Counted Out: Same-Sex Relations and Americans' Definitions of Family

3. Family Accounts: How Americans Talk About Family

37 Chapter 3 Family Accounts: How Americans Talk About Family I n the previous chapter, we identified the living arrangements that Americans count or do not count as family. We found deep disagreement , especially regarding same-sex couples and childless heterosexual cohabiting couples. From their responses, we also discovered that Americans belong to three broad but distinct categories: exclusionists , moderates, or inclusionists. We speculated on the commonalities and distinctions in the reasons for the boundaries between family and nonfamily that these three groups make. Still, our speculation is just that: mere speculation based on inferences from the closedended questions. Answers to these questions are useful, but they do not tell us why Americans are either so willing to endorse an inclusive definition of family or so resistant to doing so. To better understand the rationale behind Americans’ boundarymaking between family and nonfamily, we must rely on how Americans talk about family. To accomplish this goal, we report in this chapter on Americans’ responses in 2003 to this open-ended question: In thinking about your answers to the past few questions about what counts as family, what determines for you whether you think a living arrangement is a family? How exclusionists, moderates, and inclusionists answer this question gives us important insight into Americans’ attitudes regarding family that responses to the closed-end questions cannot convey by themselves. To be sure, the answers to this question echo some themes that we posited in the last chapter. But they add new insight by showing the struggles and complexities that Americans face when defining family and by identifying the arguments that are most resonant and potentially most influential in effecting change. They also take us in 38    Counted Out new directions that bring up new questions—questions that we subsequently posed in 2006.1 In Their Own Words: Exclusionists As described in the previous chapter, exclusionists—who constituted 45.3 percent and 38.1 percent of our 2003 and 2006 samples, respectively —adhere to a more circumscribed definition of family that privileges married heterosexual couples, permits exceptions in the case of single parents, shows ambivalence about cohabiting heterosexual couples with children, and categorically disallows other living arrangements , most notably those of same-sex couples. Figure 3.1 covers the major themes that exclusionists invoked when asked in their own words to explain why they believed that certain living arrangements count or do not count as family.2 Marriage As Fundamental Clearly, the most common theme, offered by over half of the exclusionists (56 percent), is the primacy of marriage. Indeed, most exclusionists’ key requirement for family status is a marital ceremony or other explicit legal arrangement. The transcripts of our interviews are replete with phrases such as “the marriage vow,” “the marriage covenant,” “ceremonial arrangements,” “legal marriage,” “legal connection,” and “legally binding.” In their references to marriage, exclusionists also often mentioned the gender of the marital partners—most notably specifying them as “man and wife,” “man and wife living together,” or “marriage between a man and a woman”—thus making it explicit that their definition excluded gay and lesbian couples. Still others discussed marriage in conjunction with children—for example, “a married couple and their children”—but more often than not exclusionists squarely emphasized marital status. This sentiment was echoed repeatedly in our interviews, even by exclusionists who could be characterized as less than traditional in their own behaviors. A divorced man in his late forties noted: “The marriage . . . I feel pretty strongly about this because I’ve been married twice, and I’ve been in a few of these situations. So I think the marriage part makes it a family whether we want it to be or not sometimes.”3 Interestingly, some exclusionists advocated an explicitly legalistic stance toward family, arguing that if the government does not confer family status—and consequently, familial rights and obligations—to groups other than marital couples, then nonmarital living arrange- Family Accounts    39 ments by definition cannot be families. In explaining why same-sex couples do not count as family, a woman in her forties observed: If you got two males or two females, and they’re living as a couple, [and] you go to insurance purposes, you cannot get the benefits from a person ’s job or from insurance. Or if the person dies, it’s going to always ask for the next of what? Kin. So under this umbrella, I’m going on...