U.s. Society Is Built on the Assumption That Family Life Should Be Regulated by
15.two Sociological Perspectives on the Family
Learning Objective
- Summarize understandings of the family unit as presented by functional, conflict, and social interactionist theories.
Sociological views on today's families more often than not fall into the functional, conflict, and social interactionist approaches introduced earlier in this book. Let's review these views, which are summarized in Tabular array 15.one "Theory Snapshot".
Tabular array xv.i Theory Snapshot
| Theoretical perspective | Major assumptions |
|---|---|
| Functionalism | The family performs several essential functions for society. Information technology socializes children, it provides emotional and practical support for its members, it helps regulate sexual activity and sexual reproduction, and information technology provides its members with a social identity. In addition, sudden or far-reaching changes in the family's structure or processes threaten its stability and weaken lodge. |
| Disharmonize | The family unit contributes to social inequality past reinforcing economic inequality and by reinforcing patriarchy. The family can also be a source of conflict, including physical violence and emotional cruelty, for its own members. |
| Symbolic interactionism | The interaction of family members and intimate couples involves shared understandings of their situations. Wives and husbands have unlike styles of advice, and social class affects the expectations that spouses have of their marriages and of each other. Romantic love is the mutual footing for American marriages and dating relationships, but it is much less common in several other contemporary nations. |
Social Functions of the Family
Recollect that the functional perspective emphasizes that social institutions perform several important functions to help preserve social stability and otherwise keep a guild working. A functional agreement of the family thus stresses the ways in which the family as a social institution helps brand order possible. Equally such, the family performs several of import functions.
First, the family is the primary unit for socializing children. As previous chapters indicated, no society is possible without adequate socialization of its young. In nearly societies, the family is the major unit in which socialization happens. Parents, siblings, and, if the family is extended rather than nuclear, other relatives all help socialize children from the fourth dimension they are born.
One of the virtually important functions of the family unit is the socialization of children. In most societies the family unit is the major unit of measurement through which socialization occurs.
Second, the family is ideally a major source of practical and emotional back up for its members. It provides them food, clothing, shelter, and other essentials, and it also provides them love, condolement, help in times of emotional distress, and other types of intangible support that we all demand.
Third, the family helps regulate sexual activity and sexual reproduction. All societies take norms governing with whom and how often a person should have sexual activity. The family is the major unit for teaching these norms and the major unit through which sexual reproduction occurs. One reason for this is to ensure that infants accept adequate emotional and practical care when they are built-in. The incest taboo that most societies have, which prohibits sex between sure relatives, helps minimize conflict within the family if sex occurred among its members and to establish social ties amidst unlike families and thus amidst lodge as a whole.
4th, the family provides its members with a social identity. Children are born into their parents' social class, race and ethnicity, religion, and so forth. As nosotros have seen in earlier capacity, social identity is of import for our life chances. Some children have advantages throughout life because of the social identity they acquire from their parents, while others face up many obstacles because the social grade or race/ethnicity into which they are born is at the bottom of the social bureaucracy.
Beyond discussing the family'south functions, the functional perspective on the family unit maintains that sudden or far-reaching changes in conventional family structure and processes threaten the family'due south stability and thus that of society. For example, almost sociology and marriage-and-family textbooks during the 1950s maintained that the male breadwinner–female homemaker nuclear family was the best organisation for children, as information technology provided for a family'southward economic and child-rearing needs. Whatever shift in this arrangement, they warned, would damage children and by extension the family as a social establishment and even guild itself. Textbooks no longer incorporate this alert, but many conservative observers continue to worry about the impact on children of working mothers and one-parent families. We return to their concerns soon.
The Family and Conflict
Conflict theorists agree that the family serves the important functions just listed, but they also point to issues inside the family unit that the functional perspective minimizes or overlooks altogether.
First, the family equally a social institution contributes to social inequality in several ways. The social identity it gives to its children does affect their life chances, but it too reinforces a society's organization of stratification. Because families pass forth their wealth to their children, and because families differ profoundly in the corporeality of wealth they have, the family helps reinforce existing inequality. As it developed through the centuries, and especially during industrialization, the family besides became more and more of a patriarchal unit of measurement (run into before discussion), helping to ensure men'southward condition at the tiptop of the social bureaucracy.
Second, the family tin besides be a source of conflict for its ain members. Although the functional perspective assumes the family provides its members emotional condolement and support, many families practise only the opposite and are far from the harmonious, happy groups depicted in the 1950s television shows. Instead, and as the news story that began this affiliate tragically illustrated, they debate, shout, and use emotional cruelty and physical violence. Nosotros return to family violence after in this chapter.
Families and Social Interaction
Social interactionist perspectives on the family examine how family members and intimate couples interact on a daily ground and make it at shared understandings of their situations. Studies grounded in social interactionism give united states a groovy understanding of how and why families operate the way they do.
Some studies, for example, focus on how husbands and wives communicate and the degree to which they communicate successfully (Tannen, 2001). A classic written report by Mirra Komarovsky (1964) found that wives in blue-collar marriages liked to talk with their husbands near problems they were having, while husbands tended to exist quiet when problems occurred. Such gender differences seem less common in eye-class families, where men are better educated and more emotionally expressive than their working-class counterparts. Some other classic study past Lillian Rubin (1976) found that wives in middle-class families say that platonic husbands are ones who communicate well and share their feelings, while wives in working-class families are more apt to say that platonic husbands are ones who exercise not drinkable too much and who go to work every day.
Other studies explore the role played by romantic love in courtship and marriage. Romantic dear, the feeling of deep emotional and sexual passion for someone, is the basis for many American marriages and dating relationships, simply it is actually uncommon in many parts of the contemporary earth today and in many of the societies anthropologists and historians have studied. In these societies, marriages are arranged by parents and other kin for economic reasons or to build alliances, and immature people are simply expected to marry whoever is called for them. This is the state of affairs today in parts of India, Pakistan, and other developing nations and was the norm for much of the Western world until the late 18th and early 19th centuries (Lystra, 1989).
Key Takeaways
- The family ideally serves several functions for society. It socializes children, provides practical and emotional support for its members, regulates sexual reproduction, and provides its members with a social identity.
- Reflecting conflict theory's emphases, the family may likewise produce several problems. In particular, it may contribute for several reasons to social inequality, and it may subject its members to violence, arguments, and other forms of conflict.
- Social interactionist understandings of the family unit emphasize how family unit members interact on a daily basis. In this regard, several studies find that husbands and wives communicate differently in certain ways that sometimes impede effective advice.
For Your Review
- As you think how best to understand the family, exercise you favor the views and assumptions of functional theory, conflict theory, or social interactionist theory? Explain your answer.
- Do you lot think the family continues to serve the function of regulating sexual behavior and sexual reproduction? Why or why non?
References
Komarovsky, Yard. (1964). Blue-collar marriage. New York, NY: Random Firm.
Lystra, K. (1989). Searching the heart: Women, men, and romantic love in nineteenth-century America. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Rubin, L. B. (1976). Worlds of pain: Life in the working-class family. New York, NY: Basic Books.
Tannen, D. (2001). You just don't understand: Women and men in conversation. New York, NY: Quill.
Source: https://open.lib.umn.edu/sociology/chapter/15-2-sociological-perspectives-on-the-family/
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