focus of Cofer Forum
American families face many challenges today, but families may actually be more stable than in centuries past. That was the message of speakers at the Eloise Cofer Family and Community Issues Forum held Oct. 19 in Raleigh.
This year’s forum, entitled “Family Realities . . . Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow,” was presented by the Department of Family and Consumer Sciences at North Carolina State University.
FCS faculty chose the topic of families because they were concerned about the impact the current economic downturn would have on families, said Dr. Karen DeBord, child development Extension specialist at N.C. State University and one of the conference leaders. Organizers wanted to give those who work with families a current perspective on the state of the family.
Also this year, the School of Human Environmental Sciences at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro participated as a leader and sponsor of the forum. “Our vision is that the forum will be a regional event, with partners like UNC-G to extend its reach,” said Dr. Sandra Zaslow, head of N.C. State’s Department of Family and Consumer Sciences.
Zaslow said the forum, named for former FCS department head Eloise Cofer, is an opportunity for the department to network and build new relationships with other agencies.
“The forum was conceived and supported by our department and by Dr. Cofer as a means to bring expert speakers from across the country to address family and community issues of interest to Cooperative Extension and other professionals who work with families,” she said.
The five speakers focused on how families have changed over time, what they look like today and how policy changes could help families in the future.
Speaker Steven Mintz described how the traditional family of parents and children emerged 150 years ago, but only included about 20 to 25 percent of all families of the time. Though divorce rates seem high today, 200 years ago the average marriage lasted only seven years, usually ending with the death of one spouse.
In the early 19th century, men who wanted to leave their wives simply advertised and sold them to another man. Today’s divorce rate of nearly 50 percent suggests that we place a higher emotional value on family ties, said Mintz, John and Rebecca Morris Professor of History at the University of Houston.
Mintz also described abuses of children in today’s society. Those include the violence of poverty. Today, 25 percent of all American children live in poverty.
Mintz said that a shortage of caregiving in a full-employment economy is a major source of stress for today’s American families. All of society must share in caregiving, he said.
Speaker Barbara Risman focused on North Carolina 2000 census data to demonstrate that families have changed little over the past decade. Poverty rates have declined some, but Risman said poverty statistics show that welfare-to-work programs don’t necessarily move people out of poverty.
Risman, professor and director of graduate studies in sociology at N.C. State University, said today’s “family values war” is between families and the institutions that work against them. Though parents are working full-time in most families, workplaces, schools and other support institutions have not responded to this reality.
Jan Hogan, professor of family social science at the University of Minnesota, discussed the financial ups and downs of American families. Today, the rich in America are richer, and though the poor are not poorer, the gap between the haves and have nots is growing.
Families today generally don’t stay in poverty over a long period of time, she said. Only about 5 percent of families remain in poverty. Most move to middle class through education. She also described a “fragile middle class” in America, where job loss or change, divorce with debt or medical problems can quickly bring families to bankruptcy.
Hogan said that a policy agenda for families should include programs to help the poor move up the economic ladder.
Finally, Dennis Orthner, professor of social work and public policy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, wrapped up the forum by offering steps North Carolina could take to support families.
He recommended that the state build economic support for families, especially lower-income families, through child care support. He also said that North Carolina should recognize that moving welfare families from non-working to working still leaves them in poverty.
Orthner suggested that North Carolina make families a priority, so that the state might be known as the “good families state,” rather than the “good roads state.”
—Natalie
Hampton
