Discrimination based on family status- is it a thing?

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Willow
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Discrimination based on family status- is it a thing?

Post by Willow »

There are two ways of looking at this issue: firstly the way single people might be adversely affected by not being married and the way having the status of married, and secondly if being part of a family might give you extra social weight. Ive given a few potential examples, the difficulty in discussing this is the the examples can quite easily become tangents, as they are quite big topics in their own right.


If there is discrimination how culturally specific is it? I'm not enough of an anthropologist to bring many examples to the table here- but I wonder if there are morality based roots that are linked to religion? I'm open to other ideas though.


A) Singlism
How seriously should we be taking the concept of singlism: the idea that single people are disadvantaged and discriminated against. Homelessness seems to be a possible area where policies might adversely affect the single person.



B) Giving families more rights than they have under law

Is the concept of 'family' somehow allowing the policy of family involvement in organ donation to be stetched to allowing vetos when there is no legal obligation to allow them.


Could the reason 'family' is the weak link be due to doctors and nurses being used to being fairly mean to distressed friends (refusing to let them visit or give them info as they are not family etc - we have all experienced the abruptness) but not as used to being mean to family.


If outdated institutionalised norms are causing deaths thats a serious issues. Its particularly odd as society has moved on with over 70% of people thinking Dr should not allow family 'vetos' on compassionate grounds.


I cant paste links yet (new here) most of my links were from UK
Steve3007
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Re: Discrimination based on family status- is it a thing?

Post by Steve3007 »

I think the conclusion is, no, it's not really a thing. But you've got to run ideas up the flagpole to see who salutes. Keep it up.
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Willow
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Re: Discrimination based on family status- is it a thing?

Post by Willow »

Thanks for replying but could you state your argument as well as a conclusions as it is not clear why you are discounting the possibility from what you have said.... often discrimination is invisivble to those who don't experience it so intuition isn't really 'evidence' in this kind of thing.
Steve3007
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Re: Discrimination based on family status- is it a thing?

Post by Steve3007 »

Hi Willow. Sorry, my post was a bit flippant. Flippancy is a failing of mine.

I guess you may have a point about discrimination against single people. Certainly, if we see TV advertising campaigns as a reasonable barometer of the cultural zeitgeist then there is still a tendency to portray the happy nuclear family as the norm. But that is changing. If there is such a thing as singlism then I suspect it is less of a problem now than it was in the past.
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Willow
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Re: Discrimination based on family status- is it a thing?

Post by Willow »

I think you may be correct about there already being a shift, especially for single women (but its hard to be sure if the focus of that shift was caused by feminism rather than the singlism). There may be male examples of improvement, but I'm mostly coming up with female examples, at least initially.

Singlism itself can also be googled, its being fairly well publicised by academic Bella DePaulo. There is another academic that is targeting the excessive social value given to marriage: Elizabeth Brake. It may be significant that its predominantly female authors addressing this: in that female singlism might be more of a thing than male singlism- but at least some of the discrimination is gender neutral.
The most obvious privileges are the tax breaks but there are more social perception benefits that continue too.

The discrimination that is still evident in case of homelessness is due to the way people are allocated help. The charity CRISIS focuses on homeless people in the UK. Many of the policies used sift the single people to the bottom of the pile and often offers them very little help at all, resulting in a much higher proportion of single people sleeping rough in cities all over the UK. They have produced separate reports for Single Homelessness in Scotland and in England.

Scotland has recently modified the rules to try to reduce this sifting but their rule of "intentionally homeless" may still be being used to exclude single people from getting help (this exclusion rate varies significantly across Scottish councils- figures can be found online- sadly I still can't do links as I'm still too new).

It is hard to say how much of the idea that the single person is "morally inferior" is leading to the conclusion, by some, that they are likely to simply not pay their rent. The new rule probably hasn't been in place long enough to correlate religiousness of the area alongside single people being judged as intentionally homeless- but when there is enough data I intend to look again (unfortunately thats a lot of people sleeping rough while data is gathered).
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LuckyR
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Re: Discrimination based on family status- is it a thing?

Post by LuckyR »

Willow wrote:There are two ways of looking at this issue: firstly the way single people might be adversely affected by not being married and the way having the status of married, and secondly if being part of a family might give you extra social weight. Ive given a few potential examples, the difficulty in discussing this is the the examples can quite easily become tangents, as they are quite big topics in their own right.


If there is discrimination how culturally specific is it? I'm not enough of an anthropologist to bring many examples to the table here- but I wonder if there are morality based roots that are linked to religion? I'm open to other ideas though.


A) Singlism
How seriously should we be taking the concept of singlism: the idea that single people are disadvantaged and discriminated against. Homelessness seems to be a possible area where policies might adversely affect the single person.


B) Giving families more rights than they have under law

Is the concept of 'family' somehow allowing the policy of family involvement in organ donation to be stetched to allowing vetos when there is no legal obligation to allow them.

Could the reason 'family' is the weak link be due to doctors and nurses being used to being fairly mean to distressed friends (refusing to let them visit or give them info as they are not family etc - we have all experienced the abruptness) but not as used to being mean to family.

If outdated institutionalised norms are causing deaths thats a serious issues. Its particularly odd as society has moved on with over 70% of people thinking Dr should not allow family 'vetos' on compassionate grounds.

I cant paste links yet (new here) most of my links were from UK
A) There is no doubt that Modern American society discriminates against singles. If your kid is sick, no problem gettng time off. If you're single and your dog is sick, the Administration is likely going to give you a funny look and you're likely to be labeled as a shirker.

B) Are you describing the role of family i making life decisions in the medically/legally incompetent?
"As usual... it depends."
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Willow
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Re: Discrimination based on family status- is it a thing?

Post by Willow »

LuckyR

Very true about pets, and it would be the same if it was your flat mate or best friend who was ill... or worse still dead... no compassionate leave except for family members with most companies. Society has very rigid views on who we can care about enough for it to be acknowledged by others.
But how many more of us are staying single all our lives these days? Is it reasonable that our most significant relationships are ignored and systematically devalued. How many of us singles have no other support network than other singles, what does the devaluing our support network mean to us emotionally and practically.


No that wasnt exactly what I was getting at, sorry (it would have made more sense with the links)....With organ donation family are being allowed to refuse to let the donations of registered donors to proceed... basically the family have no actual legal right to do this, and the official policy is that they should not be told they have a choice- but if they are insistent enough doctors are backing down and allowing them to stop donations. Public opinion is also against this being allowed, but it is still happening.

Worse still there isnt even the option to nominate a different next of kin for this process in Scotland- its a strict list various of spouse and then 'blood' relationships before finally getting to friends.
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LuckyR
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Re: Discrimination based on family status- is it a thing?

Post by LuckyR »

Willow wrote:LuckyR

Very true about pets, and it would be the same if it was your flat mate or best friend who was ill... or worse still dead... no compassionate leave except for family members with most companies. Society has very rigid views on who we can care about enough for it to be acknowledged by others.
But how many more of us are staying single all our lives these days? Is it reasonable that our most significant relationships are ignored and systematically devalued. How many of us singles have no other support network than other singles, what does the devaluing our support network mean to us emotionally and practically.


No that wasnt exactly what I was getting at, sorry (it would have made more sense with the links)....With organ donation family are being allowed to refuse to let the donations of registered donors to proceed... basically the family have no actual legal right to do this, and the official policy is that they should not be told they have a choice- but if they are insistent enough doctors are backing down and allowing them to stop donations. Public opinion is also against this being allowed, but it is still happening.

Worse still there isnt even the option to nominate a different next of kin for this process in Scotland- its a strict list various of spouse and then 'blood' relationships before finally getting to friends.
From a practical standpoint, some companies are moving towards just combining sick leave, bereavement leave and family leave into a block of time called personal time, which is fixed and can be used without restriction or getting approval. This is clearly the solution to that (most obvious part of the) problem.

On the specific topic of organ donation the reason for the situation you cite is not for the reason you suspect. Rather it is because no one has a "right" to donate their organs. The medical community has final say (which is totally justified, since it isn't about the donor, it is about the recipient) and that community does not want to waste limited resources fighting against family members.
"As usual... it depends."
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Willow
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Re: Discrimination based on family status- is it a thing?

Post by Willow »

Yes the medical team do have the final say; my point is that they are being swayed too much by family opinion: despite family opinion having no legal weight. My feeling is they are doing this because they are used to doing it, because family have been given more weight traditionally in medicine, and they can't shake off the institutionalized bias.


I realize I can't prove this, but equally it cannot be disproved, not without some pretty detailed research. So it's not about proof it's about deciding it might be a possibility. And frankly I don't see how it can't be a possibility. The official bodies in the UK released figures of blocked donations by family members and said they were taking measure to tighten up the processes involved to limit this bias happening; so I'm certainly not just making this up.

The articles were in the Guardian and the Telegraph and the BBC in Jan 2016.
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