families and house holds
Families and Households
(In this essay I will examine and assess the view that, in today’s society, the family is losing its functions.)
Modern family sociology mainly developed in the middle of the 20th century, in a period of stability (for countries like the USA or even Switzerland) or of social reconstruction after the Second world war (as for most other European countries). This development took place under the aegis of the then dominating functionalist paradigm (Parsons & Bales 1955, Goode 1963). Its basic model was that of the nuclear family, a couple of two adult partners living together with their children and forming an irreducible group securing fundamental tasks for social and hence societal integration, especially through socialization, a group that functioned in a relatively autonomous way, with little intimate contacts beyond its borders, which made it particularly attuned to the flexibility required by the industrial society. The internal structure of this family model was mainly organized around two ascribed criteria, sex and age. The role attribution according to the sex of the adult partners - internal tasks for the wife, external tasks for the husband - was said to correspond to expressive vs. instrumental orientations typical of sexual identities and was interpreted to be a highly functional way of performing all the necessary contributions to family and societal functioning.
The welfare state and other social institutions played a pivotal role as a ‘substitute family‘; many functions the family used to perform (see my video on Parsons’ Fit Thesis’) have now been taken over by our welfare state (anyone else hear Charles Murray groan?). Remember pre-industrialization? – The family performed many educational & caring roles! For example, single parents can perform the economic role through benefit payments and primary socialization of children can be performed by pre-school / nursery. So on the one hand, from a functionalist and New Right
(In this essay I will examine and assess the view that, in today’s society, the family is losing its functions.)
Modern family sociology mainly developed in the middle of the 20th century, in a period of stability (for countries like the USA or even Switzerland) or of social reconstruction after the Second world war (as for most other European countries). This development took place under the aegis of the then dominating functionalist paradigm (Parsons & Bales 1955, Goode 1963). Its basic model was that of the nuclear family, a couple of two adult partners living together with their children and forming an irreducible group securing fundamental tasks for social and hence societal integration, especially through socialization, a group that functioned in a relatively autonomous way, with little intimate contacts beyond its borders, which made it particularly attuned to the flexibility required by the industrial society. The internal structure of this family model was mainly organized around two ascribed criteria, sex and age. The role attribution according to the sex of the adult partners - internal tasks for the wife, external tasks for the husband - was said to correspond to expressive vs. instrumental orientations typical of sexual identities and was interpreted to be a highly functional way of performing all the necessary contributions to family and societal functioning.
The welfare state and other social institutions played a pivotal role as a ‘substitute family‘; many functions the family used to perform (see my video on Parsons’ Fit Thesis’) have now been taken over by our welfare state (anyone else hear Charles Murray groan?). Remember pre-industrialization? – The family performed many educational & caring roles! For example, single parents can perform the economic role through benefit payments and primary socialization of children can be performed by pre-school / nursery. So on the one hand, from a functionalist and New Right