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Introduction
FOR MOST AMERICANS, FAMILY MEANS THE INFRASTRUCTURE SHAPING their life's journey in one way or another from the cradle to the grave. Whatever form it takes, family provides the earliest experiences of nurturing, security, and socialization. It provides a springboard for entry into the broader community and a roadmap for navigating the vast network of interpersonal and institutional relations comprising society. For the cultural anthropologist, the family provides a window onto trends, innovations, conflicts, and aspirations of society at large. If a trend is observed in families, it will most likely surface at some other level of the social order. Knowing the state of the American family is therefore crucial to understanding consumers at every stage of their lives, and potentially how they use brands to form an identity, participate in community, and engage in social organizations.
This article summarizes findings from a trend study of families at the beginning of the millennium, cast against the state of the family in 1960. This perspective puts in stark relief demographic and qualitative characteristics of families today that influence market segmentation and advertising strategies. The size, composition, and interpersonal dynamic of families has changed, as has the way families are represented in popular culture. Marketers face the challenge of developing advertising that transcends the divisions within and among today's families and speaks to fundamental family values and experiences.
In 1960, the stereotypical American family could still be summed up in Norman Rockwell's vignettes of a small New England village (Rockwell 217; see Figure 1). It is white, middle class, homogeneous, and patriarchal. Families gathered together to eat, pray, and watch television.
Over the years, the Norman Rockwell myth has given way to a more realistic and heterogeneous view of the family. Today, "family" includes a vast array of configurations, such as households formed of two or more "blended" families of divorce, unmarried couples, childless households, and even gay parents. John Logan and Glenna Spitze write, "We believe that families have retained their role as the central core of social support through midlife and old age, despite speculation to the contrary" (34).
Market Segmentation and the Decline of Patriarchy
It could be argued that the current state of the American family is not merely reflected in popular...