of 2023 is closer to 600,000.
DACA is being legally contested. Read about the status of DACA from the National Immigration Law Center.
The Dream Act, which would make DACA permanent and would give DREAMers an opportunity to obtain legal status if they meet the requirements. The US House has passed this bill, but not the Senate. President Joe Biden has promised to sign it if it passes Congress (Gogol 2023).
The DREAM Act would create a conditional permanent resident status valid for up to eight years for young undocumented immigrants. It would protect them from deportation, allow them to work legally in the United States, and permit them to travel outside the country. It would also allow them to become permanent lawful residents. Having a clear path to lawful resident status allows DREAMers to belong.
Read more about what the DREAM Act would do from the American Immigration Council.
Sources: “Another Immigrant Story: My Mom” from "Governmental Influences on Union Formation” by Anonymous and “DACA, Dreamers, and Immigration” adapted from “Real Laws, Real Families” by Carla Medel, Contemporary Families in the U.S.: An Equity Lens 2e, are licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
Immigrant families face unique challenges in the US that may result in the lack of belonging. Queer families are another example of families that face a set of challenges that may interfere with belonging. Below we discuss these families and the larger social systems that constrain them.
Queer Families
As discussed in the chapter Overview, queer has been reclaimed by LGBTQ+ people as an empowering identity. But queer can also be used as a word that conveys hate, as it did in mid-century America. When used as an insult, queer is a word that wounds. Using this word as a threat may be grounded in homophobia, the irrational fear of or prejudice against individuals who are or are perceived to be LGBQ+. Importantly, it maintains heteronormativity, the assumption that heterosexuality is the standard for defining 'normal' sexual and family behavior and that binary gender differences and roles are the natural and immutable essentials in human relations (APA 2023). Heteronormativity is more than an assumption, however, it organizes our lives and interactions and positions the practices and ideals valued by heterosexual culture as the superior way to organize one's life. These practices and ideals include dating monogamously, getting legally married, having a couple biological children (or children who look biologically-related), living in a nuclear family household, and engaging in traditional gender roles.
Despite that queer families generally fare similarly to heterosexual cisgender families, queer families do experience homophobia. This stress provides unique challenges for queer families compared with their heterosexual cisgender counterparts. Queer partners may have to navigate judgment or rejection from their family of origin, the family into which one is born. They also may face prejudice from other social institutions like religion, medicine, media, and work, which manifests as institutional discrimination. Apart from its psychological or emotional toll, discrimination can interfere with queer families' sense of belonging in US society.
Queer families’ lives are shaped by the powerful social forces of heterosexism and cissexism, the systemic institutionalized oppression of LGBQ+ and trans/nonbinary people, respectively. Laws and policies related to adoption rights and foster care may allow discrimination against queer parents. As of 2023, 28 states ban discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity for foster and adoptive parents, and an additional four states ban discrimination based on sexual orientation alone. In contrast, 13 states explicitly allow child welfare agencies to refuse services to queer families if it conflicts with their religious beliefs and the remaining 18 states are silent on the topic, opening up a range of treatment toward queer families, from active discrimination based on the law to indifference (Movement Advancement Project 2023). The lack of nondiscrimination laws and policies at the hands of federal and state governments helps fuel ideas that queer families don't belong.
In addition, queer parents may experience discrimination in child custody cases. Heterosexual cisgender parents are often favored in custody disputes with queer parents (Haney-Caron and Heilbrun 2014). Prejudicial attitudes and stereotypes describing 'unfit lesbian moms' and 'irresponsible gay dads' have historically been used in custody cases to justify punitive court decisions. However, psychologist Charlotte Patterson studies the health of children parented in same-gender couples. She finds that it’s not the sexuality of the parents that matter. Instead, the quality of the family relationships is the most important predictor of healthy children (Patterson 2009). Research suggests that children of same-gender parents fare similarly overall to children of opposite-gender parents, though there are measures in which children of two women fare better than those of opposite-gender parents (Biblarz & Stacey 2010). Many queer parents experience discrimination despite the overwhelming evidence that being raised in a queer family is not inherently harmful or destructive to children (Goldberg 2010; Golombok and Badger 2010; Pawelski et al. 2006).
This video, Who Belongs? Family Stories of Immigration tells the story of two families, starting at 3:33 minutes in. In one family, a student immigrated as a child without documentation. She experienced racism and ongoing fear of deportation. In the other, two men were able to form a family because same-gender partnerships became legal in the US, and immigration worked for them. As you watch, consider the question: Who decides who belongs?
“Who Belongs?: Family Stories of Immigration” by Kimberly Puttman, Kevin Acosta, Omar Ruiz Garcia and Samantha Kuk, Open Oregon Educational Resources, is licensed under CC BY-ND 4.0
Immigrant and queer families share similar experiences in that the institution of the state influences cultural ideas about who belongs in US society, and who doesn't. Recent political attacks on both of these family forms have exacerbated harmful stereotypes and discrimination. They both experience cultural and institutional systems of oppression – nativism and heterosexism and/or cissexism. Thus, solutions to the family problem of belonging must consider how these systems of power are present within both the culture and various social institutions, including the state.
