Social Justice and the Future of Healthy Families: Sociocultural Changes and Challenges

• Published date: 01 July 2019
• Date: 01 July 2019
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/fare.12358

S T. R University of Texas at Austin

Social Justice and the Future of Healthy Families:

Sociocultural Changes and Challenges

Given the pace of social changes, meanings of

“family” and what makes a family healthy are

changing. How can these changing meanings

and understandings contribute to social justice

for all families? First, I acknowledge how my

personal history has intersected with research

I do on youth and families. I dene social jus-

tice with respect to healthy families, and then

consider how contemporary scholarship helps

dene, redene, and rene what is meant by

“family.” Examples arepresented from research

on cultural inuences on parenting; parentingin

same-sex couple or lesbian, gay, bisexual,trans-

gender,or queer (LGBTQ) families; and coming

out in adolescence as LGBTQ. These examples

illustrate how the notion of family is dened,

redened, and rened to provide new vantage

points on the complexities, possibilities, and

potential for social justice among contemporary

families, especially those that are marginalized.

What is the future of healthy families? In

the context of today’s extraordinary social

changes, how can the future for families

and what will keep them healthy be under-

stood and anticipated? These are generative

questions—prompting questions—that not only

reach forward but also look back to understand

Department of Human Development and Family

Sciences, University of Texas at Austin, 108 E.

Dean Keeton Street, Stop A2702, Austin, TX 78712

(stephen.russell@utexas.edu).

Key Words: Families, health, LGBTQ, parenting, social

justice.

the changing nature of family life and the

changing meanings of health for families. First,

I ground my responses to these questions in

my personal experience, acknowledging how it

intersects with my research on families and thus

shapes my response to these questions. Next,

social justice is dened with respect to healthy

families, and with this background, ways that

contemporary scholarship denes,redenes, and

renes the meaning of “family” are considered,

focusing on cultural inuences on parenting,

and on parenting in same-sex couple or lesbian,

gay, and bisexual (LGB) families in particu-

lar. Finally, research on lesbian, gay, bisexual,

transgender, queer, and questioning (LGBTQ)

youth and their families is used to illustrate

and document contemporary changes in family

relationships and healthy families. Together this

scholarship is used as grounding for an analysis

of healthy families, human rights, and social

justice.

P H  F S

During my postdoctoral studies, I worked

with Glenn H. Elder, Jr. and Rand D. Con-

ger on a study of families in changing times,

considering connections across generations

to family land and farming in central Iowa

during the farm crisis of the 1980s, which was

a period of unprecedented economic change

for rural families in the United States (Elder

& Conger et al., 2000). I also began using the

National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to

Adult Health (the Add Health Study), which

was being conducted at the University of North

358 Family Relations 68 (July 2019): 358–370

DOI:10.1111/fare.12358