166 Penny Edgell
The significance of this family model is not simply in how widespread it was in
popular culture, the sentimentality surrounding it, or its link to other cultural ideals of
prosperity and patriotism. It is also significant because it became the anchoring schema^2
for institutional routines of practice across many arenas, constructing an interlinked
institutional matrix that supported the growth of a particular work-family lifestyle.
Since the 1950s, there have been rapid and fundamental changes in family life
in our society. Furstenberg (1999) identifies several as being of particular importance:
The rising numbers of dual-earner, single-parent, and blended families, the increasing
visibility and legitimacy of gay and lesbian lifestyles, the increasing numbers of long-
term singles and childless couples, and the decoupling of family formation from other
transitions into adult status (cf. Treas 1999). This has led to increasing cultural and
structural pluralism in the family (Skolnick 1991).
The cultural pluralism means that newer, alternative family schema are widespread,
readily available, and increasingly legitimate. As Sewell (1992) argues, the multiplicity
of available schema is one source of structural change, because agents may draw on new
schema to bring about a more favorable organization of resources within an arena of
action (cf. Friedland and Alford 1991; Fine 1987). This implies that a period of increas-
ing cultural pluralism in one arena (the family, for example) may trigger accompanying
changes within linked social arenas that draw on it for the anchoring schema that
organize routine institutional practices. Historically and institutionally, the family has
served as a source of anchoring schema and symbols for religious life in the United
States (Christiano 2000; Lakoff 1996).
From this perspective, the richness of the available and legitimate cultural repertoire
for thinking about the family does not guarantee changes in other social arenas, but it
does introduce one source of potential change. However, it is important to emphasize
that when they are faced with changes in the family, religious leaders and organizations
have several choices. They can ignore the changes, or actively resist them. They can
adapt in some incremental way, or they can fundamentally transform the institution
(Ammerman 1997a; Greenwood and Hinings 1996). Change is not automatic, nor is it
uniform if it does come about.
Beyond the Culture War
The importance of a left-right “culture-wars” divide in determining religious responses
to changes in the family is taken for granted throughout the sociological literature
(Christiano 2000; Glock 1993; Hunter 1991; Lakoff 1996; Woodberry and Smith 1998).
In particular, evangelicals and fundamentalists have received a great deal of attention
for how they buffer their core family ideology – with its emphasis on male headship in
the home – from changes in gender roles within marriage, thus maintaining religious
authority and resisting accommodation to the corrosive effects of ongoing moderniza-
tion (see Sherkat and Ellison 1999; Woodberry and Smith 1998).
Most of these studies have either focused on elite discourse and social movement
rhetoric or on individual-level attitudes and behaviors regarding family, gender, and
(^2) I view anchoring schema as cultural models that organize resources and practices within an
institutional arena at a given time and place; that is to say, schema are a specific subset of a
more general phenomenon, the cultural model (cf. Douglas 1986; Sewell 1992).