Radical Changes In Family Life: Same-sex Couples, Lone Parenthood And Indivualization - Essay Example

RADICAL CHANGES IN FAMILY LIFE: SAME-SEX COUPLES, LONE PARENTHOOD, AND INDIVIDUALIZATION Introduction The concept of ‘intimate relationship’ is a wider and fluid term as it encompasses different types of associations between sexual partners, family, friends and kin. In the twenty first century, family unity and organization has undergone numerous transformation and changes including the acceptance of same-sex marriages and increased cases of single parenthood. As opposed to the earlier societal ordination in which a family was viewed as a union which brings people of diverse culture or tradition together and then establishing a common unit, the situation has quickly changed in this century. This research paper therefore examines sociological construction and transformation of family lives and the intimate relationships have shifted in the twenty first century. Besides, the paper further explores the changing understanding of the social connectedness and documented statistics about the family unions and relationships in the current world. The major sociological concepts which have shaped families in are founded on individualization, same-sex marriages, loss of cultural values, and democratization. Family system theory is a concept which was introduced by Dr. Bowen Murray who suggested that “individuals cannot be understood in isolation from one another, but rather as a part of their family, as the family is an emotional unit.” According to his theory, family is a system of interlocking, interdependent and interconnected individuals, in which none of the individuals can work in isolation from the uniting system. In this system, all the members have their duties and roles clearly defined and must be respected. The response between the members is determined by the nature of the relationship agreements and the ordained responsibilities. To maintain the balance within the family systems, boundaries are defined to act as a guide to all members of the family, hence predictability of behavior pattern. For instance, in case of social dysfunction of a member, other family members assume the responsibility. Though changes in the roles are essential in maintaining stability and unity in the relationship, it may shift the equilibrium in the relationship (as witnessed in today). As discussed: “Strong families are, of course, seen as conjugal, heterosexual parents with an employed male breadwinner. Lone mothers and gay couples do not, by definition, constitute strong families in this rhetoric. On the contrary, they are part of the problem and part of the process of destabilizing the necessary fortitude of the proper family” (Silva and Smart 93). Individualization of family lives and family discourses According to Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim and Ulrich Beck, individualization theory is the common social structure in the 21st century. Today, as opposed to the previous generation, individuals have a voice and command on personal choices without any restriction (Beck-Gernsheim 67). Individualized self-creation occurs in accordance with the changing social, institutional and professional demands of the society. Similarly, romantic relationships are dominated the modern world independent of the sex of the partners. Emotional attachments are losing value as other variables (mainly economic necessities) overrides in determining the course of relationships and attachments. Therefore, social experts assert that family structure individualization occurs on two dimensions: institutionalized individualism and post-familial family structure which are defined in three approaches to living identified as cohabitation, same-sex couples, and lone parents. This has raised political debate on whether same-sex couples like hereto-sexual partners should have the legal right of registration, child adoption and other fundamental social rights. Dealing with the post-familial family norms in the modern society has proved challenging. Marriage and sexuality are the two main discourses which dominate the discussion on family forms and norms. In the post-familial society, it is no longer a common phase for the family to be founded on the husband-wife union signed on a permanent basis. Other forms of marriages are gaining acceptance and their popularity is on the rise. Empirically, it is observed that the context and content of the family life has drastically changed. This is evidenced by decline in marriages, increased cases of outside wedlock children, higher rate of divorce cases, and single parenthood. On supportive evidences are withdrawals of breadwinner-housewife models and individualized family life. Gender equality and affirmative action has accorded equal opportunities for both sexes into labour markets and thus reducing the importance and value placed on marriages as an adulthood security. This has a transformation of marriage to personal option from economic necessity (Esping-Andersen 71). Moreover, the unions and relationship of the modern society are founded on ‘irrational’ factors variables such as passion, self-satisfaction, and love which are defined by ‘the pure relationship’ concept. Marriage has lost its prestige as a formal precondition for establishing a family. Extended families are no longer of great value as it was in the earlier centuries. Instead, complex family structures with children born of different biological parents staying together as a family has become the order of the decade, and so those children born by same sex partners or those raised by single parents. Same-sex couples and lone parenthood The modern society and family structure of the twenty first century is also characterized by lone parenthood or single parenting. Though not social accepted form of unconventional family form, single parenting is a reality in the modern society and the society must come to terms with this social transformation. Lone parenthood results from separation or divorce, and death of one of the spouse which leaves the widow/widower with the sole responsibility of raising the children. To a relatively smaller proportion, lone parenthood may occur in case the parent had never been married before or out of wedlock childbearing (Finch 145). The latest indication of the move in the family structure as a result of individualization or post-familial family pattern is the controversial debate on same-sex marriage, a common pattern in the modern societies. Same-sex marriages are believed to the foundation pillars behind the decline in family values and external structural family structures. Although the modern society has to live the reality of same-sex marriages by allowing such couples to register and receive formal recognition, legal institutions of many states are yet to grant marriage right to these couples and even to have the access to legal backings of having joint property ownership or child adoption rights. However, nearly all the states report a relaxed attitude of the society towards homosexual couples. The intolerance behavior of the religious organization towards formal recognition of same-sex marriages (founded on the philosophy that same-sex relationships contravenes religious beliefs about family structures) has been one of the reasons for living in denial by such couples (Hyggen and Skevik 78-9). United Kingdom is very relevant in allowing same-sex couples to formalize their union through registration. Great Britain, unlike other European Union members, it opposed to both registration of same-sex relationships and marriage (Finch 156). For this reason, same-sex couples forms the minority groups in these communities as they are forced to live in denial with limited legal rights of adoption or marriage. Thus, it as can be observed during the post-familial society, same-sex relationships have transcended beyond marriages to cover sexuality and child rearing through adoption. Statistics on social variable Currently, home-leaving, matrimonial, and the start of motherhood happen later in the life period than in the period after World War II. Disengagement from the America’s well-paying unskilled and semi-skilled industrial works in the 1960s, youth from all economic levels started continuing in school for higher studies and marrying and beginning their individual families later. Growing figures of women with lower income did not marry however, took non-marital parenting and frequently asking their biological families for financial and social care, instead of to their buddies. As these young adults’ requirement on their families rose lengthier, the economic and emotive encumbrance of parenting raised heftier. Currently, irrespective of their revenue level, U.S. parents offer approximately the identical percentage of their incomes to care their young grown-up children. After the mid of the twentieth century, the institution of the family experienced a sweeping change in practice and role for explanations that social scientists even today only moderately comprehend. The U S, not like various states in Europe, with its fairly immature welfare scheme, does not spend greatly in schooling, wellbeing, and work aids for young adults. However as the change to maturity turn out to be further prolonged, the growing family encumbrance might substantiate expensive to society in total. The necessity to deliver superior backing for children for long might dampen married couples from having further offspring which might lead to lesser fertility and decrease the labour force that in turn further worsen the difficulty of pro­viding both for growing numbers of the aged and for the young. Hence it is necessary to comprehend the significance of supporting the family and lessen the huge and compet­ing burdens that are being placed on parents (Furstenberg 45-51). From the Census Bureau results of the 2000 census, it was obvious that how the American family was vanishing. Fewer households comprised married couples with children, and more families comprised lone single persons, unmarried buddies, or single parent families. The writers see that the American family may be entering a frightening fresh era. Frequently, reporters compared the 2000 family with the imaginary family characterized in1950s sitcoms. The past record exposes certain histrionic changes, however not certainly the ones they concentrated on. Furthermore, there were important links over the period. Utmost noteworthy, there at no time was an American family, only a combination of families and homes. In the year 2000, 12% of Americans led a household, however lived lacking any adult relation or kid. They were persons living alone, however several had a colleague or a domestic companion. 11% of Americans in 2000 lived in a family of single parent and minimum one child. The classic home had a lone mother and her children, and then some encompassed others, for example colleagues and single cohorts. 16% member of couples not yet had offspring or whose kids deserted home. 39% of Americans lived in the typical nuclear family of wedded parentages and with their children. 14% of Americans lived in families which comprised a relation, other than the husband and wife or child. In the year 2000, 26% of all families comprised a lone individual, however merely 13% of all mature persons lived alone. American family designs in 2000, both the common tendencies, for instance the prevalence of the nuclear families, and the differences by race and education, were formed by generations of complex social changes. Those changes are involved of fresh situations, for instance better public health, financial progress, and the weakening of agriculture, and to some extent difficult to guess status of fresh cultural anticipations and so the choices Americans made. (Fischer & Hout 124). Family life cycle The progressive interpretation of the family, initially planned as a main philosophy of the family, has kept feature as an exploratory theoretical basis; but, family academics currently think through it to be further valuable theoretically than empirically, regardless of several advances and modifications. The key perception of the ‘family life cycle,’ like the notion of the ‘life cycle,’ is used extensively as a comparison for family exploration; but, the experiential usefulness of the phases defined have not lived up to expectation. As a matter of fact, the life course methodology to family study came up partially out of an analysis of the static nature of the family life cycle theory, along with the historic and demographic changes in families. For instance, the concept of ‘the intact family’ is unconvinced currently (Aldous 78). For the reason that it has been developing, the life course outlook emphases more on background difference than on hierarchical phases. Even though supporters of family development theory have responded to its criticizers by suggesting phases in the life cycle of the single parent family, the unique charisma of family growth as clarifying through hierarchical and universal phases is still an elementary theory of the concept. Aldous (78) has foreseen a strong future for family development concept if pooled with life course concept in order to decide the ‘level of analysis problem’ that disturbs family growth. The importance of individual family members is lost since the attention is on the family unit. Life course study, concentrating on family members' individual insights of the positioning of family proceedings and of their social meanings, might empower the perception of family phase to be more precisely operational (Aldous 89). The life course strategy to family learning’s can be drawn to the sociology of age stratification, a macro social perception concentrating on the role of age in social organization along with the ‘life course’ of persons and partners. A sociological commencement of the life course is theoretically dissimilar from a psychological direction. However intra-psychic marvels are highlighted in mind-set, the sociological direction stresses the significance of social meanings devoted to life actions and the social setting that they arise and are acknowledged. The attention is frequently on ‘turning points when the societal individual experiences transformation and age-linked changes that are socially formed, socially acknowledged, and shared. Societal organizations mark age and gender linked changes that are usually connected to biological progressions. A significant knowledgeable practice concerning the sociology of age to the life course methodology is seen in modern anthropology, mainly in ethnographic work on the dual nature - societal organizational and social-psychological - of age grouping. From a societal organizational outlook, age is an important standard for allocating responsibilities and dispensing wealth. Age turn out to be significant within this normative structure through socialization and sharing; that is, by means of the directing of fresh cohorts into positions and responsibilities, confirming that important social purposes are being encountered, and that social capabilities are being suitably used. From a social and psychological viewpoint, age structures establish perceptive structures that mirror the larger social understandings of the links of human beings to Mother Nature and to the supernatural. Individuals allocate societal significances to life course procedures such as marriage and parenthood, relating to whether such changes are on time, early, or late. Furthermore, the senses involved to the involvement or lack of such changes must be implicit within the organization of societal settings since these differ by race, ethnicity, and societal type and the trail of the whole life course. There are four essential norms concerning to family progress and transformations over time are mirrored in experiential family educations that recommend uses of the life course perception. Three dissimilar time structures are complex once effort to chart transformation over time in families and in the conduct of family members. Each one mirrors rather diverse set of theoretical perceptions; each needs dissimilar process of putting into operation and measurement. Besides, primarily, every index is a diverse set of procedures that have significance for growth. Ontogenetic Time and Ontogenetic Events denotes to progressive stages symbolizing persons as they grow, transform and age from birth to demise. Ontogenetic time is indexed merely, however, rather inaccurately by consecutive years. But, some psychologists use age epochs, age phases, which take up faultless relationship with age to show dissimilar epochs of ontogenetic proceedings. Generational time and generational events denotes to the position of persons in the hierarchical succession within a biosocial family of reproduction and progression. Generational time, as well named family time, is indexed not merely by biogenetic positions within families - grandparent, parent, and child – however, additionally by the roles, anticipations, and characteristics linked to those statuses. Generational proceedings are unquestionably linked to ontogenetic time; on the other hand the two are erroneously unrelated because a woman might turn out to be a grandmother. Historical Time and Historical Events denotes to macro societal measurement of time, although indexed merely by the astral datebook, this concept is practically showed in terms of proceedings, epochs, or ages subjugated by crisis, political or economic proceedings, for instance, the Civil War epoch, the depression time, the Vietnam epoch etc. Those times that can be decided in post hoc study, have reflective, and difference, influences on family conducts, as acknowledged by Hareven (98). Long back Gerontologists have explained that sequential age does not cause any transformation by itself; in its place aging denotes to proceedings that happen approximately with the passage of time. Consequently it is with historical time; it is the happenings that cause change, not merely the progression of years. The three magnitudes of time ontogenetic, generational, and historical-accordingly are the finest directories of actions that happen at diverse stages of social organization. These happenings have indications for transformation in the conduct of persons and their social associations over time; they have inferences for transformation in families over time. Within the family setting, one can perceive variation in conducts linked to interactions and characteristics in the three time frames. Family members' conducts alter with proceedings related with their personal ontogenetic progress; the start of fresh generations and the demise of aged; and the effect of geopolitical and financial growths, in addition to technical and social change, on the conducts of family life. Each of the various time clocks of change is essential so as to comprehend and describe changing family life and conducts over time (Bengtson and Allen 145-9). Conclusion Little effort has been done on the situations connected with social capital within the family or on the significances of this for family life. The labour that has been carried out either miss conceptualizes social capital or resorts to using insufficient methods or pointers of social capital. Because of the present existing results, deliver an uncertain depiction of the structure and role of social capital within family systems. However, there is some indication that network size, as calculated by ‘parent child’ proportions is a significant variant inside the family social capital. It is likely that these differences could affect social and psychological consequences in children, however the present incorrectness of gauging social capital means that this is not correctly recognized. Further, to certain extent the lone parents, stepfamily relations and same-sex partnership is also explained. Works Cited Aldous, J. Family development and the life course: Two perspectives on family change. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 2010 (52): 571-583. Beck, U. & E. Beck-Gernsheim. Individualization. London: Sage, 2001. Print. Beck-Gernsheim, E. Reinventing the Family. In search of New Lifestyles. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2002. Bengtson, V.L. and Allen, K.R. The Life Course Perspective Applied to Families over time Web. 28 December 2012. Read More