Becoming an Ex: The Process of Role Exit / Edition 2

by Helen Rose Fuchs Ebaugh

Overview

The experience of becoming an ex is common to most people in modern society. Unlike individuals in earlier cultures who usually spent their entire lives in one marriage, one career, one religion, one geographic locality, people living in today's world tend to move in and out of many roles in the course of a lifetime. During the past decade there has been persistent interest in these "passages" or "turning points," but very little research has dealt with what it means to leave behind a major role or incorporate it into a new identity. Helen Rose Fuchs Ebaugh's pathbreaking inquiry into the phenomenon of becoming an ex reveals the profundity of this basic aspect of establishing an identity in contemporary life.

Ebaugh is herself an ex, having left the life of a Catholic nun to become a wife, mother, and professor of sociology. Drawing on interviews with 185 people, Ebaugh explores a wide range of role changes, including ex-convicts, ex-alcoholics, divorced people, mothers without custody of their children, ex-doctors, ex-cops, retirees, ex-nuns, and--perhaps most dramatically--transsexuals. As this diverse sample reveals, Ebaugh focuses on voluntary exits from significant roles. What emerges are common stages of the role exit process--from disillusionment with a particular identity, to searching for alternative roles, to turning points that trigger a final decision to exit, and finally to the creation of an identify as an ex.

Becoming an Ex is a challenging and influential study that will be of great interest to sociologists, mental health counselors, members of self-help groups such as Alcoholics Anonymous and Parents Without Partners, those in corporate settings where turnover has widespread implications for the organization, and for anyone struggling through a role exit who is trying to establish a new sense of self.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780226180700
Publisher:	University of Chicago Press
Publication date:	06/15/1988
Series:	Process of Role Exit
Edition description:	1
Pages:	268
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.40(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Helen Rose Fuchs Ebaugh, professor and department chair of sociology at the University of Houston, is the author of Out of the Cloister.

Read an Excerpt

Becoming an Ex

The Process of Role Exit

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By Helen Rose Fuchs Ebaugh

The University of Chicago Press

Copyright © 1988 The University of Chicago
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-226-18070-0

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CHAPTER 1

Defining the Issues

Most of us in today's world are exes in one way or another. We have exited a marriage, a career, a religious group, a meaningful voluntary organization, an institutional way of life, or perhaps a stigmatized role such as alcoholic or drug user. For some types of role exit society has coined a term to denote exiters: divorcé, retiree, recovered alcoholic, widow, alumnus. This is usually the case for exits that are common and have been occurring for a long time. Exits that have been around long enough to have been named are usually institutionalized in that they carry with them certain expectations, privileges, and status. In addition to these institutionalized exits, however, there are numerous exits that are simply referred to with the prefix, "ex": ex-doctor, ex-executive, ex-nun, ex-convict, ex-cult member, ex-athlete. The one thing all exes have in common is that they once identified with a social role which they no longer have.

The process of disengagement from a role that is central to one's self-identity and the reestablishment of an identity in a new role that takes into account one's ex-role constitutes the process I call role exit. While at first glance there may seem to be little in common between ex-nuns and transsexuals, ex-doctors and ex-convicts, or divorced people and ex-air traffic controllers, they have all experienced role exit. The purpose of this book is to explore the role-exit process as it is experienced by people who have left a wide array of roles. I argue throughout the book that role exit is a basic social process, as basic to the understanding of human social behavior as socialization, social interaction, or role conflict. Regardless of the types of roles being departed, there are underlying similarities and variables that make role exit unique and definable as a social process.

One of the reasons role exit has not yet found its way into the social science literature is because its widespread occurrence is a characteristic of only the past thirty years or so. Except at times of war or political upheavals, in earlier periods of history people were much less mobile in terms of role changes. They stayed in one marriage for a lifetime, prepared for one occupation which they followed regardless of how satisfied or dissatisfied they were, identified with the religion of their upbringing, stayed quite close to home geographically, and were not exposed to a variety of self-help groups that can become anchors for identity formation or transformation. In other words, role exit, while it did occur in cases of widowhood, unemployment, or ostracism from a group, was much less common than it is today.

In modern society, understanding role exit is every bit as important as learning how we become socialized into groups since most individuals in society experience several major role exits in the course of their lifetimes. Statistics on contemporary family trends are simply one indication of how widespread role exits are with regard to familial roles. The divorce rate today is almost three times what it was in the 1960s (Blumstein and Schwartz 1983). Demographers project that half of first marriages now taking place will end in divorce. Related to the rise in divorce rates is the increasing number of single-parent families, particularly female-headed households which rose from ten percent in 1960 to about fifteen percent in 1979 (Gross and Sussman 1982).

Behind these statistics are the personal lives of people who are experiencing the pains and sense of freedom associated with disengaging from and becoming an ex in relation to that role. Throughout this book I will present the lives of people we interviewed who had experienced role exit, many of whom were still establishing their identities as exes and learning to deal with their previous role identities.

Sociological Characteristics of the Ex-role

Being an ex is unique sociologically in that the expectations, norms, and identity of an ex-role relate not to what one is currently doing but rather to social expectations associated with the previous role. While statuses such as physician, wife, professor, and executive place one in the social structure on the basis of current occupancy, an ex-status derives meaning from contrast with the status previously held. What an ex-nun, ex-prostitute, ex-wife, ex-executive, and alumnus have in common is the fact that these individuals once occupied societally defined positions which they no longer occupy. While expectations regarding appropriate behavior on the part of various ex-statuses differ, there are characteristics of the ex-role that are generalizable beyond issues unique to the various roles exited.

Every ex has been involved in a process of disengagement and disidentification. Disengagement is the process of withdrawing from the normative expectations associated with a role, the process whereby an individual no longer accepts as appropriate the socially defined rights and obligations that accompany a given role in society. The individual removes him- or herself from those social expectations and no longer accepts them as relevant. Integrally involved in the process of disengagement are shifts in a person's role sets, in the collection of people occupying particular roles that are associated with an individual in a given social role. A wife, for example, is involved with an array of other people simply because of her role as wife. These include her husband, his family, his friends, their mutual friends, his business associates, neighbors, etc. In the process of disengagement, expectations of the wife shift on the part of these individuals. Usually, too, association with these people shifts in terms of either frequency or character.

Disengagement is a mutual process between the individual and relevant role-set partners. As the person begins to remove him- or herself from the social expectations and associations with members of a previous role set, they in turn usually begin to withdraw from the exiting individual both emotionally and physically.

While disengagement refers to disassociation from the rights and obligations associated with a given role, disidentification refers to the process of ceasing to think of oneself in the former role. Disengagement leads to disidentification in the sense that individuals who withdraw from the social expectations of given roles begin to shift their identities in a new direction, that is, they begin to think of themselves apart from the people they were in the previous roles.

At the same time that exes are disengaging from previous roles and disidentifying with their normative expectations, they are in the process of learning new sets of role prescriptions. In one sense this is the process of role socialization, of internalizing the norms and expectations associated with a given social role. What makes exes different from others entering new roles is the fact that exes are unlearning normative expectations of previous roles at the same time that they are learning ones. This constitutes a process of resocialization to the extent that old sets of norms are given up and replaced by new sets of expectations.

Associated with socialization into a role is usually a shift of self-identity whereby the individual incorporates the social role into his or her perception of self. What characterizes the ex is the fact that the new identity incorporates vestiges and residuals of the previous role. To be a nonmember of a group is essentially different from being an ex-member in that nonmembers have never been part of the group. An individual has a self-identity that is formed as a result of numerous life experiences. For the ex-member a central experience is having been part of a previous group or social category. To become well integrated and a whole person, an ex must incorporate that past history into his or her current identity. Exes, therefore, share the fact that they must establish new identities that incorporate their past social status.

The process of role exiting involves tension between an individual's past, present, and future. Past identification with a social category or role lingers in one form or another throughout the lives of role exiters as they struggle to incorporate past identities into present conceptions of self. Exes tend to maintain role residual or some kind of "hangover identity" from a previous role as they move into new social roles. This role residual is part of self-identity and must be incorporated into current ideas of self.

Another characteristic that makes the ex-status unique are the images society holds of previous roles. People in society are conscious of ex-statuses and place an individual in a social structure not on the basis of current role occupancy alone but also on the basis of who the individual used to be. Life-cycle changes such as childhood, adolescence, and old age—those changes universally experienced by people—are usually not taken into account when considering ex-statuses. Rather, the unique statuses associated with occupation, life-style, marital status, or deviant roles tend to lead to societal stereotypes. Exes continually have to deal with society's reaction to their once having been part of a previous role set.

Role exit involves adjustment and adaptation, on the part not only of the individual making the change but also of significant others associated with the person. For example, mothers without custody have to deal with the reactions of their children as well as those of their own families of origin, who often look with horror on a woman who gives up custody of her children. Like divorcees, of which group she is also a part, she has to deal with former in-laws as well as an ex-spouse. One of the primary adjustments for transsexuals is dealing with significant others as they become aware of the sex change in the individual, including children, parents, and other relatives.

The ex also has unique relationships both with former group members—individuals with whom one once shared a social status—and with fellow exes who were also part of the same social group. Having shared a previous social status establishes relationships with which nonmembers of the group do not have to deal. At the same time, exes have to deal with people who have never been part of the previous group. The attitudes of such people often involve ignorance, stereotypes, curiosity, and a lack of sensitivity to the nuances of a previous role. In a very real sense, exes from a specific social role constitute a marginal group and frequently develop a "marginal culture" (Stonequist 1937; Gist and Dworkin 1972) to support one another and cope with the labels and stereotypes of the broader society.

To be an ex, therefore, is sociologically unique. It differs significantly from never having been part of a previous social role. Likewise, the exiting process has unique characteristics that distinguish it from the process of socialization into new roles. Disengagement, disidentification, dealing with role residual, and being categorized as an ex-member of a group are a few of the elements that make role exit a unique social process.

Socialization and Role Exit

Role change, that is, entrances and exits from social roles, has been recognized by social scientists for many years. However, in terms of serious and systematic analysis, the emphasis has been placed on role entrances, especially in the socialization literature. Traditionally, especially since the work of Cooley, Mead, and W. I. Thomas, socialization has been a central focus for both sociologists and social psychologists. It is almost impossible to pick up an introductory book in either field without encountering a discussion of socialization.

While much of the early socialization literature focused on infant and childhood socialization, in the past few years adult socialization has become recognized as a neglected and important focus for study (see Brim and Wheeler 1966). A major impetus behind this trend are the contributions being made by scholars of the human life cycle, who are emphasizing socialization as a phenomenon of adolescence and adulthood roles as well as of childhood. Sociologists have recently become interested in age stratification (Riley, Johnson and Foner 1972; Foner 1974); the life cycle perspective (Elder 1975); career patterns (Rosenbaum 1983; Spilerman 1977; Kanter 1977a); mobility in adulthood (Featherman and Hauser 1978); the effects of life events (Brim and Ryff 1980; Hogan 1981); and developmental changes in the family (Elder 1980; Rubin 1979).

While numerous books have been written concerning role entrance, especially concerning socialization as the primary process of learning new roles, very little scholarly work exists on the exit dimension of role change, even though the concept is implicit in the idea of adult socialization, particularly when one takes into account discussions of "anticipatory socialization."

The idea of "anticipatory socialization," which has been in the sociological literature for several decades, is suggestive of several dimensions of the role-exit process. As originally formulated by Merton and Rossi (Merton and Rossi 1957; Merton 1957a), anticipatory socialization is the acquisition of values and orientations found in statuses and groups in which one is not yet engaged but which one is likely to enter. Internalizing group values prior to actually joining a new group serves two functions for the individual: it aids the individual's rise into that group in terms of motivation and ease of entrance, and it eases his or her adjustment after he or she has become part of it. By identifying with a group that one hopes to join, the person begins to be like members of the group in value orientation and normative expectations before actually entering the new role and assuming the rights and obligations associated with being a member.

When comparing the processes of socialization and role exit, fundamental questions arise. Is role exit simply socialization in reverse, that is, the mirror opposite of socialization, or is it a unique social process? Can we apply what we know about resocialization, anticipatory socialization, and adult socialization to understand role exit, or are these concepts insufficient for understanding the process? I argue throughout the book that role exit is unique and distinguishable from socialization, and that we know about socialization into roles is insufficient for an adequate understanding of role exit.

Role-exit theory views socialization as simply one aspect of the process. Looking ahead to the acquisition of a new role may or may not be important to a person exiting a role. In some cases, exiters have little or no idea of what they will do after a major role exit; they focus exclusively on getting out of undesirable present roles.

In addition, even for those exiters who do engage in anticipatory socialization, looking forward is simply one aspect of a much larger process of doubting, decision making, and disengaging from an array of obligations and expectations associated with a present role. The dynamics of disengagement are very different from the dynamics of learning and assimilating a new role.

The focus of socialization literature is primarily on the new role one is assimilating or to which one aspires. Disengagement from old roles is important only to the extent that it facilitates adaptation to a new role. The speedier and more completely such disengagement takes place, the greater the probability that socialization into a new role will "take" and be effective. Disengagement, therefore, is viewed as something that must be accomplished before socialization can be completed. The social dynamics of the disengagement process have never been central to socialization research.

Furthermore, nowhere in the social science literature on socialization is explicit emphasis placed on the impact of a "holdover" identity derived from an ex-status. Nor is there systematic attention placed on social reactions to an individual that are based on a previous role. The one exception might be labeling theory as applied to previous stigmatized roles, as in the case of the ex-con or ex-junkie. However, there has been no attempt to integrate these findings into a broader social process theory.

Merton (1957a) suggested the theoretical importance of the concept of ex-status when he observed that not only an individual's "current status but also his past history of statuses" affect the present and future behavior of the individual. However, with the exception of work done by researchers interested in studies of class mobility and the impact of past statuses on current class behavior, very little theoretical research has focused on exstatuses and their impact on current identity.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Becoming an Ex by Helen Rose Fuchs Ebaugh. Copyright © 1988 The University of Chicago. Excerpted by permission of The University of Chicago Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents

Foreword by Robert K. Merton
Preface
1. Defining the Issues
2. First Doubts
3. Seeking Alternatives
4. The Turning Point
5. Creating the Ex-Role
6. Summary and Conclusions
Epilogue: Applied Settings
Appendix A: Demographic Characteristics of the Sample
Appendix B: The Therapeutic Impact of the Information Interview
References
Name Index
Subject Index