Why Is the Family Crucial to Our Understanding of Social Nehavior

10.ii Sociological Perspectives on the Family

Learning Objective

1. Summarize understandings of the family as presented past functional, conflict, and social interactionist theories.

Sociological views on today's families and their problems generally fall into the functional, conflict, and social interactionist approaches introduced in Chapter 1 "Understanding Social Problems". Permit's review these views, which are summarized in Table 10.ane "Theory Snapshot".

Table 10.1 Theory Snapshot

Theoretical perspective	Major assumptions
Functionalism	The family performs several essential functions for lodge. 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. Family bug stem from sudden or far-reaching changes in the family'southward structure or processes; these problems threaten the family's stability and weaken order.
Conflict theory	The family contributes to social inequality by reinforcing economic inequality and by reinforcing patriarchy. Family problems stem from economic inequality and from patriarchal ideology. The family tin can too be a source of conflict, including concrete violence and emotional cruelty, for its ain members.
Symbolic interactionism	The interaction of family members and intimate couples involves shared understandings of their situations. Wives and husbands have different styles of advice, and social class affects the expectations that spouses take of their marriages and of each other. Family unit problems stem from different understandings and expectations that spouses have of their marriage.

Social Functions of the Family

Retrieve that the functional perspective emphasizes that social institutions perform several important functions to aid preserve social stability and otherwise go along a society working. A functional understanding of the family thus stresses the means in which the family as a social institution helps make society possible. As such, the family unit performs several important functions.

First, the family is the primary unit for socializing children. No society is possible without adequate socialization of its young. In most societies, the family is the major unit of measurement 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 nigh important functions of the family is the socialization of children. In nearly societies the family unit is the major unit through which socialization occurs.

Second, the family is ideally a major source of applied and emotional support for its members. It provides them food, wear, shelter, and other essentials, and it too provides them honey, condolement, and assistance in times of emotional distress, and other types of support.

Third, the family unit helps regulate sex and sexual reproduction. All societies have norms governing with whom and how ofttimes a person should have sexual activity. The family is the major unit for teaching these norms and the major unit of measurement through which sexual reproduction occurs. One reason for this is to ensure that infants have acceptable emotional and practical intendance when they are born.

Quaternary, the family provides its members with a social identity. Children are born into their parents' social grade, race and ethnicity, faith, and so forth. Some children have advantages throughout life considering of the social identity they acquire from their parents, while others face many obstacles because the social course or race/ethnicity into which they are born is at the bottom of the social hierarchy.

Beyond discussing the family unit'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's stability and thus that of society. For example, most sociology and wedlock-and-family textbooks during the 1950s maintained that the male breadwinner–female homemaker nuclear family was the best organization for children, equally it provided for a family'due south economic and child-rearing needs. Whatsoever shift in this organisation, they warned, would harm children and, by extension, the family every bit a social institution and fifty-fifty social club itself. Textbooks no longer contain this warning, only many conservative observers continue to worry almost the impact on children of working mothers and one-parent families. We return to their concerns shortly.

The Family and Conflict

Conflict theorists hold that the family serves the important functions just listed, but they also point to bug within the family that the functional perspective minimizes or overlooks altogether.

Outset, the family as a social institution contributes to social inequality. Because families pass along their wealth to their children, and because families differ greatly in the amount of wealth they have, the family helps reinforce existing inequality. As information technology developed through the centuries, and peculiarly during industrialization, the family too became more and more of a patriarchal unit (since men made money working in factories while women stayed home), helping to reinforce men's status at the elevation of the social hierarchy.

Second, the family can also be a source of disharmonize for its own members. Although the functional perspective assumes the family provides its members emotional comfort and back up, many families practise just the opposite and are far from the harmonious, happy groups depicted in the 1950s television shows. Instead, they argue, shout, and apply emotional cruelty and physical violence. Nosotros return to family unit violence subsequently in this chapter.

The disharmonize perspective emphasizes that many of the problems we come across in today's families stalk from economical inequality and from patriarchy. The problems that many families feel reverberate the fact that they live in poverty or near poverty. Money does not always bring happiness, only a dire lack of money produces stress and other difficulties that impair a family unit'southward functioning and relationships. The Note 10.9 "Applying Social Research" box discusses other means in which social form influences the family.

Disharmonize within a family also stems from patriarchy. Husbands commonly earn more than money than wives, and many men continue to feel that they are the head of their families. When women resist this one-time-fashioned notion, spousal conflict occurs.

Applying Social Research

Social Grade and the Family

A growing amount of social science research documents social form differences in how well a family unit functions: the quality of its relationships and the cognitive, psychological, and social development of its children. This focus reflects the fact that what happens during the showtime months and years of life may have profound effects on how well a newborn prospers during childhood, adolescence, and across. To the extent this is true, the social course differences that accept been found take troublesome implications.

According to sociologist Frank E. Furstenberg Jr., "steep differences be across social classes" in mothers' prenatal experiences, such as the quality of their diet and wellness intendance, every bit well as in the health intendance that their infants receive. As a result, he says, "children enter the world endowed unequally." This inequality worsens after they are born for several reasons.

Starting time, depression-income families are much more than likely to experience negative events, such as expiry, poor health, unemployment, divorce, and criminal victimization. When these negative events practise occur, says Furstenberg, "social class affects a family unit's power to cushion their blow…Life is just harder and more hardhearted at the bottom." These negative events produce not bad amounts of stress; as Chapter 2 "Poverty" discussed, this stress in turn causes children to experience various developmental problems.

2d, low-income parents are much less probable to read and speak regularly to their infants and young children, who thus are slower to develop cognitive and reading skills; this problem in turn impairs their schoolhouse performance when they enter elementary schoolhouse.

Third, low-income parents are besides less able to expose their children to cultural experiences (e.yard., museum visits) outside the abode, to develop their talents in the arts and other areas, and to otherwise be involved in the many nonschool activities that are important for a child's development. In dissimilarity, wealthier parents keep their children very busy in these activities in a pattern that sociologist Annette Lareau calls concerted cultivation. These children's involvement in these activities provides them various life skills that assistance raise their performance in school and afterwards in the workplace.

Fourth, low-income children grow up in depression-income neighborhoods, which often take inadequate schools and many other problems, including toxins such as lead paint, that impair a child'due south development. In contrast, says Furstenberg, children from wealthier families "are very likely to attend meliorate schools and alive in better neighborhoods. Information technology is every bit if the playing field for families is tilted in means that are barely visible to the naked eye."

5th, low-income families are less able to beget to send a child to college, and they are more than likely to lack the social contacts that wealthier parents can use to help their child get a good job after higher.

For all these reasons, social course profoundly shapes how children fare from conception through early on adulthood and across. Because this body of research documents many negative consequences of living in a low-income family, information technology reinforces the need for wide-ranging efforts to help such families.

Sources: Bandy, Andrews, & Moore, 2012; Furstenberg, 2010; Lareau, 2010

Families and Social Interaction

Social interactionist perspectives on the family unit examine how family members and intimate couples interact on a daily basis and arrive at shared understandings of their situations. Studies grounded in social interactionism requite us a keen agreement of how and why families operate the way they do.

Some studies, for instance, 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 nigh problems they were having, while husbands tended to be serenity when bug occurred. Such gender differences are less common in eye-class families, where men are ameliorate educated and more emotionally expressive than their working-form counterparts, but gender differences in advice yet exist in these families. Another archetype study by Lillian Rubin (1976) constitute that wives in middle-class families say that ideal husbands are ones who communicate well and share their feelings, while wives in working-class families are more apt to say that ideal husbands are ones who do non drink besides much and who get to work every day.

Co-ordinate to the symbolic interactionist perspective, family unit problems often stem from the dissimilar understandings, perceptions, and expectations that spouses have of their marriage and of their family. When these differences become too extreme and the spouses cannot reconcile their disagreements, spousal disharmonize and possibly divorce may occur (Kaufman & Taniguchi, 2006).

Key Takeaways

• The family ideally serves several functions for society. Information technology 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 unit may also produce several problems. In item, it may contribute for several reasons to social inequality, and information technology may subject its members to violence, arguments, and other forms of conflict.
• Social interactionist understandings of the family emphasize how family members interact on a daily basis. In this regard, several studies find that husbands and wives communicate differently in sure ways that sometimes impede effective advice.

For Your Review

1. Every bit you think how best to understand the family, do yous favor the views and assumptions of functional theory, disharmonize theory, or social interactionist theory? Explicate your answer.
2. Do you think the family continues to serve the office of regulating sexual behavior and sexual reproduction? Why or why not?

References

Bandy, T., Andrews, M.M., & Moore, K.A. (2012). Disadvantaged families and child outcomes: The importance of emotional support for mothers. Washington, DC: Child Trends.

Furstenberg, F. E., Jr. (2010). Diverging evolution: The not-and so-invisible hand of social class in the The states. In B. J. Risman (Ed.), Families as they really are (pp. 276–294). New York, NY: W. W. Norton.

Kaufman, G., & Taniguchi, H. (2006). Gender and marital happiness in afterward life. Journal of Family Problems, 27(6), 735–757.

Komarovsky, M. (1964). Blueish-neckband marriage. New York, NY: Random House.

Lareau, A. (2010). Unequal childhoods: Inequalities in the rhythms of daily life. In B. J. Risman (Ed.), Families as they really are (pp. 295–298). New York: W. W. Norton.

Rubin, Fifty. B. (1976). Worlds of pain: Life in the working-class family. New York, NY: Bones Books.

Tannen, D. (2001). You just don't understand: Women and men in conversation. New York, NY: Quill.

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