Two American Families Essay

While watching the documentary “Two American Families” there was three aspects I noticed within the two families. The first being how there was a shift in the social class of the families due to economic problems. The second being the role reversal of the male and the female. The third being the effect of the families’ financial instability on the children and their decisions into adulthood.
There was a shift in both families’ social standing. The Neumanns and the Stanleys started out as middle-class families, for example, they both had a comfortable income with benefits from their factory jobs in Milwaukee. However, their jobs did not last because the factories started to search for cheap labor overseas. This caused the Neumanns and the

Stanleys social class to shift to a lower class family because they could not provide reliable income for a decent life. Also, the males in the household did not work for period of time or they worked at low-paying jobs. The Neumanns could not afford to buy food due to them paying the overdue mortgage, so they had to go to places that could provide them with the food. The Stanleys could not afford adequate clothing because of lack of money, so they went to thrift shops to find cheap clothes that made them fit in with society (i.e., Fake it, till you make it).
As the shift in the families’ social class changed so did the roles of the women. Cherlin refers to this as women-centered kinship were the strongest bonds of support and caregiving comes from the women it could be finances, support, etc. When the Neumanns was a middle-class family the father worked to bring in the income and the mother stayed at home as the caretaker. Once the husband lost his job the mother stepped up and took odd jobs such as skin seller, truck driver, and factory worker. The mother started to become the person the family depended on for money till the father got a job. The change really took a toll on the father, he started to become depressed and angry seeking divorce as his only way out. The Stanleys situation was different when they were a middle-class family the mother and father both worked and had benefits to provide for the family. Once their social standing changed to lower class the father looked for odd jobs while the wife begins to look into a job real estate to provide for the family income. With the woman working both families was able to get out of lower-class and proceed into a working-class family. In addition, they were able to provide the minimum needs for a decent life. Both men in the families had odd jobs but not any benefits to support the family like the wives did.
The financial instability of both families really took an effect on children.

For example, with the Neumanns, the children started to come to the house alone without their mother caring for them like she used to. As the children reach their teenage years their moods started to change and so did their grades. In adulthood, the boys started to work odds jobs because they had children at young ages, which cause them to drop out of high school. The daughter decided to get a stable job with benefits because she wanted to avoid dealing with the same struggles her family had. The Stanleys children had a different outcome. When the children took notice of the mother and father financial problems the boys decided to get a job in landscaping to help out. The eldest son graduated from high school and proceeded to go to college, which took all the families income and left the other kids without support. Cherlin describes this effect as the limits of kin networks meaning that the induvial income must be shared with the other family members. The mother and father paying for the son’s education cannot give money to the other kids. So the other kids looked for odd jobs or joined the military. In adulthood, the daughters have kids and struggle to make money. The son goes overseas for a job to avoid financial instability that his parents had in the U.S. The college son works at a good job with benefits but is still afraid that he might end up like his mother father, so he decides to work odd jobs

too.
Even though the families were of different cultural backgrounds they each had the same problems financially. Both families faced poverty, the women had to step up and help, sometimes the children. Each child of the Neumanns and Stanleys was effected by the turn of events in a good way or bad way.