Gender and Couple Relationships by Susan M. McHale Valarie King Jennifer Van Hook & Alan Booth

Author:Susan M. McHale, Valarie King, Jennifer Van Hook & Alan Booth
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Springer International Publishing, Cham

Intersectionality, Power, and Diversity

Thus far, the discussion of expansionist theory has been applied only to a limited group of US men who are middle-class , employed, and married. How does expansionist theory apply to fathers who are not employed, and who may not be married or residing with children? Since the late 1970s, men’s experiences as fathers have diversified alongside growing income inequality . In fact, one of the fastest growing segments of the US population is that of low-income men, who now encompass 28 % of the population (McDaniel, Simms, Fortuny, & Monson, 2013) . The emergence of intersectionality as an important development in our understanding of expansionist theory is briefly mentioned by Hyde (See “Women, Men, Work, and Family: Expansionist Theory Updated”). This paradigm shift is critical in moving us beyond a simple focus on middle-class men who are providers and caregivers.

Intersectionality encourages us to examine a full range of diversity. Shifting family arrangements tell us an important story about men in families . Gender has been reconfigured and couple relationships are diversified in family units in recent decades. Only 34 % of the children now live in married, dual-income families (Cohen, 2014) . Further, 43 % of the adults live in married couple households, but 40 % live in lone individual or single-parent households. To relegate expansionist theory or the study of work and family dynamics, to a shrinking segment of married, dual-income couples is to misunderstand the very real impact of economic and social changes. It is still the case that the work/family field of research is “haunted by the lives it excludes” (MacDermid, Roy, & Zvoncovic, 2014) .

I argue for extending the analysis of expansionist theory to view intersectionality as a reflection of power and inequality, not just diversity. How are gender and couple relationships shaped by emerging inequality and social institutions? For example, the establishment of a national child support system has had varied impacts on men in different family arrangements. For men with resources in the middle and upper classes, nonresidential fathers pay child support which is received by mothers and children. In contrast, low-income nonresidential fathers whose children receive welfare assistance also pay child support, likely lower amounts, but it is not necessarily received by mothers and children. In half of the states, their payments go directly to the state agency to recoup cash assistance. The remaining states have arranged for a small percentage of the payment to pass through to poor families, with only five states passing through the entire child support award.

These fathers face very different incentives to contribute financially to their children’s well-being. In my own research, low-income fathers are unable to secure a package deal and unable to take on multiple role expectations in part due to intervention of policy systems that shape fatherhood in new and complicated ways (Roy, 2014) . Cory was a young 25-year-old wrestler with two preschool age sons from a former girlfriend. He completed paternity establishment and was immediately served with a child support order. He and

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