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Quick revise
After studying this section, you should be able to understand:
Some of the common terms used by sociologists to describe family structures include:
Why did the working class develop an extended family structure due to urbanisation?
2. Industrialization
Process in which machines are widely used in the production of goods. Development of factories and
ability to mass produce consumer goods.
Why did the structure of family change from extended families due to industrialisation?
Because the extended families were ideally suited to the demands of family-based subsistence
farming, which declined in industrialisation.
Why was the nuclear family more suited to the industrial society?
1) Geographic mobility (find and keep work in industrial processes)
2) Labour flexibility
3) New opportunities for social mobility and economic advancement as new work developed
4) Decline of nepotism (new industry = demand specific skills, cannot find job simply due to connections)
Why were people forced to change the way they lived to accommodate new forms of
economic production?
Because extended families no longer supported the economic requirements that dominated the
new economic system.
According to Harris, why were nuclear family structures necessary for industrialisation?
Set up an inheritance system that concentrated wealth to a small number of people.
3. Globalization
Rapid global movement of different ideas, styles and products that can be picked up, discarded
and adapted to fit the needs of diff. cultural groups.
KEY POINT
The influence of these traditional beliefs about family life has been immense. They constitute a
powerful conservative ‘ideology’ (i.e. dominant set of ideas) about what families should look like
and how family members should behave, e.g. the following beliefs are very influential today in
Britain.
That women have maternal instincts and that the main responsibility for parenting
lies with the mother.
That cohabitation does not have the same value as marriage.
That lone parents are not as effective as two parents.
That homosexuals should not have the same fertility or parenting rights as
heterosexuals.
Murdock claimed that this nuclear family performs four basic functions in all societies, which
benefit both society and the individual.
Criticism of Murdock
The main criticism of Murdock is that his definition of family life is very much a product of time
and place (1940s USA) and consequently is ethnocentric, i.e. it is based on the view that
Western, and especially American, culture produces the ‘best’ cultural institutions and that
other cultural family types are somehow inferior.
Interpretivist sociologists argue that Murdock fails to acknowledge that families are the
product of culture rather than biology, and that, consequently, family relationships and roles
will take different forms even within the same society.
Murdock’s model is value-laden and not objective, because it is clearly saying there are ‘right’
and ‘wrong’ ways to organise family life. It is also very dated and fails to take account of
modern social processes such as the increased availability of career choices for women, the
decline in male employment opportunities, the importance of the contraceptive pill, the
relaxation in social and religious attitudes and the increasing recognition, from the 1970s
onwards, that family life does not always benefit all family members.
However, despite his tendency to make moral judgements about heterosexuality and marriage,
Murdock is largely correct in his view that the family is the fundamental building block of
societies. Most members of society see kinship ties as the most important aspect of their
obligations to others, whilst socialisation into the values, norms and morals of society, which is
responsible for producing the next generation of citizens, mainly occurs within family contexts.
KEY POINT
Parsons argued that the modern family is left with two basic and irreducible functions.
The ‘nuclear unit’ provides husband and wife with very clear social roles. The male is the
‘instrumental leader’ and is responsible for the economic maintenance of the family group. The
female is the ‘expressive leader’ who is primarily responsible for the socialisation of children
and emotional maintenance.
Parsons concludes that the nuclear family is functional (beneficial) to society. Moreover, it is
beneficial for the individuals because it provides a stable environment for spouses and children
to construct loving relationships.
However, Fletcher argues that the family has not experienced structural differentiation to the
degree that Parsons claims. Fletcher argues that the family is still heavily involved in the
functions of education, health and welfare. The State has not taken over these functions.
Instead, the State and the family work hand-in-hand with each other. Moreover, Fletcher claims
that the family is now responsible for the major economic function of consumption – most
advertising of consumer goods is aimed at persuading families to spend their income so that
the economy is stimulated.
The British functionalists Willmott and Young (1973) took issue with Parsons over the speed of
change. This is sometimes called
the ‘internal critique’ because these sociologists agree with Parsons that the nuclear family is
the ideal type of family for industrial
societies. Their empirical research, conducted in a working class area (Bethnal Green) in the
1950s, showed that classic extended families still existed in large numbers even at this
advanced stage of industrialisation.
Willmott and Young argue that this unit only went into decline in the 1960s. There were three
broad reasons for this.
State council housing and slum clearance led to extended working class
communities being re-housed in new towns and council estates. Most new
housing was geared to nuclear families.
The Welfare State – opportunities created by the expansion of secondary
education, and full employment in the 1950s, undermined the need for a mutual
support system.
Consumerism became the dominant ideology in the 1960s, especially as home
technology, e.g. television, developed. This made the home a more attractive
place.
KEY POINT
Willmott and Young argued that such developments encouraged the evolution of the
symmetrical family, i.e. a home-centred, privatised nuclear unit. They claimed that this would
become the dominant family type by the 1990s. In this sense they agreed with Parsons.
It socialises children, especially working class children, into capitalist ideology, i.e.
it is within the family that children learn obedience and respect to those in
authority, that inequalities in power are ‘natural’ and that the capitalist
organisation of society is ‘normal’ and unchangeable. They grow up into
conformist adult workers who rarely challenge exploitation and inequality.
The family also acts as a psychological comforting device for the worker against
the hardships of the workplace in which problems such as low pay, exploitation or
fear of losing one’s job can be forgotten for a while.
As the major agency of consumption the family is constantly encouraged by
ideological agencies, such as the mass media, to invest in
what Marcuse calls ‘false needs’, i.e. consumer goods bought to be conspicuously
consumed and which quickly become obsolete (such as designer goods). This
ensures that the capitalist class continues to make vast profits.
KEY POINT
Marxist-feminists suggest that the nuclear family meets the needs of capitalism for the
reproduction and maintenance of class and patriarchal inequality. It benefits the powerful at the
expense of the working class and women.
The Marxist-feminist Benston (1972) argues that the nuclear family provides the basic
commodity required by capitalism, i.e. labour power, by:
reproducing and rearing the future workforce at little cost to the capitalist class
maintaining the present workforce’s physical and emotional fitness through the
wife’s domestic labour.
Benston argues that capitalism essentially gets two labour powers (that of the husband and
wife) for one wage. The nuclear family acts as a stabilising force in capitalist societies because
workers find it difficult to withdraw their labour power if they have families to
support. Ansley (1976) suggests that men may attempt to make up for the lack of power and
control in the workplace by exerting control within the family through domestic violence.
However, these changes do not mean that liberal feminists are fully happy about the degree of
change. There is still a long way to go, especially in the mass media’s representation of women.
There is also some evidence that equality in marriage may be exaggerated and that domestic
violence is still a significant problem today. However, liberal feminists believe that gentle
persuasion and consciousness raising will convince men that social change aimed at dismantling
patriarchy will work for the benefit of all society.
Women now have many more choices available to them compared with previous
generations. They are less likely to view romantic love, and therefore marriage, as
their primary goal.
Pre-marital sex and serial monogamy have become more socially acceptable.
Some women are voluntarily choosing childlessness, whilst developments in
reproductive technology mean that traditional heterosexual assumptions are
undermined, as lesbians and single women use that technology to have children.
The variety of career opportunities for women, and male unemployment, mean
that females are now increasingly likely to be the economic providers for their
families.
Children are often fashion accessories, which convey status on their parents.
Children are now less likely to be shaped by family socialisation, because many
young people today grow up either outside of nuclear family life or they spend
more time with professional childminders than with their parents.