Social Mobility in an Era of Family Instability and Complexity

• Author: Laura Tach
• Published date: 01 January 2015
• Date: 01 January 2015
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/0002716214547854
• Subject Matter: Section II: Special Topics Relevant to Building a New Infrastructure

547854ANN
The Annals of the American AcademySocial Mobility in an Era of Family Instability and Complexity
research-article2014
Families play a central role in the study of social
mobility—they are units of analysis for measuring social
class as well as settings that shape the intergenerational
transmission of resources. The American family has
undergone important changes since the mid-twentieth
century. Divorce, nonmarital childbearing, and cohabi-
tation increased dramatically. The rise in divorce and
cohabitation made the family a less stable unit of
socialization and led to a proliferation of step and
Social Mobility blended family arrangements with complex configura-
tions of residential and biological ties. As a result of
in an Era of these changes, less than half of children spend their
entire childhood in an intact, two-biological parent
household, and families are no longer defined solely by
Family
shared residence or biology. The instability and com-
plexity of family life requires stratification scholars to
Instability and rethink how they measure origin and destination class
and to consider how parents in nontraditional families
transmit class-specific resources to the next generation.
Complexity
Keywords: family structure; inequality; intergenera-
tional mobility; parental influence; survey
research
By
Families play a central role in the study of
LAurA TACh
social mobility. They are often the unit of
analysis of origin and destination social class
position, leading to debates about which family
members should be counted in a measure of
social class position. Beyond its role in defining
social class, family structure is a substantive
part of the social mobility process. Individuals
in less-advantaged class positions are more
Laura Tach is an assistant professor of policy analysis
and management at Cornell University and faculty
affiliate at the Center for the Study of Inequality and
the Cornell Population Center. Her research examines
how social policy shapes urban poverty and family life,
and it has appeared in journals such as Demography,
Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, and the
Annual review of Sociology.
NOTE: This article was prepared for The National
research Council Committee on Population and pre-
sented at the Workshop on Social Mobility, June 10,
2013, in Washington, D.C.
DOI: 10.1177/0002716214547854
ANNALS, AAPSS, 657, January 2015 83

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ThE ANNALS OF ThE AMErICAN ACADEMY
likely to live in nonintact families, and children from nonintact families tend to
achieve lower socioeconomic positions as adults. As such, family structure is a
mechanism in the reproduction of inequality across generations (McLanahan and
Percheski 2008).
Family Structure in the Study of Social Mobility
A long tradition of stratification research has theorized how parents pass on eco-
nomic, cultural, and social resources to their children (Blau and Duncan 1967;
Kohn 1969; Sewell, haller, and Portes 1969; Bourdieu 1973; Kerckhoff 1976;
Featherman and hauser 1978; hout 1984; Lareau 1989). Many of the mecha-
nisms by which parents transmit these attributes to their children require fre-
quent contact and interaction throughout the childhood socialization period
(Coleman 1988; Biblarz and raftery 1993; Beller 2009). The growing prevalence
of unstable and diverse family forms, where parents have unstable or infrequent
contact with their children, raises questions about the process of intergenera-
tional transmission.
An earlier generation of stratification scholars grappled with how to measure
mobility as women entered the labor force. Correlations between fathers and
sons were no longer adequate indicators of social mobility because children and
adults lived in households with two earners and two occupations. This prompted
researchers to begin asking survey questions about the socioeconomic standing
of women and mothers. They also developed measures of class position that
accounted for the socioeconomic positions of both parents. The conventional
view that a family’s class was determined by the father’s or husband’s class posi-
tion (Goldthorpe 1983; Erikson and Goldthorpe 1992) was updated to allow the
“dominant” class position to be the parent with the strongest labor force attach-
ment and higher class position, regardless of gender (Erikson 1984).
Some researchers critiqued the use of just one parent to determine the class
position of the family and advocated for a “joint approach” that incorporated both
parents’ class positions. Advocates for this approach argued that each spouse’s
class position may have an independent and cumulative influence on class
resources (Sewell, hauser, and Wolf 1980; Wright 1989; Sorensen 1994; Beller
2009). Indeed, researchers have found that each parent’s occupation and educa-
tion independently shapes children’s educational outcomes (Mare 1981; Kalmijn
1994; Korupp, Ganzeboom, and Van Der Lippe 2002).
If each parent’s class position influences children’s class positions, the conven-
tional approach that uses just one parent’s information generates measurement
error. Estimates of father-child associations, for example, will include the corre-
lated but unmeasured effects of mothers’ class resources. If the correlation
between mothers’ and fathers’ class positions is greater than zero, using just
fathers’ class position will lead to an overestimate of the association between
fathers and children. And if the correlation between mothers and fathers is less
than one, using just fathers’ class position will lead to an underestimate of the
total origin-destination association. Furthermore, because assortative mating (the

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SOCIAL MOBILITY IN AN ErA OF FAMILY INSTABILITY AND COMPLExITY
85
correlation between mothers’ and fathers’ characteristics) differs across groups
and over time (Mare 1991), researchers could erroneously interpret variation in
conventional mobility estimates as substantive differences in the extent of mobil-
ity rather than as the result of differences in the amount of measurement error
across groups or over time (Beller 2009).
The rationale for including information from two parents in measures of class
position was developed for intact, two-parent families, but the logic applies to
other family configurations as well. how should one incorporate the socioeco-
nomic position of a nonresident parent, stepparent, or other parent-like figure
who shares biological or residential ties with children? If parents and parent-like
figures from nontraditional family forms pass on at least some of their economic
and cultural resources to children—that is, if their intergenerational associations
are greater than zero—failure to include them in measures of social class position
will bias both individual- and family-based measures of social mobility.
In the past, bias generated by excluding these nontraditional family members
was likely small because they constituted a relatively small fraction of all house-
holds. This logic no longer holds, due to the growing prevalence of unstable and
complex family forms. These families raise measurement questions about which
family members to include in a family’s class position and theoretical questions
about how different types of family members transmit class-specific resources
across generations.
The Growing Diversity of Family Forms
The American family has undergone dramatic changes since the mid-twentieth
century. Divorce, nonmarital childbearing, and cohabitation have become more
common. The rise in divorce and cohabitation has made the family a less stable
unit of socialization and led to a proliferation of step and blended family arrange-
ments with complex residential and biological ties. As a result of these changes,
less than half of children spend their entire childhood in an intact, two-biological
parent household, and families are no longer defined solely by shared residence
and biology (Carlson and Meyer 2014). In complex families, relationships tend to
be more troubled, and the rights and responsibilities of family members for one
another are less certain. This has led some scholars to consider implications for
the meaning of marriage in society and others to consider the implications for
child well-being (Cherlin 2004; halpern-Meekin and Tach 2008). For mobility
scholars, the instability and complexity of family life raises questions about how
to define origin and destination class positions and how parents in nontraditional
families transmit class-specific resources to the next generation.
Cohabitation
Nonmarital births accounted for less than 5 percent of all births in the united
States in 1950, but by 2009 more than 40 percent of births occurred outside of

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ThE ANNALS OF ThE AMErICAN ACADEMY
marriage (Martin et al. 2011; Ventura and Bachrach 2000; Ventura 2009). This
growth occurred unevenly across the socioeconomic spectrum, with rapid growth
among less-educated mothers but only slight increases among highly educated
mothers (McLanahan 2004). Despite this striking change in the family context of
childbearing, most unmarried mothers have their children within romantic rela-
tionships. The proportion of nonmarital births occurring within cohabitation has
increased sharply since the 1980s, accounting for almost all of the increase in
nonmarital childbearing. In the 2000s, about half of nonmarital children were...