CONSEQUENCES OF TRANSFORMATIONS IN POOR FAMILIES OF URBAN EXTRACTION IN PERPETUATING POVERTY

Allow me to begin with some general remarks on the changes occurring today in the family. Lately many voices of alarm have been heard about the tendency towards a supposed family breakdown. What are the symptoms that create this generalize alarm - that can be observed among academics as well as civil, religious and political leaders - about the future of the present situation an the future of the family?

There is talk about an increase in teenage pregnancy, family instability as reflected by divorce and separation rates, new family arrangements that include reconstituted families, tendency towards couples living together, etc. Added to these problems is the family institution, as a basic unit of society, also being blamed for all kinds of social ills, from drug addiction and juvenile delinquency to the loss of integration of societies.

To understand the meaning of those tendencies it would be useful to briefly review some of the more prominent features of the great transformations that families have been going through in the last century and a half.

During the documented existence of humanity, and probably up to the generation of our grand parents, prevailed what can be called the family/enterprise, the kind of family that was at the same time a place of consumption, procreation and production such as farmers, small artisan shops, small enterprises or small service businesses. The "norm", throughout the history of humanity, was that - with different dedication and capacity - all members of the family worked in the family enterprise. This system, which predominated for many centuries, was characterized by a pattern of close interaction based in mutual dependency, sometimes reinforced by relative geographical isolation. The authority was patriarchal. It was basically an economic unit fighting for survival that found that the most efficient way to survive - like in most production units - was to have a hierarchical organization with a clear leader on top. The head of the home had the role of main provider of income, manager of the collective enterprise and transmitter of techniques and skills which when adopted guaranteed his children the possibility of perpetuating the family lifestyle within a context of very slow social and technological change.

With the growth of cities, factories and large public and private companies, the family/enterprise was superseded by the single income family (or breadwinner system as called by the Americans). What distinguishes this type of family is the clear separation between the place of work and the place of residence and the clear distinction of roles between the masculine role (to work and bring the money) and the feminine role of looking after the house.

Curiously this model, well publicized by the American movies of the 50's as the ideal of urban middle class families, (and with which my generation grew), was short lived, since it only applied to a minuscule period of the human history.

In Europe, this system was associated with the birth and development of the industrial revolution. Farm work predominated in England until 1830 and in United States until 1907, but before and after those dates there was a displacement of labor from agricultural activities of quasi subsistence - such as artisan domestic shops- to salaried positions in industries.

Compared to the fast pace of similar changes in countries considered today underdeveloped, those changes were slow and continuous, allowing for the emergence of some intermediate organizational forms that lessened the impact that the separation of home and workplace had for families. Such is the case of the cotton textile factories in England at the end of the eighteenth century and beginning of the nineteenth. In those factories, according to Smelser, whole families were hired. This allowed parents to preserve for a while the faculty ability to train and supervise their children's labor in industry.

Data on changes in the composition of the working population of France since the beginning of the nineteenth century also show a continuous and slowly paced reduction of the "system of family labor". The relative slowness of the processes of introducing new production technologies and organizing economic activities, permitted that through several generations people could adjust their family patterns of behavior to the new realities. This allowed the consolidation of the so called "breadwinner system" that assigned specific domestic roles to women and specific labor roles outside the home to men.

Today, in developed countries, the multiple contribution family where both parents work outside the home is already, statistically, the prevalent one. In a recent seminar of the International Association of Social Security, many of the participants from industrialized countries agreed that the decade of the 60's marked the turning point of this trend since by then the breadwinner system was not the norm any more. The rate of participation of married women indicated that the majority of families registered both spouses as members of the working force.

These changes in the preponderance of the family/enterprise, single breadwinner and both spouses working happened parallel to other "mini revolutions" that sometimes facilitated and sometimes hindered the transition from one type of family to the other. Just to mention a few:

First: Sexuality and reproduction became dissociated. The combination of technological advances in contraceptives, better education and a faster dissemination of knowledge liberated sexual relationships from the fear of unwanted pregnancies and contributed little by little to weaken the double standards applied to the sexual activities of men and women.

Second: Women begun to enjoy many more years of their active life without reproductive responsibilities. There are several reasons for this. On one hand, women live longer, have less children than before and births tend to concentrate in the first stages of their married life. On the other hand, access to washers and dryers, microwaves, refrigerators and all the other domestic appliances simplified domestic work while at the same time an increase in care services available for children and the earlier availability of pre-school for young children contributed to liberate the time formerly devoted to child rearing.

Third: Women became increasingly qualified. If in our grandparents generation the educational average was higher in men than in women, now the contrary is true. The average of years of study among women tends to be higher than among men in all countries, specially among the new generations. This situation tends to increase the cost of staying at home.

Fourth: Today's culture emphasizes individualism, autonomy, personal realization and a privatization of life associated with consumption that diminishes the role of sociability as a source of satisfaction in daily life. All this is probably undermining the feelings of obligation towards others and intra-family solidarity. Parallel to this, and as part of the secularization process, aspects of life previously considered sacred such as maternity, sexuality and marriage are being put under the scrutiny of reason in a world without communicational frontiers where TV competes with the socializing functions of families.

Fifth: We are already in an economy of service that offers much more opportunity of work to women than the previous industrial economy.

Many other changes could be mentioned that accompany the transformations of types of families but what has been said is enough to underline an important point: the axis for the transformation of family life lies in fundamental changes in the situation of women. With more education, more available time, less sexual dependence on the couple, a cultural climate that foster the development of their potential outside the domestic frontiers and within a productive structure that favors their incorporation, women today are faced with opportunities never dreamed in the past.

This situation is substantially modifying the contents of couple relationships. To better understand these modifications, let us briefly review what happens inside each of the types of families previously mentioned.

In the family/enterprise, the parents are partners in production as well as co-responsible of the maintenance of the home. Work life and family life are one. The relationship between the couple as well as the relationship with their children must be such that would assure daily the continuity of a collective effort in which the well being of each member depends on the activity of the others.

In the single bread winner family that mutual dependency is maintained although it changes content. Work life and family life are separated. The woman needs the man to provide daily sustenance and the man needs the woman to organize his domestic world and assume the main responsibility in rearing their children. This complement of roles lead many, without doubt, to think that this was the ideal type of family.

On the other hand, for the " working couple ", a less economic and emotional dependence of the woman, with its resulting new opportunities of relations with other men and women in the world of labor, culture and knowledge, opens, for the woman, a new margin of negotiation in relation to her rights and to the distribution of domestic responsibilities and a re-definition of the couple's relationship. The result necessarily has to be a more equal relationship than in the past. Even more, the stability of the new relationship as a couple comes to depend more on the compatibility of the life projects of each of the spouses than on the adhesion to traditional family patterns or the pressure of other relatives or friends.

The changes in the couple relationship occurring through the transformation of the types of families through history, do not seem to call for alarm. On the contrary, for those of us who believe in equality, opportunity of choice, freedom and personal realization, the way things are going should lead us to the feeling that everything is O.K. What binds the couple depends less on economic needs, prejudices and social pressures and more on affection and compatibility of life projects. Besides, it does not seem probable that in a world with growing opportunities for equality between men and women, families would hold on to the organizational principle of division of labor by sex.

But "alarmists" would say that we are not looking at what we have to look at: the darker side of the coin. They would emphasize the following:

In the first place, there is more instability in families as shown by the divorce and separation rates registered in the majority of countries for which we have information. A consequence of this is the growth of single parent homes (usually the mother with her children) and re-constituted homes where children do not live with their two biological parents.

Another sign of family instability is the growth in the proportion of young couples that live together without getting married and who do not formalize their union even after their first child.

They also point out that the liberation of premarital relationships is such that neither improvements in education among the young nor the growing awareness of contraceptive techniques can curtail the increase in the ratio of adolescent pregnancies.

The "alarmists" stress that family is the basic nucleus of society and that no other institution can take its place in the task of transmitting values to children, discipline them for an orderly social life and give them identity, sense of belonging and awareness of moral obligation towards others. They show how studies corroborate that for this task what is necessary (although of course not sufficient) is the continuous presence of both biological parents.

They quote statistics that show, for example, that in United States around 1950, over 80% of children grew up in families with their two biological parents who were legally married. By 1980 only 50% of children grew up in such families. Certainly by this decade less than 50% of children are living with their two parents.

Statistics also show that the absence of parents increase the probabilities of failure at school and predisposition to drug addiction and delinquency.

Based on this, the preoccupation of "alarmists" dwells on the conviction that if these patterns of instability and family disorganization continue, humanity could be moving towards a social collapse.

Evidently the problem here is how to conciliate the tendencies towards a growing individualization (personal realization) and autonomy within the couple with the obligations and responsibility fundamentally associated to the socialization functions. The tensions between those two demands seem inevitable.

On one hand there is no doubt that many women feel overburdened by family traditions and see the process of individualization and autonomy as liberating forces that open opportunities for the development of personal capacities that otherwise would remain inhibited. On the other hand, it is also true that those processes do not seem to have been accompanied by an equivalent change in the expectations of men with respect to family roles. Very likely it is this imbalance of expectations that is one of the factors contributing to the increase of one parent families, instability and reconstituted families that, as it is well known, constitutes a risky situation for children.

What is clear is that only an increase in equity in the distribution of family obligations and roles and the elimination of the principle of division of work based on gender, can give families the necessary flexibility to face the challenges of adapting itself to constant change.

In summary, the march towards greater fairness between men and women in all areas seem to be an unstoppable process and a sign of human progress. But there is no doubt that this process implies a profound re-definition of roles that have served traditionally as cornerstones for the formation of the adult identity of men and women and this, obviously, has to create strong tensions. I believe that those attachments to values that are emotionally charged, usually translated as cultural inertia, explain in part the tensions between emotional content and cognitive and rational contents that emerge with the change of roles. For example, a recent study in Europe, whose outcome I watched in TV, shows a higher frequency of heart attacks in men who stay at home in charge of domestic chores than in men working outside, exactly the contrary of what happens with women. My impression is that a large proportion of men and women as well as institutions supporting families are still ideologically and culturally ill equipped to deal with the challenge of maintaining the essential family functions while processing the transformation of their respective roles within the family.

On the other hand, one of the obvious costs of adjusting to these new conditions is the growing instability of couples and the proportion of single mothers, of people living together and of reconstituted couples. Studies show that the consequences of these situations is not good for the children. They systematically perform worse when both biological parents cannot be counted on for their care.

The last decade shows a significant reduction of the relative weight of single income families with respect to double income families. This change did not equally affect families of different social strata, but being more prominent among more educated couples. That way, the gap already existing between families of different social strata got wider.

Chart 1: Evolution of the percentage of couples with children 0 to 5 years old where both parents work, according to the average of years of study of the couple. Urban Uruguay 1991-1999

SECOND CHANGE: INCREASE OF THE RELATIVE WEIGHT OF NEW FORMS OF FAMILY CONSTITUTION, REFLECTED IN THE NUMBER OF BIRTHS OUTSIDE MARRIAGE, PEOPLE LIVING TOGETHER AND ONE PARENT FAMILIES.

The speed of changes in forms of family constitution has been remarkable, to the point that Carlos Filgueira considers this one of the hidden revolutions of Uruguayan society. Let us see some figures:

Evolution of the index of illegitimate births for mothers under 20 and for total of mothers. Uruguay. Selected years.

Sources: IPES based on Vital Statistics of the INE and the Statistical Division of the Ministry of Public Health. Uruguay

...With respect to people living together:

Percentage of people living together in relation to the total number of couples by age and region. Urban areas 1984-2000

Sources: own development based on chart 2 of Carlos Filgueira, Revoluciones Ocultas: la Familia en Uruguay, CEPAL Montevideo, 1996

The families with the greatest risk of de-structuring (people living together and single parent families) are concentrated in the lower strata of the population. Disparities both in income and in education affect the probability of this happening.

Chart 3: Percentage of couples living together and of single parent families with children 6 to 12 years old in relation to income per capita and education. Urban Uruguay, 1999

THIRD CHANGE: INCREASE OF FAMILY INSTABILITY. ALTERATIONS IN THE WAY COUPLES ARE FORMED AND ARE DISSOLVED AS SHOWN IN THE EVOLUTION OF DIVORCES AND SEPARATIONS RELATIVE TO STABLE COUPLES. INCREASE OF RE-COMPOSED FAMILIES AND THE PROPORTION OF CHILDREN THAT DO NOT LIVE WITH BOTH THEIR BIOLOGICAL PARENTS.

Between 1960 and 2000, the number of divorces increased over six times. In 1960, there was a divorce for every 12 registered marriages. In 1990 this ratio went down to 2.8 and recent data show that at the present the ratio must be approaching 1 to 1. This data still does not take into account the separation of couples living together.

Many divorced people form new families. We do not have updated information on the proportion of re-constituted families were children do not live with both their biological parents. In 1990, approximately 10% of children attending elementary school lived in re-constituted families.

SOME CONSEQUENCES OF THE CHANGES IN FAMILY SYSTEMS AND THE CONSTITUTION, DISSOLUTION AND RE-CONSTITUTION OF FAMILIES ON THE MECHANISMS AFFECTING THE CONSOLIDATION AND PERPETUATION OF POVERTY.

If we accept that repeating a grade in elementary school is one of the situations of risk that increase the probability of perpetuating poverty from one generation to the next, chart 4 shows the impact that the form of constitution of the family has on this area.

Chart 4: Percentage of 6^th grade students who repeated grades by educational level of mothers and type of family. (Montevideo, 1990)

Source: CEPAL, Montevideo office, based on the study "Diagnosis and research of basic education in Uruguay", 1991

Similar conclusions can be drawn from Chart 5 where we can observe that within the same socio-economic bracket, the fact that the union of parents is either consensual or legal has a clear incidence in the risk of marginality or exclusion for adolescents.

Chart 5: Percentage of 14-19 year olds who do not study, do not work, and do not look for work in relation to income per capita, educational level of parents and kind of family structure. Urban Uruguay, 1999

INCOME PER CAPITA	EDUCATIONAL LEVEL	KIND OF FAMILY STRUCTURE
		living together	Single parent family	Married
LOW	Low	31.4	27.0	20.7
	Medium	19.2	18.1	10.2
	High	15.2	1.6	7.4
MEDIUM	Low	16.5	13.3	10.8
	Medium	22.9	7.8	7.9
	High	26.1	3.3	3.3
HIGH	Low	9.8	7.5	3.9
	Medium	5.6	4.9	5.7
	High	3.3	3.0	1.7
Total		21.5	12.5	8.6

Sources: IPES based in the poll of homes of the INE

DIFICULTIES TO DEVELOP AND IMPLEMENT FAMILY POLICIES

Let us see some of the difficulties involved in developing and implementing family policies:

      1.      Diagnosis problems
2.      Difficulty in specifying the objectives of a family policy
3.      Tensions between the public and the private realm
4.      Tensions between family values and values of social equity.

1. A first difficulty is lack of information on some of the characteristics of the formation, kind of structure and dissolution of families. I refer mainly to the problem of identifying family nucleus within the homes and identifying re-assembled or re-constituted families. Having information in both these cases would permit assesing the impact that those types of families have on the behavior of children and adolescents.

We do not even have good analysis of the characteristics of people who get divorced in spite of the information available. The same happens with the possibility of carrying exhaustive analysis on the characteristics of mothers who conceive children outside wedlock. This information would be of great help to focus on measures towards avoiding this situation.

Still, as I said before, the main problem of family policies is not, in my opinion, a problem of diagnosis. We could make great progress with what we already know if we knew clearly what direction to take.

2. The difficulty lies in arriving to an operational specification of the objectives of the measures. What does it mean to support the family? To create favorable conditions for its constitution? Try to avoid its dissolution? Improve its wellbeing? Protect the vulnerable members? Try to maintain the structures or to maintain the functions?

The question is whether we should act directly on family relations, on the socio-economic conditions that support family life or on trying to reinforce the relations between families and institutions.

3. A third difficulty lies in trying to conciliate the public responsibility of supporting the family and its members with the respect owed to the privacy of the family. This tension becomes evident when dealing, for example, with cases of domestic violence.

4. Finally, in spite of the apparent consensus on the importance of the family, many people doubt how much its functioning contributes to the erosion of some highly appreciated social values. For example some people fear that reinforcing the family might imply maintaining an organizing principle of society based on the division of labor by gender. This would imply that the values on which the family is based would demand, particularly for women, the renunciation to aspirations of personal realization.

Other people fear that stressing the functioning of families might weaken the efforts towards equal opportunity for the different social strata by maintaining the inter-generation perpetuation of social stratification where children of different social strata would not enjoy the same treatment and opportunities.

OTHER NOTES ON GENERAL ORIENTATIONS.

In spite of the difficulty to define lines of action, there are certain problems that can be dealt with certain clarity and can provide general orientations. Let me mention some of them.

1.In the first place, I believe that any action whose objective is to improve the conditions of the constitution of the family or the conditions for its stability, should be directed to the social strata that posses less resources. This suggestion is not part of a general criteria that gives preference to that strata as targets of social action and is not based on the belief that other strata do not have serious family problems. It is rather the conviction that a well constituted family is the most important resource that members of those strata can have to improve their life conditions, the life conditions of their children and to contribute to the general well being. And this because of

      a)     they do not have alternative resources
b)     the existence of a collective project is like a motor that mobilizes members, channels their aspirations and helps them to postpone gratification in view of a collective goal.
c)      Incomplete or unstable families in those strata are not able to contain their children and make them internalize work habits and discipline. This leaves children exposed to bad influences from peers, in precarious situations and makes them potential members of a sub-culture of marginality.
d)     The break up of the family structure in urban popular strata deprives society of an irreplaceable forger in the formation of the national human capital.

In effect, the growing trend towards incomplete homes and unstable couples in the lower urban strata, implies a progressive weakening of the family and, as a consequence, the inability of the family to produce the assets that would capacitate children and adolescents to avail themselves of the existing structure of opportunities. At the root of the difficulties to constitute stable families are a combination of cultural changes in the meaning of sexuality and the unwillingness of poorly educated men to assume the responsibilities implied in forming and maintaining a home. In effect, the data available show, on one hand, a lowering of the age of sexual initiation and an increase in the number of adolescent mothers. On the other hand, they also show a fast increase in the years of study needed today for a young person to be able to maintain a family.

2. A second field of action relates to sensitize public consciousness on the fact that any institutional alternative designed specifically to compensate for family deficiencies will be more difficult, more costly and less effective than efforts directed to support the family. It is also important to realize that the cost of such alternatives will increase with the prolonged period of formation needed for the young to satisfy the new requirements of the labor market given the apparent inability to substitute the family in providing for the material, psychological, emotional and disciplinary support demanded by the new patterns of social integration.

3. A third field of action is the prevention of teenage pregnancy. The evidence available suggests that it is very difficult to avoid the accumulation of liabilities throughout life when the point of departure is weak. Therefore, one of the most crucial times for intervention is the moment in which families are formed. Given the growing rate of teenage pregnancies and its correspondent incidence in the growth of the rate of illegitimate births, it seems essential to create conditions that would delay the age of pregnancies. This implies, among others, urgent measures in the area of sexual education, teaching how to control reproduction and only have wanted babies as well as acquiring a deeper and broader understanding of the responsibilities that go with being a mother or a father. It would also help if women stay longer within educational establishments.

4. A fourth priority is to reduce the association prevalent today, specially among uneducated young people, between family constitution and poverty. A family free from poverty must be an accessible goal for young people. This hinges on the creation of opportunities for productive employment, the flexibility of the requirements to have access to that employment, the type and level of social benefits assigned to families (family allowances, maternal and paternal leave, etc.) and access to services that would make work and child rearing compatible.

This also hinges especially on housing policies, since the hope of having a home articulates and brings meaning to the efforts of the couple, aware that the possession of a home acts as a protective cushion in difficult economic contingencies and reduces the vulnerability of the family.

5. In fifth place, having a family must be not only an accessible but a desirable goal. For that, we need to promote in first place the social recognition of the importance of the family. Traditional societies always ritualized the act of marriage in celebrations that embraced the local community thus showing the importance assigned to the event. Those rites have lately become weaker and in some cases have lost all meaning. We need to find ways for the responsible organizations to generate conditions that dignify and enhance marriage ceremonies at the civil registry.

6. Six. The strengthening of community ties must always be present when developing family policies. When more than one alternative has been proposed, the one to chose must be the one that promotes dialog, mutual dependency, that reinforces solidarity and the realization of common initiatives. All that strengthens the networks of reciprocity and trust. The denser the social fabric, the more its ability to support the family in fulfilling its socializing function. It also facilitates the transfer of standards of behavior to children and adolescents in a much more effective and efficient way than through state bureaucracies and specialized organizations of control.

7.Seven. In the field of information, it is necessary to strengthen the registry office of vital statistics to be able to monitor, through updated information, what is happening with births, legitimate and illegitimate, studying the variations in the categories of mothers most affected by illegitimacy. Also to be able to follow the patterns of marriages and divorces and the characteristics of the people involved in those situations.

8. Finally, and perhaps parallel to the development of policies specifically designed to support the constitution and stability of families, it is necessary to develop instrument to evaluate the effect that these policies have on the structure and functioning of families. Policies in education such as the lengthening of the school day or providing lunch at the school certainly affect the functioning of families. The question is how.

The same happens with policies directed to senior citizens, both the ones related to retirement and pensions as well as the ones on health or old folks homes.

Even more so, it happens with housing policies involving initiatives which were not aimed at changing the structure and functioning of families but that certainly affect those dimensions and should have been previously considered.