Family Theories and Social Change Notes

Perspectives on the Role of the Family

  • Murdock's Functionalist Definition of Family (1949):

    • Universal: Exists in all societies, indicating the family's fundamental role in human social structures.

    • Four characteristics: common residence (members live together), economic co-operation (resource pooling and labor division), reproduction (responsible for procreation), and socially approved sexual relationship between adults (ensuring legitimacy and stability).

    • Exclusive definition: Based on characteristics differentiating families from other social groups, setting clear boundaries.

    • Flexible enough to accommodate polygamous families, showing adaptability across various cultural norms.

    • Excludes single-parent and homosexual households, reflecting the limitations and biases of the time.

  • Giddens' Inclusive Definition:

    • Focuses on kinship and relationships, emphasizing social bonds rather than rigid structures.

    • Families are defined by kin connections with adult members responsible for childcare, highlighting caregiving as a central function.

    • Covers a variety of family forms but risks being too broad, potentially diluting the definition's analytical power.

  • Nuclear Family as Universal Unit (Murdock):

    • Nuclear family: Parents and children, seen as the core unit across different family structures.

    • Extended families include other relatives, but the nuclear family is central, suggesting that the nuclear family is the primary building block.

    • Isolated nuclear family: Self-contained, economically independent unit, common in modern industrial societies.

  • Murdock's Functional Prerequisites of the Family:

    • Sexual control: Stability through exclusivity, managing sexual behavior within socially approved norms.

    • Reproduction: Creating new society members, ensuring continuity of society.

    • Socialization: Teaching values and norms, integrating new members into society.

    • Economic provision: Ensuring survival through a division of labor, meeting the material needs of family members.

  • Parsons and Bales (1956):

    • Families in modern societies have become increasingly specialized, adapting to the changing demands of industrial life.

    • Loss of functions: Other institutions taking over roles previously held by families, such as education and healthcare.

    • Irreducible functions:

      • Primary socialization: Developing human personalities, instilling basic values and norms.

      • Stabilization of adult personalities: Providing emotional support, reducing stress from outside pressures.

  • Fletcher (1973):

    • Core functions: Childbearing and child-rearing (cannot be performed by individuals alone), highlighting the unique role of families in these areas.

    • Peripheral functions: Largely taken over by other institutions (e.g., education, healthcare), indicating a shift in responsibilities.

  • Neo-functionalism (Horwitz, 2005):

    • Family as a bridge connecting the individual ('micro world') to wider economic society ('macro world'), emphasizing the family's role in mediating between personal and societal spheres.

    • Effective rule-learning due to emotional commitment and subconscious copying, illustrating how families instill societal norms through close relationships.

'Loss of Functions' Debate

  • Fit Thesis: Industrialization and urbanization led to changes in family structure.

    • Shift from extended to nuclear families due to geographic mobility and labor flexibility requirements, adapting to the demands of the industrial economy.

    • Extended families suited pre-industrial, family-based subsistence farming, fitting the needs of an agrarian society.

    • Nuclear families fit economic needs of industrial society, aligning with the requirements of a mobile workforce.

  • Functionalist Sociologists (Parsons, Goode):

    • Extended families in pre-industrial society were multi-functional, kinship-based, and economically productive.

      ``* Labor-intensive agriculture required many family members.

    • Limited mobility due to poor communications.

    • Elderly relied on kin due to lack of welfare systems.

  • Nuclear Family Dominance:

    • Industrialization required mobility.

    • Decline of nepotism; skills and knowledge became more important.

Arguments Against Parsons

  • Finch (1989): Little evidence of stronger family obligations pre-Industrial Revolution.

  • Historical studies show various household types pre-industrial era.

  • Alternative Suggestion: Pre-industrial families were mainly nuclear, aiding industrialization.

  • Low life expectancy limited vertically extended families.

  • Primogeniture inheritance system facilitated industrial development.

  • Anderson (1995): No single dominant family structure during industrialization.

    • Working class developed broadly extended family structure due to urbanization.

    • Kinship networks crucial for care, job security, childcare, and support for orphans.

    • Children contributed to family income from a young age.

  • Shift in Functions:

    • Education handled by schools.

    • Health and social care by professionals.

    • Recreation individualized or external.

    • Families still play modified roles (e.g., parental involvement in education).

Evaluation of Functionalist Accounts

  • Contributions:

    • Emphasized the importance of family life and the prevalence of the nuclear family.

    • Identified positive support functions of families.

    • Recognized the continuing preference for nuclear families and their encouragement by governments.

  • Criticisms:

    • Outdated and not universally applicable (based on mid-20th century white middle-class American experience).

    • Ignores social class and ethnicity differences.

    • Idealizes the nuclear family, exaggerating positives and downplaying negatives (e.g., gender roles, lack of support).

    • Fails to recognize other viable family types.

    • Assumes family is distinct from other institutions.

    • Sees socialization as a one-way process.

Marxist Accounts

  • Systems Approach Emphasizing Conflict:

    • Family supports capitalist economy in three ways:

      • Ideological control: Spreads ideas favorable to capitalism.

      • Economic role: Reproduces labor force and bears costs of replacement.

      • Political role: Acts as a steady, stabilizing force.

    • Althusser (1970): Family as ideological state apparatus (ISA).

    • Zaretsky (1976): Socialization passes on ruling-class ideology.

    • Families are targets for advertisers, becoming major profit sources.

    • Privatized nuclear family encourages focus on private problems, stabilizing political order.

    • Family becomes outlet for frustrations, deflecting from real causes.

  • Zaretsky: Family as refuge from work can be criticized for ignoring drudgery, violence, and neglect.

  • Overall: Marxism provides a corrective to functionalism by highlighting class inequalities.

  • Limitations: Marxists may exaggerate negative aspects, neglecting emotional fulfillment.

Neo-Marxism

  • Adds a cultural dimension to the relationship between family and the economic system.

  • Highlights how different types of family capital give advantages and disadvantages to children of different classes:

    • Cultural capital

    • Social capital

    • Symbolic capital

Feminist Responses

  • Challenge functionalist and Marxist perspectives: Focus on conflict and exploitation of women.

  • Family as an oppressive structure locking women in service roles.

  • Feminism = umbrella term

  • Liberal Feminism:

    • Situation of women can be improved by changes like new laws.

    • Criticized for not recognizing patriarchy is deeply embedded in society.

  • Radical Feminism:

    • Patriarchy: Domination of women and children by men.

    • Society is patriarchal, but so is the nuclear family.

    • Critiques liberal feminists efforts, states radical change needed.

  • Marxist Feminism:

    • Combines insights of feminism and Marxism – world of work.

    • Women make capitalism possible (domestic work).

    • Dual burden (double shift): Exploited in the workplace and at home

  • Black Feminism:

    • Developed mainly in the USA amongst African-American women.

    • Did not agreed all men as ‘the enemy’ in the way some radical feminists did.

    • Family plays a different role as ‘haven’ from racism.

  • Difference Feminists:

    • Emphasize the differences between men and women, and between different groups of women.

    • Disagree with liberal feminists who argue that men and women can be equal.

Diversity and Social Change

  • This section uses evidence mainly from the United Kingdom, but similar patterns are found in other modern industrial societies, with similar causes and consequences.

  • Gattrell’s research: Parents found it difficult to combine work and parenthood.

Marriage

  • In modern industrial societies, the number of marriages and the marriage rate have been failing.

  • Causes of marital changes:

    • Population (demographic) changes rather than a change in people’s behavior.

    • Wider influences on people’s behavior.

Cohabitation

  • Lower levels of stigma attached to living with someone without being married the wider availability of birth control (contraception) and abortion.

  • Smart and Stevens suggest four main reasons for recent upward trends in cohabitation

Divorce and separation

  • In recent years there has been a general decline in divorce, although since 1981 there has been a doubling of ‘re-divorces’.

  • One clear pattern is that divorced people (divorcees) have been getting older, a fact that reflects the later average age of marriage.

  • Causes of divorce:

    • Patterns of divorce are affected by a range of social factors.

    • Contemporary ideas about marriage are arguably influenced by romantic identity (individualism).

Different family and household forms

  • Households

    • Single-person households

    • Couple households

    • Shared households

  • Nuclear families

  • Reconstituted or step-families

  • Same-sex families

  • Lone-/single-parent families

  • Extended families

    • Vertically extended families

    • Horizontally extended families

    • Matrifocal families

    • Patrifocal families

  • Families of choice

Dimensions of family diversity

  • Organisational Diversity

  • Social class diversity

  • Cultural and ethnic diversity

The debate about the extent of family diversity and the dominance of the nuclear family

  • Social changes

  • Changing social attitudes

  • Increased life expectancy

The New Right and postmodernist perspectives on family diversity

  • The New Right perspective

  • Postmodern optimism

The state and social policy as influences on the family

  • Family life is surrounded by:

    • legal norms, controlling things such as marriage and divorce

    • moral values that shape ideas about what a family is and should be, what it does and should do.

  • Functionalism

  • The New Right

  • Marxism

  • Feminism

Family roles and changing relationships

  • Gender equality and experiences of family life

    • Liberal feminism

    • Marxist feminism

    • Radical feminism

  • Conjugal roles and debates about gender equality in the family

    • Housework and child care

      Ann Oakley

  • Debates about whether the experience of family life is positive or negative for family members

Age and family life

  • The social construction of childhood, and changes in the role and social position of children in the family

    Philippe Ariès

  • What products and industries exist that are aimed at children as consumers?

  • The role and social position of grandparents in the family