Pacific Sociological Association Brothers' Keepers: Situating Kinship Relations in Broader Networks of Social Support Author(s): Barry Wellman and Scot Wortley Reviewed work(s): Source: Sociological Perspectives, Vol. 32, No. 3 (Autumn, 1989), pp. 273-306 Published by: University of California Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1389119 . Accessed: 29/04/2012 13:27 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. University of California Press and Pacific Sociological Association are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Sociological Perspectives. http://www.jstor.org
Transcript
Pacific Sociological Association
Brothers' Keepers: Situating Kinship Relations in Broader Networks of Social SupportAuthor(s): Barry Wellman and Scot WortleyReviewed work(s):Source: Sociological Perspectives, Vol. 32, No. 3 (Autumn, 1989), pp. 273-306Published by: University of California PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1389119 .Accessed: 29/04/2012 13:27
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].
University of California Press and Pacific Sociological Association are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize,preserve and extend access to Sociological Perspectives.
Sociological Perspectives Copyright 0 1989 Pacific Sociological Association
Vol. 32, No. 3, pp. 273-306 ISSN 0731-1214
BROTHERS' KEEPERS: Situating Kinship Relations in Broader Networks
of Social Support BARRY WELLMAN
SCOT WORTLEY
University of Toronto
ABSTRACT: The authors evaluate the importance ofkin in providing four different dimensions of social support: emotional aid, services, financial aid, and companionship. The authors analysis uses both quantitative and inter- view data from the East York (Toronto) studies of social networks. Kin
comprise slightly less than half of these networks: an average of five ties out
of twelve. Parents and adult children are highly supportive network members, providing high levels of emotional aid, services and financial aid
(they avoid companionship, however). Siblings complement and substitute
for parents and children, especially in the provision of services. Because there are many more ties between siblings than there are between parents and children, siblings (along with friends and neighbors) provide a substantial
proportion of the support East Yorkers receive. By contrast, extended kin tend to be the least supportive and least companionable of network members.
If kinship systems did not keep extended kin in contact, few would be active network members.
W(H)ITHER KIN?
"Am I my brother's keeper?" asked Cain about Abel. Millennia later, this is still an open question. People in all societies wonder about the extent to which their friends and relatives can help them to deal with everyday problems, acute crises, and chronic burdens. Concerns about the availability of such "social support" usually mingle with nostalgia for the past. Are contemporary communities and kinship groups as ready and able to be supportive as were our legendary ancestors?
We now know that community and kinship have stood up well to the large-scale social transformations of urbanization, industrialization, bureaucratization, tech- nological change, capitalism, and socialism.1 We have also learned that kith and kin are not relics from a pastoral past but are active arrangements for helping in- dividuals and households deal with stresses and opportunities. They provide everything from empathetic advice to health care to capital and labor power for productive work. Direct all correspondence to: Barry Wellman, Centre for Urban and Community Studies, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M5S 1A1.
SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES Volume 32, Number 3,1989
Analysts have triumphantly gone beyond demonstrating the sheer persistence of
community and kinship to debating the place of such ties in contemporary lives.
They have found interpersonal networks to be motley crews: socially diverse, spatially dispersed, and sparsely knit (Willmott 1987;Wellman 1988a). They crude-
ly estimate that most North Americans and Europeans have informal ties with
approximately 1,500 persons (Boissevain 1974; Pool & Kochen 1978). Friends com-
prise the largest segment of active relations, while neighbors and co-workers dominate daily meetings. Active kinship relations are much rarer, with most kin
only vaguely known or known about. Now that we know that kinship ties continue to exist, what is their volume,
proportion, role, and uniqueness? Do individuals have many kinship ties or a few? How central are these relations within an individual's broader network of sociabil-
ity and support? What sorts of support do kin give each other? Is this different from the support that friends give? Such questions have sometimes led analysts to divide Western kinship relations into two distinct categories. They have argued that
especially supportive ties stretch between parents and adult children (Fischer 1986; Coward 1988; Radoeva 1988; Somlai 1988) and siblings (Irish 1964; Farber & Smith 1985; Gold 1987; Rosenthal 1987), while weak, unsupportive ties usually link extended kin (Coombs 1980; Laslett 1988).
In arguing (with Parsons 1943; Wirth 1938, and others) that kinship ties remain
important sources of companionship and support, analysts sometimes reduce their
conception of kinship to a form of friendship (see the discussions in Craven & Wellman 1973; Fischer 1982a). If kinship is now just a peculiar form of friendship, then it has become more of a voluntary act with individuals choosing to maintain active (as distinguished from latent) relationships with selected kinfolk. Unsup- portive kin should be as rare as unsupportive friends in such voluntaristic networks, and kin should be indistinguishable from friends in the kinds of support they provide.
Yet most North Americans and British do distinguish between kith and kin, and
they make important distinctions in how they expect to relate to different types of kin. They feel they should have stronger ties with their immediate kin-parents, adult children, siblings, and cognate in-laws-than with their extended kin-grand- parents, aunts, uncles, cousins, etc. They regard parent/adult child bonds as
especially strong and supportive (Firth, Hubert, & Forge 1969; Mogey 1977; Farber 1981; Rosenthal 1985). They are less apt to expect relations with extended kin to be
strong and supportive. There is no one kind of social relationship called "social support." Rather, many
different kinds of supportive resources flow through informal networks. Yet most network members provide only specialized aid. This means that the people at the centers of these networks must obtain various kinds of aid from different network members. Just as general stores have given way to boutiques, people must search
through their assortment of ties to find specific kinds of support. This differentiated world suggests caution in treating kinship, a priori, as a unique
system of sociability and support. Instead, our study uses a social network approach to situate kinship relations within broader sets of informal ties. The network
274
BROTHERS KEEPERS
approach starts with the sets of all persons with whom individuals are actively linked and only then inquires whether such network members are kith or kin (Wellman 1982,1988a, 1988b).
Our basic question is: To which network members outside of their households do people turn in order to obtain which kinds of social support? When do they look to kith or to kin-and for what kinds of resources? We first document the variety of kinship and friendship relationships-supportive and not-in these networks. We next look at which kinds of relationships tend to provide similar kinds of social support, with a view to seeing if kinship ties are distinctive in the kinds of support they provide. For which kinds of support are which kinship ties especially apt to be useful? As part of this enterprise, we investigate in detail the most supportive of all relationships: those between parents, adult children, and siblings.
THE EAST YORK STUDIES
Our investigation uses both quantitative and qualitative data from the East York studies of urban social networks. East York is a densely settled, residential area of about 100,000, a half-hour trip from Toronto's central business district. Its residents view their area as a tranquil, cohesive community with strong family ties. The informal social support East Yorkers get is often interwoven with institutionally provided care. The borough has a long tradition of communal aid and active social service agencies, and as in the rest of Canada, medical services are free.
Our information comes principally from interviews conducted in 1977-1978 with a quasi-random subsample of twenty-nine of the 845 randomly-sampled East Yorkers we had first surveyed in 1968. The East Yorkers are predominantly British- Canadian, married (with children), working-class and lower middle-class. The men hold jobs such as electrician, laboratory technician, and truck driver, while the women hold jobs such as secretary, waitress, and insurance claims examiner. The somewhat homogeneous class and ethnic composition of the sample may restrict its general applicability.
We interviewed the respondents for 10-15 hours about the 347 active members of their personal networks: 137 socially-close intimates and 210 somewhat less-intimate significant persons with whom the respondents were actively in contact.2 These active ties are the units of the analysis in the present study. By asking about all active ties, we are able to assess the position of kinship ties in these networks and to compare supportive and non-supportive ties. Because we have available both quantitative and qualitative data from the interviews we have been able to jux- tapose the precision of statistical analysis with the richness of textual analysis. As a check on the findings derived from the small interview sample, we have also done as comparable as possible an analysis using the larger 1968 survey dataset (845 respondents with 3,930 ties). Findings based on the survey data consistently cor- roborate those reported here which are based on the interview data.
The networks contain a mean of twelve active ties, five intimate and seven significant (but not intimate). Slightly less than half (44 percent) of the active network members are kin. Only a minority of the active network members live in
275
SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES Volume 32, Number 3,1989
the same neighborhoods as the respondents, with more than half living at least nine miles away. The median network member is in touch with a respondent about once every two weeks, with contact being in person somewhat more frequently than by telephone. Most interaction takes place in private milieus: homes, vacation cottages, or the telephone (for more details, see Wellman, Carrington, & Hall 1988).
These active networks typically contain one large core component of about eight members, all of whom are directly or indirectly linked with one another, for example, "friends of friends" or "my best friend is also close with my sister." Yet the appreciable amount of local integration within the components and clusters of these networks does not mean that the overall networks are highly integrated. The median density of 0.33 means that only one-third of all possible links between active network members actually exist.
SUPPORT
Social scientists originally treated social support as a generalized resource available from network members to deal with routine problems, acute crises, and chronic burdens. Working in health care research, they concentrated on showing that social support helps people to be happier, healthier, and longer-lived. Yet socially sup- portive resources differ, and analysts recently have been distinguishing between different types of support: for example, emotional aid, material aid, information, and companionship. They have come to realize that not all network members are supportive, and that even those network members who are supportive may provide only certain kinds of support (see the reviews in Wellman 1981; Lin, Dean, & Ensel 1986; Pilisuk & Park 1986; Hall & Wellman 1985; Israel & Rounds 1987).
Our own research is interested more in the social production of support than in its health-giving consequences. We acquired information about eighteen different kinds of social support from the interviews and a follow-up questionnaire. We asked the respondents to tell us about each of the major and minor types of aid they had ever received from or given to each network member (for more details, see Wellman 1982; Wellman & Hiscott 1985; Wellman & Wortley 1989).3 We found that the network members specialize in the kinds of social support they give to East Yorkers. Although many ties have provided some kind of companionship, emo- tional aid, or service, most ties have usually supplied a total of only one to three kinds of support (out of a maximum of eighteen studied). A typical relationship contains one or two kinds of companionship together with one or two kinds of either emotional aid or services.
We used variable cluster analysis to identify which kinds of support these relationships have often provided. This analysis showed that the same network members have provided several different kinds of emotional aid or different kinds of services, but that the same network members have not often provided both emotional aid and services. The one substantive anomaly is instructive: the network members who provide major services (such as acute or chronic health care) are the same persons as those who provide emotional aid-and not those who provide such
276
BROTHERS KEEPERS
other services as household aid and occasional child care (Wellman & Hiscott 1985). Such major services appear to be as emotionally supportive as they are instrumen-
tally useful. The cluster analysis revealed five basic "dimensions" of support:
- Emotional Aid, provided in some form by 61 percent of the network members (the kinds included are minor emotional aid, family problems advice, major emotional aid, major services);
- Services, provided by 61 percent of the network members (minor services, lending or giving household items, minor household aid, major household aid, organizational aid);
- Companionship, provided by 58 percent of the network members (discuss- ing ideas, doing things together, fellow participants in an organization);
- Financial Aid, provided by 16 percent of the network members (small loans/gifts, large loans/gifts, large loans/gifts for housing);
- Job/Housing Information, provided by 10 percent of the network members (job information, job contacts, housing search).4
Few ties provide many dimensions of social support. Instead, different rela-
tionships tend to provide emotional aid, services, financial aid, companionship, or information.5 The division of supportive labor within these networks means that East Yorkers must work to maintain an array of potentially supportive rela-
tionships. When they have problems, they must search through their networks for
specialized assistance rather than being able to count on finding help throughout the network.
Yet such help has usually been there when sought, and it sometimes has been there when not sought. These ties do more than simply help the East Yorkers to pass time and find social identities. They not only provide aid for dealing with routine
problems, they are important "reproduction reserve armies" sending large and diverse quantities of resources to the rescue in times of crisis: from emotional
support to large and small services to major transfers of wealth. Aid from network members is more closely linked to domestic work than to paid
work. The ties are almost always based in homes and not in workplaces or formal
organizations. The East Yorkers spend much time and effort maintaining sociable relations with network members and using their relations to satisfy immediate household needs. They spend some time (and more effort) mobilizing resources
through these networks to deal with crises. These networks are conservative, providing havens to help East Yorkers keep
what they have and providing emotional aid and services to heal routine and
extraordinary stresses. Unlike the informal relations of production and economic survival common in the Third World, the East Yorkers' networks principally provide emotional aid, domestic material aid, and companionship. They rarely provide financial aid, help in earning a living, or links to political movements.
277
SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES Volume 32, Number 3,1989
KINFOLK AS NETWORK MEMBERS
Kinship relations are important to East Yorkers. Kinfolk comprise nearly half (44 percent) of their active ties, including 47 percent of their socially-close intimates and 41 percent of their less socially-close but still significant ties. One-quarter of the networks contain at least two-thirds kin, while three-quarters of the networks contain at least one-quarter kin (Table 1). The kin in these active networks are usually a majority of all living kin (through first cousins).6
Most living immediate kin are active network members. Such relationships are usually quite important to the East Yorkers: 53 percent of them are in intimate relationships rather than in less-close significant ones. Overall, immediate kin comprise 31 percent of all active network members, fully 42 percent of intimate network members, but only 24 percent of significant network members (Table 2). Siblings comprise the bulk of the immediate kinship ties, followed by parents and a few adult children.
The great majority of these networks (79 percent) contain parents or adult children, usually as central figures. Eighty-six percent of all networks also contain at least one sibling. In four networks without parents, sisters, and brothers work actively to hold kinfolk together. Only two networks (7 percent) operate without kin activity: One contains only a peripheral cousin and one contains no kin. In the latter case, a childless retired plumber (Gerald Hopkins, married, sixty-six) has cut his ties with relatives because they "expect more of you than natural friends. As far as I am concerned relatives aren't worth it."7
In contrast with immediate kin, extended kin relationships-with grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins-are rarely intimate. Although extended kin are 12 percent of all active network members, they comprise only 5 percent of the intimates but 18 percent of the weaker significant relationships (Table 2).
The kith who make up a slight majority of the network members are predominantly friends (24 percent), and neighbors (20 percent), with a smaller representation of co-workers (8 percent) and other relationships which operate
Mean % Kin in Networks 46 (44) 45 (43) 44 (43) Standard Deviation 28 (27) 36 (36) 28 (29) Notes: *Percentages in parentheses count couple ties as two.
N = 29 Networks.
278
BROTHERS KEEPERS
within formal organizations (5 percent). Most friends are intimates (61 percent), but other kith rarely are intimate (Table 2).
The East Yorkers' kinship relations are different from their friendship ties in ways that can affect the exchange of social support. Because most kinship ties have been born and not made, kin have known each other longer than friends. Kinship ties in these networks have lasted an average of thirty-five years, almost three times as
long as ties with other network members. Moreover, because kinship is a system
Table 2 Percentage of Role Types by Intimacy (Couples Counted as 2 Ties)
Tie All Ties Intimate Significant Type
Women Men Total Women Men Total Women Men Total
Parents Parents-in-law Total
Children Children-in-law Total
Siblings Siblings-in-law Total
Immediate Kin
Grandparents Aunts/Uncles Cousins Other Kin Other-in-laws
SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES Volume 32, Number 3,1989
and not a set of unconnected ties, comparatively densely-knit clusters of kinship relations provide structural bases for social coordination and control. Thus kin have the advantages of having arrived early and having a densely-knit cluster of ties reinforce their relationships. However, they have the disadvantages of being less voluntarily chosen than friends to be network members and of being less socially similar to the persons at the centers of these networks (Pitt-Rivers 1973; Graves & Graves 1980).
Most of the networks with a high proportion of kin are large, densely-knit, and supportive. However, three networks with a high proportion of kin are quite small. These East Yorkers rarely see their kinfolk or exchange aid with them. They are persons who report that they "keep to themselves," preferring kinship ties because they take less effort to maintain than social ties with friends, neighbors, or coworkers.
Do kin enact distinct roles in these networks? One approach to this question is to ask if kin give different kinds of support than friends. We used hierarchical cluster analysis to compare the tendency of different kinship and non-kinship roles to provide emotional aid, services, companionship, financial aid, and job/housing information. Those roles which tend to have similar profiles in the proportions of members providing these kinds of support will tend to cluster together.8
The cluster analysis shows that we can distinguish kin empirically from non-kin. Kinship roles are generally distinct from non-kinship roles in the extent to which they provide dimensions of support to the East Yorkers (see Figure 1). We can easily identify as clusters in Figure 1: (1) parents, (2) children, (3) siblings, (4) extended kin, (5) friends and neighbors, and (6) ties based on common membership in the workplace or another formal organization. Moreover, with the exception of same- generation brothers and sisters (whose roles are more similar to friends), all of the kin lie near each other in the bottom half of the dendrogram. Other similarities are instructive: Parents-in-law are similar to parents, and men are similar to women in the equivalent kinship role (note the proximity of mothers and fathers).
STRATEGY AND TACTICS
Role Types While the cluster analysis identifies similarities in the support profiles of different types of network members, it does not show which types of network members specialize in providing which types of support. To study this, we use a five-role typology based on the six clusters described above: (1) parents and children, (2) siblings, (3) extended kin, (4) friends, (5) organizational ties.
Although cluster analysis guided the development of this typology, it did not determine it. We reduced the number of categories from six to five by grouping parents with adult children. They are adjacent in the clustering dendrogram (Figure 1), there are two few adult children in the sample for satisfactory multivariate analysis, and the support profiles of parents and children differ only in that it is the parents who give financial support and the adult children who receive it. We also
280
BROTHERS KEEPERS
moved male neighbors and the few siblings-in-law to the friend and sibling categories respectively.
Couple Ties
Ties with married couples present a major definitional problem in relating tie characteristics to support. What appears at first to be a single tie between two persons can often be a complex social relationship involving three or four persons. Is a tie to a married couple one relationship or two? How do we count the relationships between "Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice" (Mazursky 1969)? There is no single answer. In many cases, there is really only a single tie to either the husband or the wife, with the other person being only a background figure. In many other cases, the East Yorkers insisted that their tie was to the wife and husband jointly: They interacted with them as a unit and thought of them that way. In only a few cases do the East Yorkers report having separate relationships with husbands and wives.
Hence we counted ties to a couple as a single tie in analyzing social support unless the respondent said the ties were separate. We assumed that such joint "couple ties" essentially have the personal characteristics (gender, etc.) of the primary person in the relationship. This procedure reduced the number of active ties from 444 to 347 (compare Tables 2 and 3). It resulted in slight decreases in the proportion of ties who are friends and neighbors-persons most likely to be dealt with as couples- and a slight increase in the proportions of parents, siblings, and organizational ties (Table 3). Thus the procedure raised the percentage of kin among all active network members from 42 percent to 44 percent.
East Yorkers rarely define kin as being in couple ties: Such ties are only 6 percent of active parent-child bonds, 16 percent of sibling bonds, and 20 percent of extended kin bonds. If the East Yorkers do name both immediate kin in a couple, they are apt to name them-and deal with them-as separate relationships. By contrast, they deal as couples with many friends (35 percent) and neighbors (49 percent). These couple relationships are significantly more likely to operate in neighborhood milieus, such as backyards and street corers.
Although couple ties do provide two bodies for the price of one relationship, our analysis suggests that they are not significantly more likely than single ties to have provided support. The one partial exception is emotional support. Only 38 percent of men in couple ties have provided any kind of emotional aid, a significantly lower percentage than is the case for support provided by single men or women (coupled or single). Many married men defer to their wives as the principal providers of emotional support to households and networks (see also Wellman 1985).
A Multivariate Approach While simple cross-tabulations show directly the extent to which different role types (parents and children, etc.) provide various kinds of support (emotional aid, etc.),
281
SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES Volume 32, Number 3,1989
multiple regression allows us to assess the importance of role type when compared with other relational factors which may also engender support. It also allows us to control for the confounding impact of such factors on support (for example, the
tendency of kin to live further apart than friends). In addition to kinship, sociologists have produced at least five other potential explanations for the social production of social support:
Table 3 Percentage of Role Types by Intimacy (Couples Counted as 1 Ties)
Grandparents Aunts/Uncles Cousins Other Kin Other-in-laws
1 5 5 2 2
Extended Kin
All Kin
Friends Neighbors Total
Coworkers Organizational Total
All Nonkin
TOTAL
Note: N = 444.
282
BROTHERS KEEPERS
Figure 1 Clustering of Role Types by Social Support Profiles
Sctp: 0 s 10 is I I a
Note: No children-in-law in data set.
- The social closeness of a relationship (e.g., intimacy, voluntariness);
- Opportunities for contact in a relationship (e.g., frequency of contact, residential distance);
- The multiplexity of a relationship (e.g., the number of contexts in which the relationship operates);
- The resources available to potentially supportive persons (e.g., socio- economic status, gender, education);
- Similarities in the personal characteristics of the two participants in a rela- tionship (e.g., same gender).
The first three arguments derive from the qualities of the relationships themselves while the fourth and fifth arguments derive from the characteristics of the network members. In contrast, kinship analyses derive from the interpersonal environment in which these ties are embedded. We selected a number of indicators of these arguments (see Wellman, et al. 1987 for more detailed discussions and variable descriptions) and use multiple logistic regression to discover the extent to which different types of relationships are apt to provide emotional aid, services, financial aid, or companionship.
We use multiple logistic regression because the cluster-derived support variables
283
SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES Volume 32, Number 3,1989
are coded dichotomously: "Yes" (the relationship provides some sort of support in this cluster) or "No" (the relationship does not provide any kind of support in this cluster). This approach treats relationships providing a small amount of emotional aid are treated the same as those providing a great deal of emotional aid.
We use this conservative coding approach for several reasons: It addresses the fundamental question of support and non-support in a relationship (" does she or doesn't she help out with emotional problems?"). It avoids assumptions that the number of types of support in a cluster is a continuous, equal-interval variable (0-1 types of emotional aid does not necessarily equal 1-2 types). Moreover, the small range of possible values in a variable which counts the number of kinds of support in each dimension of aid (0 to 3-5) is not suited to the assumptions of ordinary least squares regression.
The next section provides the results of our analyses for each dimension of social support. Logistic regressions identify which tie characteristics-including kinship ties-are supportive.9 Cross-tabulations show the percentage of network members of each relational type who provide each kind of support (for both "intimates" and non-intimate "significants"). Quotations taken from the respondents' interviews provide a more detailed understanding of the aid kin provide.
WHICH TIES GIVE WHAT KINDS OF SUPPORT?
Emotional Aid
A majority (61 percent) of all active network members have given some kind of emotional aid to the East Yorkers. This aid is especially likely to have come from intimates, those interacting with the East Yorkers in more than two social contexts (multiplex ties), women, and parents and children (Table 4). Although friends and siblings are not significantly more apt to provide emotional aid, most friends and siblings have provided emotional support (Table 4). Indeed, because friends and siblings comprise the majority of relations (66 percent) in these networks, they comprise the majority (69 percent) of those active network members who have provided emotional aid (Table 5).
By contrast, extended kin have not usually provided emotional support (Table 4) except in rare major crises (Table 6). Furthermore, emotional support does not depend significantly on the frequency of contact between network members, the multiplexity of their relationship, their resources (other than gender), or their similarities to the East Yorkers.
Parents and Adult Children Almost all parents and adult children (including in-laws) have provided emo-
tional support (Table 4). The bond is important in both directions: whether the reporting respondent is the adult child or (more rarely) the parent. Although only 8 percent of the East Yorkers' active ties are with parents or adult children, these relationships comprise 13 percent of the East Yorkers' emotionally supportive relationships (Table 5). Moreover, ties between parents and children are so emo-
284
BROTHERS KEEPERS
tionally supportive that they seem to transcend routine feelings of intimacy. Parents and children who are not intimates have provided emotional aid at about the same rate as those who are intimate (Table 4).
At first glance the gender gap appears reduced for parents and children, with almost as high a percentage of fathers and sons (78 percent) as mothers and
daughters (86 percent) having provided some kind of emotional support. Yet when we consider each specific kind of emotional support, mothers and daughters have been more supportive than fathers and sons. For example, 73 percent of mothers and daughters have provided advice on family problems in contrast to only 33
percent of fathers and sons (Table 6). Similarly, 64 percent of mothers and daughters have provided emotional support in crisis periods in contrast to 44 percent of fathers and sons. Taken as a whole, the emotional support data suggest that although fathers and sons are almost as likely as mothers and daughters to have provided some kid of emotional support, mothers and daughters are more likely to have
provided each specific kind of emotional support (for example, help in a major emotional crisis) and are also more likely to have provided several kinds of it.
Many East Yorkers have had warm, emotionally supportive ties with mothers and daughters. For example, Betty Lancaster (married homemaker, thirty-five, one child) still recalls vividly how her mother helped her many years ago through a
period as a drug addict and teenage prostitute:
Being close to my mother is that if there were ever any problem that she had or that I had, we know that the other person is always there. We're close in that we know each other is always there. It wouldn't matter what it was, the other one is always there. Lots of things that I've been through, she's always stuck by me. My drug addiction, and having a child before I was married and I had a nervous breakdown: she was with me through all that.
Robina Cook (married, forty-nine, three children) has frequently called on an adult daughter for routine advice:
Well, it's more of a general thing. I will discuss things with Linda and she is a very common sense person. I like talking something out with her even though I might have a fair idea on it: her feeling on it is quite important to me. It really is. I like her thinking.
Martha Ellis' (married homemaker, forty-five, two children) description of her mother shows the strength and breadth of their bond:
I can sit down and discuss anything with my mother, and I know that's as far as it's going to go. If she happens to be coming out this way on business or something, she'll drop in and have a cup of coffee and a chat and away she'll go again. Often or particularly through the winter on a Saturday night if the children aren't doing anything, we'll just hop over and spend an hour or a couple of hours with her
285
SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES Volume 32, Number 3,1989
for a chat, about anything in general or about other members of the family or a crisis or something that has come up. If I needed her in an emergency to come to the house and stay, she'd be on the next train or the next plane and be here when I needed her. If she was on her feet and able to get here.
Although not as supportive as mothers and daughters, fathers and sons are some of the most emotionally supportive network members, except when it comes to dealing with problems with spouses and children (see Table 6). Thus Harry Warner (single laborer, twenty-nine, no children) often visits his chronically ill father in the hospital:
I see my Dad a lot. I go over there to see him at least once a week, sometimes two or three times a week. And if he's bad, I'll go over
Table 4 Emotional Aid from Network Members
A: Logistic Regression on Emotional Aida Beta (Standardized)
Contexts of Interaction .22 Intimacy .22 Gender .20 Parent/Child .13
Logistic Model R: .30 Somer's D: .46 Notes: aOnly variables significant at .05 shown.
N= 294.
B: Percentage of Network Members Providing Emotional Aid
Total Intimates Significants
Role Type (N = 337) Parent/Childb 84 87 81 Sibling 68 76 56 Extended Kin 40 71 34 Friend/Neighbor 63 76 53 Organizational Tie 49 86 41
Intimacyb (N = 337) 77 50
Genderb (N = 337) Male 50 63 38 Female 69 88 57
Contexts of Interactionb (N = 333) More than 2 75 85 57 2 or less 56 71 49
TOTAL SAMPLE (N = 337) 61 77 50 Note: bSignificant variable from logistic regression.
286
BROTHERS KEEPERS
Table 5 Percent of Support Provided by Network Members
Role Emotional Services Financial Companionship Total
and stay with him because I worry. I think the world of my old man. I think so much about him, it bothers me. I talk to him, and we get into heavy conversations, and I argue with him too. I think it helps him, he likes to argue. Everybody's trying to be nice to him, but just to be natural with him is good.
Siblings Statistically speaking, siblings are not significantly more likely than other net-
work members to have provided emotional support (Table 4). Yet, in practice, emotional support from sisters and brothers is important, being nearly one-quarter (24 percent) of all emotionally supportive relationships (Table 5). Part of the reason why siblings are important for emotional aid is because they are such a large part of most networks, comprising 22 percent of all active ties. Moreover, siblings are somewhat more supportive than most other network members: The percentage of sisters (including sisters-in-law) who have provided specific kinds of emotional support is second only to mothers and daughters (Table 6).
Margaret Baillie's (married claims examiner, forty-three, three children) sister has been her key supporter:
Table 6 Percentage of Network Members Providing Specific Kinds of Emotional Support
Male Parent/Child Female Parent/Child Male Sibling Female Sibling Male Extended Kin Female Extended Kin Male Friend/Neighbor Female Friend/Neighbor Male Organizational Female Organizational OVERALL SAMPLE Note: N = 337.
SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES Volume 32, Number 3,1989
With your sister you have more to share because you have been brought up together and know each other's lives. So you really feel you could rely on her and she could rely on you. That is one of the major reasons I feel close to her. We don't keep many secrets from each other. I would do almost anything if she were in trouble, and vice-versa. We've helped each other out whenever we could.
Maureen O'Sullivan (divorced executive secretary, forty-nine, two children) says of her sister: "We share all of our experiences. She would be the person that I would
go to talk over any emotional problems or anything like that with." Likewise, Patricia Fairgray (widowed secretary, sixty-three, three adult children) has relied on two of her sisters-in-law for emotional support since the death of her husband:
I feel I can share all my thoughts, my worries, everything with Marg. She is so understanding and can come up with some good ideas too. I have a lot of confidence and faith in Jessie as well, and a high regard for her. I wouldn't hesitate to express my innermost thoughts to her.
Similarly, Lisa Foster (married waitress, thirty-eight, three children) has counted on her sister for stable emotional support during stressful times:
What I call close is that we get along good. If I have something I want to talk to her about, I know she is there to listen. This is what I call closeness. I think of her as more of a friend than a sister. My young fellow got hurt one day. We rushed him into the hospital, and she came with me. When any of my kids get hurt, I get really wound up. I more or less need somebody there. And then Cindy went in to have her appendix out, and she was with me at the hospital that time too.
Fewer brothers than sisters have provided emotional support (Table 6). Yet in some ways brothers are as emotionally supportive as fathers. Although a lower
percentage of brothers (57 percent) than fathers (78 percent) have provided overall emotional support, brothers have been as likely as fathers to have provided each
specific kind of emotional support (Table 6). Taken together, these data suggest that those brothers who are emotionally supportive tend to be generally supportive and
provide a broader range of emotional support than do fathers. For example, Jack Aitken (civil servant, thirty, two children) has often relied on
his brother to help sort out his personal life:
He is the type of guy that I can associate with and share my problems. I feel so close to him that if I had any problems, very personal problems, he would be the one I would go to. I am not a Roman Catholic, so I don't know about confessing to a priest, but when you talk to him about things that are really deep inside you, you feel closer to him. He would be my confessor.
Similarly, Eve Spencer (housewife, thirty-one, two children) knows that her brother has always stood by her when she has needed understanding:
288
BROTHERS KEEPERS
I went through a very bad time with my daughter when I was pregnant with her. He was the only one who understood what was happening with me, the emotions. I can just talk to him when something is hurting or whatever. I can talk to him and know that he will listen and understand. I could say things to him that I couldn't even admit to my husband. I know he wasn't going to be judging me or anything, and that's something I can't forget. I will always be grateful for that.
Gender Male East Yorkers are multiply disadvantaged in getting emotional support.
They have not received much emotional support from other men, and because they rarely have women friends (Wellman, Carrington, & Hall 1988), they have few women in their networks. As a result, men have usually turned to the few women to whom they have access: their wives, mothers, and sisters. Like it or not, these women are "the representative of the nuclear family in fulfilling obligations to relatives" (Robins & Tomanec 1962; see also, Cseh-Szombathy 1988). Thus John Williams (married, self-employed tailor, forty-four, three children) depends on his sister to lend a sympathetic ear when he has problems at home:
I guess we are able to talk to each other; to tell each other's more sensitive problems. If I have any family problems, I go to her. It's a close to the heart relationship.
If male East Yorkers have not been able to call upon their mother or sister for emotional support, they have often sought a substitute. Jack Aitken has found a surrogate mother in an elderly friend:
Especially when my Mom died, I felt that I could talk to her about things that I would discuss with my Mom. She's a very good listener, that's what I found. I have told her things sometimes I haven't even told my own wife. Because of the environment and I know she has an open ear, I can spill the beans. I feel that she protects. She is my idea of a mother.
Services
As many network members have provided services as have provided emotional aid (61 percent), although there is only moderate overlap between those who have provided these two types of support (r = 0.33). Those who have provided services have mainly helped with small chores (such as helping out with shopping or fixing the car, 39 percent), minor household tasks (such as minding a child, 35 percent), or lending household items (37 percent). A small of percentage of network members also have helped with major household projects such as home renovations (10 percent), or have helped the East Yorkers to deal with large organizations such as government bureaucracies (10 percent).
289
SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES Volume 32, Number 3,1989
As physical access is necessary for the delivery of many services, a higher percentage of network members in frequent face-to-face contact with the East Yorkers have supplied them with services (Table 7). Although the significant variable in the logistic regression is "friends and neighbors," it is actually only neighbors who have been heavy service providers: 75 percent of them have
provided services as compared with 66 percent of friends.
Many immediate kin-parents, children, and siblings-have also been service
providers. By contrast, few extended kin have provided services. Like siblings, they often live far away from the East Yorkers, and they have little face-to-face contact with them. Yet, unlike siblings, only a minority of those extended kin who are intimates have provided services; extended kin constitute only 3 percent of the
service-providing relationships (Table 5). Network members who have similar employment statuses are somewhat more
likely to have exchanged services. This reflects the tendency of women homemakers to help each other with domestic chores, while men help each other with home and car repairs (Wellman 1985). No other similarity between network members and East Yorkers and no personal characteristic of the network members is significantly associated with the provision of services.
Parents and Adult Children As is the case for emotional aid, parents and adult children are the most likely of
all network members to have provided services (Table 7). Moreover, the services
provided by parents, unlike those provided by other network members, are statis-
tically independent of frequent face-to-face contact with the East Yorkers. Almost all of the intimate parents and children and three-quarters of those with a significant relationship have provided services. For example, Tom Robinson's (newly-married printer, thirty,, no children) parents take care of his pet parakeet every weekend when he goes away to his cottage. (When his mother was acutely ill, he drove her to the hospital.)
Penny Crawford (married part-time sales clerk, thirty-five) provides a typical example of this kind of service exchange:
My father [a baker] gave me cakes and pies for my party. He made a big cake for me, a big birthday cake. I fixed his drapes for him: He wanted them clean so I took them to the cleaners and got him some new ones for the bedroom.
In many cases, adult children have helped their parents with physical work around the home. For example, Jenny Draper (married, retired clerk, sixty-four, one adult child) had her thirty-four year old daughter cut down trees and clear the land before Jenny and her husband began construction on their cottage. Since her divorce, Maureen O'Sullivan's adult son has done many household chores:
He does any repairs like curtain rungs that fall down, doors that need fixing. He does some repairs on the car, his car and my car, and
290
BROTHERS KEEPERS
that sort of thing. The things you need a man around for.
When they are capable of it, parents have also helped with heavy chores. Dick Johnson (married sales manager, thirty-eight, three children) is often surprised by the zeal of his mother-in-law:
She is a very unique woman. She is so self-sufficient. When I wouldn't go on the ladder to paint the top of my own house, she did it for me. I didn't know she was doing it, I wouldn't have allowed her. I just came home and it was done.
Some East Yorkers complain that their parents expect their children's time and
energy as a right. As Tom Robinson puts it:
The more you do for them, the more you have to thank them for it. They have a tendency to say, "After all that we have done for you."
Margaret Baillie expresses similar feelings:
They expect their children to look after them. When you say, "Gee, I look forward to my weekends too," she says, "Who else am I going to depend on if I can't depend on my kids?" I don't mind cooking a meal for her, but it's more that my husband has to be the chauffeur for her, or that she phones up and asks me to pick up something for her when I'm shopping.
In other cases, reciprocity has been a cooperative family enterprise, with each network member maintaining independence while providing services as diverse as
taking telephone messages, painting, and babysitting.10 In these situations, imme- diate kin have given aid freely without feelings of coercive obligation. As Wendy Sherwin (married homemaker, thirty-three, two children) says, "You don't hesitate to ask a family member for help if you need it."
Dick Johnson (married sales manager, thirty-eight, three children) has been
helping his mother-in-law for a decade:
I guess I might at one time have preferred to sit and read a book rather than go and dig in her garden. But she's such a great lady, it's been one of those things that flashes in my mind momentarily, and I immediately discount it. She has helped me when I needed it. That's why I feel guilty when that kind of idea comes into my head. I don't think I've ever said no to her. Mind you, she doesn't ask a lot of me either.
Siblings The case of siblings shows the usefulness of combining cross-tabular and regres-
sion analyses. On the one hand, the cross-tabulations in Table 7B show that brothers
291
SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES Volume 32, Number 3,1989
and sisters have provided less services than parents, children, and neighbors, and no more services than most other role types. On the other hand, the regression in Table 7A shows that siblings are particularly apt to provide services. Unlike the cross-tabulations, the multiple logistic regression controls for the effect of other variables, such as frequency of contact. Siblings tend to live further away from the East Yorkers and see them less often: situations inhibiting the provision of services (Wellman, et al. 1987, Table 2).
Because there are more siblings than parents in these networks, siblings comprise a greater percentage of service-providing relationships: 21 percent as compared
Table 7 Services from Network Members
A: Logistic Regression on Servicesa Beta (Standardized)
Parent/Child .29 Friend/Neighbor .28 Face to Face Contact (logged) .19 Sibling .18 Intimacy .17 Similar Employment Status .10
Logistic Model R: .33 Somer's D: .49
Note: aOnly variables significant at .05 shown.
B: Percentage of Network Members Providing Services
Total Intimates Significants
Role Type (N = 337) Parent/Childb 84 93 75 Siblingb 58 67 47 Extended Kin 34 43 29 Friend/Neighborb 70 82 61 Organizational Tie 44 71 38
Face to Face Contactb (N = 329) More than 52/year 70 88 59 25 to 52/year 79 84 74 Less than 25/year 52 67 42
Intimacyb (N = 337) -76 51
Similar Employ. Statusb (N = 327) R & NM Not Employedc 67 79 59 R & NM Employed 64 79 52 R Employed, NM Not 55 71 47 R Not, NM Employed 57 71 48
TOTAL SAMPLE (N = 337) 61 76 51 Notes: bSignificant variable from logistic regression.
CR = Respondent; NM = Network Member.
292
BROTHERS KEEPERS
with the parents' 13 percent (Table 5). For example, Douglas Freedman (married, forty-seven, two children) asked his brother for help with major household renova- tions:
I called him on the phone. I said, "I need your help, I'm doing aluminum siding. What are you going to be doing on this weekend?" He said, "Fine, I'm on holidays, and I'll earmark the weekend for you." He did. He stretched it out until Monday.
Patricia Fairgray's brother-in-law has provided many services since the death of her husband:
He's been very close to me. There is hardly a week that goes by that he doesn't pop in here at some time, and he phones three or four times a week to see if everything is okay. If I need anything, I always know he is at the end of the phone. If there is something wrong with the tap or the washing machine or anything, he will always come over and do his best. After their Dad died, he took the boys places, to football games, and if they had a Scout Night or something, he would go with them.
Similarly, Margaret Baillie has frequently exchanged services with her two sisters:
We've helped each other out whenever we could. When I had my third one, my youngest sister came over and stayed at my house and looked after my children when I went out. We've shared the care of our mother. My oldest sister always whips up dresses for us. She made my wedding gown, bridesmaids', and attendants' gowns.
Financial Aid
Financial aid, small and large, is more rarely provided by network members than emotional aid, services, or companionship. Only 16 percent of all active network members have provided the East Yorkers with money. Most financial help is a small loan when one person is short of funds: 13 percent of all network members have given East Yorkers such small loans. Over time, these small loans have often become reciprocal exchanges rather than one-way transfers. Such exchanges are significant- ly associated with voluntary, frequently seen relationships, especially with men (Table 8). Thus 20 percent of organizational ties (coworkers, etc.) have lent money to the East Yorkers.
Large loans or gifts of money are rare, whether they be for housing (3 percent) or for other major needs such as health care (4 percent). Unlike many kinds of emotional aid or services, they are rarely reciprocated because the East Yorkers would not have borrowed if they had prospects for receiving the needed money (Wellman, Carrington, & Hall 1988). Network members who do not hesitate to supply large quantities of services and emotions hesitate to supply financial aid. Both giver and receiver fear that because large sums cannot be repaid, it will strain
293
SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES Volume 32, Number 3,1989
the relationship. As Douglas Freedman says of his brother: "He can rely on me for everything except money." Yet East Yorkers have often been provided major support to the chronically ill who are unlikely to return such aid in the future.
Table 8 Financial Aid from Network Members
A: Logistic Regression on Financial Aid Beta (Standardized)
Parent/Child .32 Voluntariness .17 Face to Face Contact (logged) .12 Marital Status -.11 Gender -.10
Logistic Model R: .38 Somer's D: .60 Notes: aOnly variables significant at .05 shown.
N= 294.
B: Percentage of Network Members Providing Financial Aid
Total Intimates Significants
Role Type (N = 337) Parent/Childb 52 53 50 Sibling 16 14 19 Extended Kin 5 0 6 Friend/Neighbor 11 12 10 Organizational Tie 20 43 15
Face to Face Contactb (N = 329) More than 52/year 24 31 20 25 to 52/year 17 25 10 Less than 25/year 13 10 15
Marital Status Similarityb (N = 336) R & NM Marriedc 15 14 16 R & NM Single 5 11 0 R Married, NM Single 31 44 22 R Single, NM Married 9 5 11
Genderb (N = 337) Male 20 19 21 Female 14 18 11
TOTAL SAMPLE (N = 337) 16 18 14 Notes: bSignificant variable from logistic regression.
CR = Respondent; NM = Network Member.
. . . .. - . . . ..
294
BROTHERS KEEPERS
Parents and Adult Children Although large loans are rare, the East Yorkers' demand for them also is rare.
They are a once in a lifetime transaction. Such monetary transfers have been the key for buying several homes and seeing several East Yorkers through crises.
Perhaps a particular sense of reciprocal obligations between parents and children explains the general story. In practice, those needing major chronic care are usually elderly parents. And it is the parents who have been significantly ready to provide financial aid, especially major financial aid (Table 8). Although they are only 8 percent of all active network members, parents and adult children form 30 percent of all financially-supportive relationships (Table 5). Over half of them have given loans or monetary gifts to the East Yorkers, and they are just about the only network members who have provided substantial sums (Sussman & Burchinal 1962b, report similar findings). Moreover, the statistically significant association of financial support with network members in different marital situations (Table 8) reflects the propensity of widowed parents to aid married children. (No other personal char- acteristic of network members and no other similarity between network members and East Yorkers is associated with financial support.)
For example, Penny Crawford's father quickly provided airfare for her and her husband when Penny's father-in-law suddenly became ill in Scotland. He also gave them the down payment for their mortgage. Similarly, Patricia Fairgray, a widow, has made significant loans to both of her sons:
Bob saw this car he wanted and he was a little bit short. So he asked me if I could loan him $1,500 for his car, and I said yes. Then I sent Ross [her other son] a check for $1,500. I said, "Just keep it on the side and if anything crops up you will have some extra money." I knew that by the time he put the down payment down on the house he didn't have an awful lot of cash left.
Eve Spencer's father helped her get a large mortgage from her grandmother:
There was a house we were interested in over here, a five-bedroom house, and the guy upped the down payment. I didn't feel we could manage it, and I was telling Dad about it. He went to my Grand- mother. First thing I know she is on the phone. She had my Dad take her to the bank, she got out the money we needed, and my father was here with the cash in his hands. It was three or four thousand dollars.
Although it is not as common, children also have helped their parents out of financial difficulties. For example, Jack Aitken paid the taxes on his parents' home one year: "My father came and asked me. Times were rough then. He asked me for money, and I had it."
Parents and children have often foregone overt bargaining or dominance rela- tionships. Martha Ellis says of her mother-in-law: "If that woman had one dollar
295
SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES Volume 32, Number 3,1989
left in her purse and I asked for it she would give it to me rather than buy herself something she needed."
However, some parents have used their financial resources to assert power in a relationship. For example, Mark Haines' (married production manager, thirty, two children) parents refused his request for money to buy a home:
When we were first looking for a house, I said, "Give me $10,000," and they said "No!" They didn't take me seriously.
Companionship Over half (58 percent) of the East Yorkers' active network members are "companions": persons with whom they exchange ideas (47 percent), engage in informal activities (39 percent), or who are fellow members of formal organizations (18 percent). The social production of companionship is somewhat different from that of the other forms of social support. It comes from kith and not from kin. To an appreciable extent, the persons whom East Yorkers enjoy being with are not those who have provided them with emotional or material aid. Yet such ties are truly and importantly supportive: They help East Yorkers avoid isolation, and they provide empathetic understanding and positive feelings of belonging to social circles (Leighton 1986).
Network members who are intimates or who have multiplex ties with the East Yorkers are especially likely to be companions." Three-quarters of intimate ties are companionable relationships (Table 9). Similarly, most voluntarily-maintained re- lationships are companionate. Thus friends and organizational ties are the most likely of all role types to be companions (although the positive correlation disap- pears in the multiple regression), reflecting the tendency of friends to be voluntary ties. If friends do not enjoy doing and discussing things together, there is often little structural reason to maintain their relationship (see also, Fischer 1982b; Wiseman 1986).
Kinship Kin (30 percent) are much less likely than kith (70 percent) to provide companion-
ship. Although kin comprise 44 percent of all active network members, they form only 31 percent of all companionship ties (Table 5). All three kinship roles- parent/child, sibling, extended kin-are significantly less likely than friends and organizational ties to be companions (Table 9A). Indeed, East Yorkers rarely are companions with those parents and extended kin with whom they do not feel intimate (Table 9B). Tom Robinson holds a common sentiment: "I don't chum with my relatives. They're strictly out."
Immediate kin are just about the only network members who can be intimates of the East Yorkers without being their companions (Table 9). In contrast to voluntary friendship ties, kinship bonds of obligation can substitute for relations of sociability in maintaining intimacy. Consequently, intimate kinship relations are in place for supportive interaction when needed, even when they are not companionate.
296
BROTHERS KEEPERS
Table 9 Companionship from Network Members
A: Logistic Regression on Companionshipa Beta (Standardized)
Note: bSignificant variable from logistic regression.
Betty Lancaster reports on one unhappy, but still significant, kinship tie:
I have a brother that I cannot stand. I wouldn't even give him the time of day if he wasn't my brother. I only tolerate him because he is my brother.
Leonard Dobson (married maintenance man, thirty-six, three children) is more ambivalent about his intimate brother:
I feel close to him but I couldn't say why other than the fact that he is my brother. We don't go to places together: we don't go to hockey games or baseball games or anything like that. So I suppose our only tie is that we happen to be brothers.
The generation gap between parents and children inhibits companionship when the individuals are not intimates. For example, Dianne Cressey testifies, "I feel close
297
SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES Volume 32, Number 3,1989
to my mother. But she is a lot older than I am, and her values are different from mine." Graham Hearst (single, unemployed, twenty-nine, no children) feels that his lifestyle has greatly compromised his relationship with his parents:
I haven't got along with my parents for half my life. They really wish that I would settle down and get a house, a car and 2.4 kids, and a job and all that, and then they would understand me. But it isn't happening and it probably isn't going to. I don't see them that often, just dinner maybe. It's better that way.
Even those parent-child relationships that are companionate can be tempered by differences in age and attitudes. Betty Lancaster points out the difficulties with her mother:
Yes, we have a lot in common. She's an animal lover, she has a lot of plants. We like to go to sales at the shopping plaza and light stuff like that, but there's such a gap between sixty and thirty-five. I rarely can appreciate the attitudes that come through living through those years and those times.
Siblings are more apt than other kin to be companions even when they are not intimates (Table 9B). Similar ages give siblings more things in common, and many East Yorkers have a favorite sister or brother with whom they frequently do things or discuss ideas. For example, Margaret Baillie has shared many activities with a sister:
She enjoys the same kind of things that I do. When we were single, we used to go to dances. We used to bowl in the same league too. Now we play cards. We'll also go out to eat: The whole family and her whole family will go out to eat, or we'll have a picnic together. We'll even have holidays together. We went down to Florida together, and a lot of years we have rented cottages together.
As with other kinds of social support, extended kin are the least likely of all network members to provide companionship (Table 9). East Yorkers may dislike or be indifferent to these persons, or they may live so far apart that companionship is impractical. When great distances separate extended kin, communication has often ceased and the ties have deteriorated. For example, Lisa Foster is socially and spatially close with her immediate family, but feels distant from her extended kin:
They're mostly back East. I really don't know them well because we don't keep in contact. I don't even know who is alive and who's dead now.
On the other hand, some individuals have actively tried to maintain relations with extended kin by arranging special occasions that bring together family mem-
298
BROTHERS KEEPERS
bers. Andy Capp (married mechanic, forty-five, three adult children) and his wife are such people:
We might throw a party here and call all of the family in. We gather all of the clan in now and then just to make sure we get them all together. It is a way of ensuring everybody remembers that we are a family.
DIFFERENT FROM KITH AND OFTEN KIND12
It is no longer news that kin continue to occupy important places in the lives of most inhabitants of the First, Second, and Third worlds. But our findings go further, placing kin in the context of individuals' broader set of interpersonal relations. They show that immediate kin are more than important: they occupy a central and rather
unique place in the East Yorkers' social networks. There are several indications that the household is as much the unit of the rela-
tionship as the individual:
- Support basically serves domestic, reproductive needs: the domain of the household. These relations are used to heal the physically and emotionally wounded, to build homes, and to repair cars. They usually operate out of households and not out of workplaces or public places.
- Couple ties are no more supportive than individual ties: it is two households being linked and not three or more adults.
- Parents-in-law are similar to parents in the support they provide. The between-household links minimize questions of affinity and consanguinity.
- There are few gender differences within role type: mothers behave more similarly to fathers than anyone else, sisters to brothers, etc. The most important thing in determining the supportive link appears to be the basic role relationship-e.g., parent-child, sibling-sibling-and not the marital status, the consanguinity, or the gender of the network member at the other end of the link.
If kinship did not exist in theory, we would have found it anyway in practice-at least for parents, adult children, and siblings. These relationships stand out for the high percentage of network members who provide emotional aid, services, and financial aid (from parents). Despite the small number of immediate kin in these networks, they provide about one-third of the supportive relationships. The are the
persons upon whom the East Yorkers count. The highly supportive parents and children have helping profiles which stand out
from all other network members. Even when the relationship is not intimate, it is reliably and actively helpful. Parents and kin continually recognize and act on perceived obligations to support immediate kinfolk: what Fortes (1969) and Farber (1981; Farber & Smith 1985) call the "axiom of amity." They are supportive for
299
SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES Volume 32, Number 3,1989
emotional problems (especially crises). They provide services as mundane as food shopping, as acute as a large loan to start a boutique, and as chronic as moving in to care for the sick.
Our findings extend the now-common finding of widespread care for elderly parents by adult children (for example, Coward 1988; Soldo, Wolf, & Agree 1986; Somlai & Lewis 1988; Steuve 1982; Wenger 1987). Although such support for the frail elderly is important for social policymakers' concerns about old-age care, the
gerontologists' emphasis on the frail elderly has downplayed the longer-term support which adult children give to their active parents and which parents give to their adult children (see also, Fischer 1986).
These data also give statistical precision to the ambivalent parent/adult child
relationships documented in such popular fiction as Portnoy's Complaint (Roth 1969) and nonfiction as How to be a Jewish Mother (Greenburg 1965). They make it clear that parents and children do not function as friends. Indeed, the high mobilization of parents and children to provide aid to each other may work against having relaxed relations. Support, yes; companionship, no!
Siblings complement and substitute for parents and children. When parents get frail, a sister usually holds together the kinship group (see also, Wellman 1985; Gold 1987; Rosenthal 1987). Thus when asked why she feels close to her sister, Helen Troy (single bank clerk, fifty-three, no children) responded that:.
I just sort of am, although we're not really alike. I think if we were not sisters, we might not have much to do with each other because we are different. But because we have the same remembrances and have always felt like a family, it keeps us close.
Although siblings are usually similar in ages and interests to the East Yorkers, they do not provide the companionship that friends do. To a great extent, this is because siblings often live further apart than friends, inhibiting social contact. (To put it more positively, kinship is better able than friendship to maintain active
long-distance relations.) Extended kin stand out, too, but in much different ways. They are different both
from immediate kin and from friends. They tend to be the least supportive and least companionable of network members. If kinship systems did not keep extended kin in contact, few would be active network members. At most, East Yorkers expect amity from a favorite aunt (who they deem close enough to be a fictive immediate kin). Although they would like reciprocity from the small number of other extended kin they have helped, they rarely receive it. While they are bothered when they do not get support, they really do not expect it.
Among extended kin, those apparently eligible for active-albeit unsupportive- network membership are aunts, uncles, grandparents, and first cousins. Grandchildren are too young to be supportive, and other relatives are too socially distant. Many extended kin remain active network members because of their position in kinship systems and not because they are supportive or sociable. As Chris Armstrong (married firefighter, thirty-one, two children) puts it, "My rela- tives are welcome any time." They are welcome for limited interaction, but the East
300
BROTHERS KEEPERS
Yorkers expect little from them. Indeed, reclusive John Williams values their social distance:
Family ties are great as long as they are just ties and not stranglables. Don't drive it into me that because we're related you've got to come and see me.
Although holding markedly different positions in these active networks, both immediate kin and extended kin operating in these networks are part of the same
kinship system. Reliability underpins their relationships with the East Yorkers. Immediate kin are reliably there for support; extended kin are reliably there as
significant network members without having to do much in the way of support or sociability. They function without the need for direct, one-on-one reciprocity which characterize many friendship relations. And in crises, some extended kin do pro- vide support.13 In their distinctive ways, both immediate and extended kin help individuals and households to reduce interpersonal uncertainties in making their
way through stressful, problematic worlds. Let us give Andy Capp the last word:
You have a duty to your family if they require assistance. This has been drummed into us since forever, and it is a fact. Because if your family can't tell it to you who the hell can they tell it to? I don't care if you hate your brother, if he asks for help, that's what you'll give him. It's something that's bred into us, and our parents made sure we understood that if anybody needs help in the family, then you would help them. I've got a couple of sisters I'm not all that fond of, but if they ask, that's it. If they weren't family, I would totally ignore them.
Acknowledgments: Our research has been supported by grants from Health and Welfare Canada (Welfare Research Program), the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (general research and aging research), the Ontario Ministry of Health and the Programme in Gerontology of the Uni- versity of Toronto.
We thank Vicente Espinoza, Kristina Makkay and Susan Sim for their assis- tance with this research. We thank Bonnie Erickson, Bernard Farber, Charles Jones, Peter Laslett, John Mogey, Detelina Radoeva, Sebastien Reichmann, Bev Wellman, and Peter Willmott for their advice.
A preliminary version of this article was presented at the conference on
'Kinship and Aging." Committee on
Family Research, International Socio- logical Association, Lake Balaton, Hungary, April, 1988.
NOTES
1. For community, see the reviews in Fi- scher 1976; Wellman 1988a; Wellman & Leighton 1979; for kinship, see the reviews in Sussman & Burchinal 1962a; Mogey 1977; Lee 1980; Eichler 1983; Fischer 1982a; Goldthorpe 1987; Laslett 1988; Plakans & Wetherell 1988; Wellman 1990. 2. Intimate network members are those
301
SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES Volume 32, Number 3,1989
whom interviewed respondents "feel are closest to you outside your home." Sig- nificant network members are those non-in- timates whom respondents "are in touch with in your daily life and who are sig- nificant in your life." Intimate and sig- nificant network members jointly comprise the respondents' sets of active network members.
See Wellman (1979) for the results of the survey; Wellman (1982) for a description of the interview and study design; Wellman & Wellman (1989) for the relationship be- tween household support and network support; Wellman & Wortley (1989) for an evaluation of different theories of the tie basis of support. The numbers in this article differ slightly from those in previous East York articles due to further cleaning of vari- ables (cf., Wellman, et al. 1987; Wellman, Carrington & Hall 1988). As in our other articles, we generally count "couple ties" as one relationship. See below for a further discussion of such ties. 3. The questionnaire was a follow-up to the interviews designed to elicit more sys- tematic information about support. The fif- teen items asked about whether each network member gave or received a specific kind of support. (The three com- panionship items were coded from the in- terviews.) For example, the first item was "Gave help with small household jobs (such as minor repairs to house, car, cot- tage; small amount of help with housework)." For all items, the respon- dents were asked whether the support has been given to or from them: "You to (Name)" or "(Name) to You." Because we were interested in supportive community, we did not put any time limit on the ex- changes. By contrast, many studies relating social support to health ask only about recently-received support. 4. We have not used this dimension in this analysis because a small, specialized num- ber of workmates tend to provide informa- tion and contacts about job openings. 5. The strongest correlation is 0.33 be-
tween emotional aid and services (see Wellman with Hiscott 1985). 6. Our supposition about the proportion of available kin in these networks derives from Smith & Laslett's (1988) estimates for "20th century England." These show for adults aged 30-65:
-3.5-4.5 living "primary kin" (parents, children, siblings, grandparents); -3-7 "descending kin" great-grand- children, grandchildren, children, nieces and nephews; -5 "lateral kin": cousins, aunts and un- cles, nieces and nephews.
There are some differences between their approach to counting kin and ours: they count nieces and nephews twice (albeit for different purposes), they do not include in-laws, and they include children under eighteen. 7. All quotations are from interview transcripts, edited for conciseness. To preserve anonymity, we have changed all names of respondents and network mem- bers. In addition, we have changed some identifying details in ways which should not weaken the validity of the examples and discussion. 8. We used SPSS-X 2.1's CLUSTER proce- dure. We clustered types of relationships- not individuals: the relational types shown at the left of Figure 1. We compared the percentage of the incumbents of these rela- tional types who gave each of the five types of social support under study: emotional aid, services, companionship, financial aid, and job/housing information. (These are the basic dependent variables in this study.) We used the method of average linkage between groups with the measure of squared Euclidian distances for the clustering. We stopped at six clusters in our stepwise analysis because the proximity coefficients started increasing markedly with further combinations into five or fewer clusters, indicating that the proce- dure was unwarrentedly forcing dis-
302
BROTHERS KEEPERS
crepant roles into a cluster. Happily, the six clusters are relatively clean and have theoretical interest. 9. The logistic regression tables only present variables found significant (at the .05 level) in multiple logistic regressions. "Logist Model R" is a parametric statistic in the logistic regression reflecting the fit between the dichotomous dependent vari- able (e.g., whether or not the tie provides emotional aid) and a linear combination of the significant independent variables (e.g., intimacy, parent/child tie). Somer's D indi- cates the strength of the ordinal fit between the dichotomous dependent variable and linear combinations of the independent variables.
The SAS logistic regression procedure we use only provides unstandardized coeffi- cients which are not meaningful in the context of this study. To provide the stan- dardized betas shown here, we performed OLS multiple regressions containing only the variables found significant in the logis- tic regressions. Our confidence in the use- fulness of this procedure was bolstered by finding that all the OLS R coefficients were nearly identical to the square of the analogous Logist Model R.
After ascertaining that network mem- bers' occupational status and level of education did not seem to be related to any of the dependent support variables, we removed them from the final logistic regressions. The many missing values for these variables meant that the respondents often were not aware of their network members' occupational or educational situations, or that neither the network members nor their spouses had a current occupation. For the same reason we also removed variables indicating if the respon- dent and the network member had similar occupational statuses or levels of educa- tion. Analyses including these variables produced almost identical results to those with these variables deleted.
In all cases the Model R and the Somer's D are reasonably strong. This is gratifying
because the dichotomous dependent vari- ables in the logistic regressions do not take into account variations in the strength of the dependent variables. Moreover, we only aspire to offer a partial explanation. Clearly matters other than the social characteristics of a relationship affect whether a tie provides support: e.g., the psychological attributes of network members, the support recipients' own needs and resources, and location in divisions of labor, the nature of the networks in which the ties are situated, and Toronto's position in world socio- economic systems.
To aid interpretation, we also present for the significant variables the percentages of network members who provide the respon- dents with this type of support. These per- centages are also presented separately for intimate and significant ties in order to aid comparability with those studies which have only analyzed intimates. 10. Johnson (1978) reports that grand- parents are the most common source of non-parental child care in Toronto for dual income families. 11. Mulitplexity is so highly correlated with companionship that we removed it from the final logistic regression. In part, this is because our operational definition of multiplexity, the number of different con- texts in which network members interact with East Yorkers, is somewhat similar to our operational definition of companion- ship. 12. With apologies to Shakespeare [Ham- let, I, ii, 65]. 13. Fischer's (1982b) California survey reports similar findings. See especially Chapter 7.
REFERENCES
Boissevain, Jeremy. 1974. Friends of Friends: Networks, Manipulators, and Coalitions. Oxford: Blackwell.
Coombs, Gary. 1980. "Variant Usage in American Kinship: The Nomenclator Effect." Pp. 11-27 in The Versatility of
303
SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES Volume 32, Number 3,1989
Kinship, edited by Linda Cordell and Stephen Beckerman. London: Academic Press.
Coward, Raymond. 1988. "Care of Elderly Parents by Adult Children: A Com- parison of the Patterns of Sons and Daughters." Paper presented to the "Kinship and Aging" conference, Bala- tonzamardi, Hungary, April.
Craven, Paul & Barry Wellman. 1973. 'The Network City." Sociological Inquiry 43: 57-88.
Cseh-Szombathy, Laszl6. 1988. "Sex Differ- ences in Kinship Interaction." Pp. 274- 291 in Kinship and Aging, edited by Peter Somlai. Budapest: MTZ Szociologiai Kutat6 Intezete.
Eichler, Margrit. 1983. Families in Canada Today. Toronto: Gage.
Farber, Bernard. 1981. Conceptions of Kin- ship. New York: Elsevier North Holland.
Farber, Bernard & Karen Smith. 1985. 'Ties with Children and Siblings among Resi- dents of Sun City." Paper presented to the annual meeting of the American So- ciological Association, Washington, August.
Firth, Raymond, Jane Hubert, & Anthony Forge. 1969. Families and Their Relatives. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Fischer, Claude. 1976. The Urban Experience. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
. 1982a. 'The Dispersion of Kinship Ties in Modern Society." Journal of Fami- ly History 7 (Winter): 353-375.
. 1982b. To Dwell Among Friends. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Fischer, Lucy Rose. 1986. Linked Lives: Adult Daughters and Their Mothers. New York: Harper & Row.
Fortes, Meyer. 1969. Kinship and the Social Order. Chicago: Aldine.
Gold, Deborah. 1987. "Siblings in Old Age: Something Special." Canadian Journal on Aging 6:199-215.
Goldthorpe,J.E. 1987. Family Life in Western Societies. Cambridge: Cambridge Uni- versity Press.
Gordon, Michael. 1978. The American Fami-
ly. New York: Random House. Graves, Theodore & Nancy Graves. 1980.
"Kinship Ties and the Preferred Adap- tive Strategies of Urban Migrants." Pp. 195-217 in The Versatility of Kinship. Lon- don: Academic Press.
Greenburg, Dan. 1965. How to be a Jewish Mother. Los Angeles: Price Stern.
Hall, Alan & Barry Wellman. 1985. "Social Networks and Social Support." Pp. 23- 41 in Social Support and Health, edited by Sheldon Cohen and S. Leonard Syme. New York: Academic Press.
Irish, Donald. 1964. "Sibling Interaction: A Neglected Aspect in Family Life Re- search." Social Forces 42 (March): 279- 288.
Israel, Barbara & Kathleen Rounds. 1987. "Social Networks and Social Support: A Synthesis For Health Educators." Pp. 311-351 in Advances in Health Education and Promotion. Vol. 2, edited by Scott Simonds, Patricia Mullen & Marshall Becker. Greenwich, CT: JAI Press.
Johnson, Laura Climenko. 1978. Taking Care. Toronto: Social Planning Council of Metropolitan Toronto.
Laslett, Peter. 1988. "Family, Kinship and Collectivity as Systems of Support in Pre-Industrial Europe: A Consideration of the 'Nuclear-Hardship' Hypothesis." Continuity and Change 3: in press.
Lee, Gary. 1980. "Kinship in the Seventies: A Decade Review of Research and Theory." Journal of Marriage and the Family 42 (4): 923-934.
Leighton, Barry. 1986. 'The Myth of the Demise of Community. Experiencing Personal Community Networks." Ph.D. Thesis, Department of Sociology, Uni- versity of Toronto.
Lin, Nan, Alfred Dean & Walter Ensel. 1986. Social Support, Life Events and Depression. Orlando, FL: Academic Press.
Mazursky, Paul. 1969. "Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice." Burbank, CA: Columbia Pictures.
Mogey, John. 1977. "Content of Relations
304
BROTHERS KEEPERS
with Relatives." Pp. 413-429 in The Family Life Cycle in European Societies, edited byJ. Cuisnier & M. Segalen. Paris: Mouton.
Parsons, Talcott. 1943. 'The Kinship Sys- tem of the Contemporary United States." American Anthropologist 45: 22- 38.
Pilisuk, Marc & Susan Hillier Parks. 1986. The Healing Web. Hanover, NH: Univer- sity Press of New England.
Pitt-Rivers, Julian. 1973. 'The Kith and the Kin." Pp. 89-105 in The Character of Kin- ship, edited by Jack Goody. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Plakans, Andrejs & Charles Wetherell. 1988. 'The Kinship Domain in an East European Peasant Community: Pinker- hof, 1833-1850." American Historical Re- view 93 (2): 359-386.
Pool, Ithiel de Sola & Manfred Kochen. 1978. "Contacts and Influence." Social Networks 1: 5-51.
Radoeva, Detelana. 1988. "Old Bulgarians: Value Aspects of their Attitude towards Children as a Part of the Family." Paper presented to the "Kinship and Aging" conference, Balatonzamardi, Hungary, April.
Robins, Lee & Miroda Tomanec. 1962. "Closeness to Blood Relatives Outside the Immediate Family." Marriage and Family Living 24 (November): 340-346.
Rosenthal, Carolyn. 1985. "Kinkeeping in the Familial Division of Labor." Journal of Marriage and the Family 47 (Novem- ber): 965-974.
. 1987. "The Comforter: Providing Personal Advice and Emotional Sup- port to Generations in the Family." Canadian Journal on Aging 6: 228-239.
Roth, Philip. 1969. Portnoy's Complaint. New York: Random House.
Soldo, Beth, Douglas Wolf, & Emily Agree. 1986. "Family, Household and Care Arrangements of Disabled Older Women." Paper presented to the annual meeting of the Gerontological Society of America, Chicago, November.
Somlai, Peter, ed. 1988. Kinship and Aging. Budapest: MTA Szociol6giai Kutat6 Intezete.
Somlai, P6ter & Robert Lewis. 1988. "Help Given to and Received from Aged Fami- ly Members in the United States and Hungary." Pp. 55-100 in Kinship and Aging, edited by Peter Somlai. Budapest: MTA Szociologiai Kutat6 Intezete.
Steuve, Ann. 1982. 'The Elderly as Net- work Members." Marriage and Family Review 5(4): 59-87.
Sussman, Marvin & Lee Burchinal. 1962a. "Kin Family Network: Unheralded Structure in Current Conceptualizations of Family Functioning." Marriage and Family Living 24 (August): 231-240.
. 1962b. "Parental Aid to Married Children." Marriage and Family Living 24 (November): 320-332.
Wellman, Barry. 1979. 'The Community Question." American Journal of Sociology 84 (March): 1201-1231.
. 1981. "Applying Network Analysis to the Study of Social Supports." Pp. 171-200 in Social Networks and Social Sup- port, edited by Benjamin Gottlieb. Bever- ly Hills, CA: Sage.
. 1982. "Studying Personal Com- munities." Pp. 61-80 in Social Structure and Network Analysis, edited by Peter Marsden & Nan Lin. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.
.1985. "Domestic Work, Paid Work and Net Work." Pp. 159-191 in Under- standing Personal Relationships, edited by Steve Duck & Daniel Perlman. London: Sage.
. 1988a. 'The Community Question Re-evaluated." Pp. 81-107 in Power, Community and the City, edited by Michael Peter Smith. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books.
. 1988b. "Structural Analysis: From Method and Metaphor to Theory and Substance." Pp. 19-61 in Social Struc- tures: A Network Approach, edited by Barry Wellman & S.D. Berkowitz. Cam- bridge: Cambridge University Press.
305
SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES Volume 32, Number 3,1989
. 1990. 'The Place of Kinfolk in Per- sonal Community Networks." Marriage and Family Review: Forthcoming.
Wellman, Barry, Peter Carrington, & Alan Hall. 1988. "Networks as Personal Communities." Pp. 130-184 in Social Structures: A Network Approach, edited by Barry Wellman and S.D. Berko- witz. Cambridge: Cambridge Uni- versity Press.
Wellman, Barry & Robert Hiscott. 1985. "From Social Support to Social Net- work." Pp. 205-222 in Social Support, edited by Irwin Sarason & Barbara Sarason. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.
Wellman, Barry & Barry Leighton. 1979. "Networks, Neighborhoods and Com- munities." Urban Affairs Quarterly 14 (March): 363390.
Wellman, Barry, Clayton Mosher, Cyndi Rottenberg, & Vicente Espinoza. 1987. "Different Strokes From Different Folks: Which Ties Give What Support?" Work- ing Paper. Berkeley: Institute for Urban and Regional Development, University of California.
Wellman, Barry & Scot Wortley. 1989. "Dif- ferent Strokes from Different Folks." Revised Version. Toronto: Centre For Urban and Community Studies.
Wellman, Beverly & Barry Wellman. 1989. "Domestic Affairs and Network Rela- tions." Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association. San Francisco, August.
Wenger, G. Clare. 1987. Support Networks; Change and Stability: Second Report of a Follow-Up Study of Old Elderly People in North Wales. Bangor: Centre for Social Policy Research and Development, Uni- versity College of North Wales.
Willmott, Peter. 1987. Friendship Networks and Social Support. London: Policy Stud- ies Institute.
Wirth, Louis. 1938. "Urbanism as a Way of Life." American Journal of Sociology 44 (July): 3-24.
Wiseman, Jacqueline. 1986. "Friendship: Bonds and Binds in a Voluntary Rel- ationship." Journal of Social and Personal Relationships 3 (June): 191-212.
