The Family in Contemporary Society - Essay Example

The Family in Contemporary Society Introduction Families are the basic unit of a society. It is the place where individuals are cared for, cultivated, and provided with the necessary tools to deal with their environment. Although families have the best ability to nurture strong and rational beings, they can also produce delinquent and unproductive members of a society. When families disintegrate, the outcomes affect not just the immediate family members, but also the community. This essay discusses the contemporary definition of and theoretical perspectives on Western family, its importance, its historical development, its postmodern characteristics, and the link between family and criminal behaviour. Definition of Family The family is not just a unit of society. It is a theoretical concept filled with meanings and with a historical narrative of its own. As stated by Jagger and Wright (1999), “The groupings that are called families are social constructed rather than naturally or biologically given” (Erera 2002, 2). Even though economic and social factors influence family lives, our knowledge of family is influenced by the constantly changing family arrangements, structures, and trends. Moreover, ideas of what comprises a family are inevitably entrenched in a given place and time. Nuclear family arrangements have commonly been considered the model of ‘normal’ families, irrespective of socioeconomic standing, racial affinity, or culture (Erera 2002, 2). This narrow-minded perspective misrepresents the existence of unique families by viewing them as an ‘anomaly’. Anthropologist George Peter Murdock introduced one of the first definitions of the family (Settles 1999, 56): The family is a social group characterised by common residence, economic cooperation, and reproduction. It includes adults of both sexes, at least two of whom maintain a socially approved social relationship, and one or more children, own or adopted, or the sexually cohabiting adults. Murdock, thinking about the dominant pattern of the period, argued that the nuclear family was widespread and unavoidable, the foundation of more complex family arrangements. Due to the variety of family structures and the political discourses around them, an exclusive, inclusive description of family is not possible (Settles 1999, 56). Families are described in numerous ways in terms of situations, functions, and roles. Even though traditional scholars have put forth blood relations as an important feature of the family, others claim that the family should be defined in terms of the relationships and attachments that people have towards important individuals in their lives. According to Georgas (2006, 63), this definition changes the emphasis from the arrangement or legal standing of families to the characteristics and importance of relationships and attachment patterns. Unique family arrangements question the prevailing definition and views of a family. Moreover, diverse family structures “challenge gender roles and influence gender typing by what they say and what they do” (Dowd 1999, 110). The definition of family should at this point transform to encompass various alternative family systems. Alternative family arrangements are becoming more and more widespread, such as cohabitation, same-sex-couple families, single-parent families, and so on, which are believed to offer acceptability to alternative family arrangements (p. 110). The Importance of the Family The family represents a brilliant model of a primary group. Family relations are possibly the crucial element in personal attachment and value. It is crucial in its early impact on the person, in its plainness of structure, and in its significance as moulding character. Important and basic though it is, it can be considered as a small society where in a broad array of human interests and goals, and social mechanisms are situated. The family is exclusive in affording stability of social life. The effect of the family on bigger social units is quite huge even though the interconnectedness between society and family are very intricate. It is commonly believed that the family fosters social involvement (Winnicott 1969, 183). It is believed that healthy families create healthy and well-endowed citizens. According to Chambers (2001, 158), citizenship requires discipline and morals. Parents are supposed to instil in children the form of morals that is responsive to the group’s moral principles. Family life is the root of numerous fundamental human drives which serve a vital function in the bigger social experience. The model of selflessness and compassion may be found in the unselfish and compassionate function of parents as regards to their children. Compassion may scatter from the family unit to community, country, or even humanity. The family is distinctively vital in its effect on individual character. The initial idea of a sociologist, psychologist, social worker, or psychoanalyst in trying to understand an individual character is to take into account the effect of family context (Settles 1999, 130). There are numerous findings showing that both disturbed and healthy characters are mostly attributed to early family experience. The family is essential as the site for the most important emotional experiences which the person has in his/her lifetime, such as birth, adolescence, marriage, and death. The family is the spring of protection, of security, of distressed anxiety, of hated and affection, of happiness and sorrow (Hunt 2005, 92). In particular, it builds the context for delicate, inconsistent, and unpredictable emotional complex. Different Theoretical Approaches Sociology has several theoretical perspectives. Theories that put emphasis on the significance of social institutions have had a strong effect on the growth of the sociological field. The sociology of the family demonstrates the complete array of theoretical approaches, namely, functionalism, Marxism, psychoanalysis, and symbolic interactionism. Functionalists created a paradigm of concepts which summarised the most important social structures of the society, and the connections that are present between such social structures. The family was viewed as one of the central components of the social system, creating a crucial connection between the person and the broader social group (White & Klein 2002, 121). Any alteration or failure in the family would have a significant effect on the entire social system. Functionalism, with its positive belief in the development and advancement of society, was successful in building a powerful protection of the post-war Western family against claims that it had been seriously diminished. Functionalists introduced an idea which demonstrated that the family had transformed into a better kind (Chambers 2001, 50). Investigations by Goode, Murdock, and others were successful in proving that the family, in transforming its structure, had been allowed to focus on the most vital roles. Parsons (1956 as cited in Chambers 2001, 50) identified the two major roles to be children’s socialisation and adult stabilisation. Integral to the argument of functionalism about the family is the idea of ‘fit’. The nuclear family structure was observed to be appropriate to post-war Western society. The family had been given the freedom to raise children, with more ‘educated’ or ‘knowledgeable’ parents collaborating with childcare professionals and educators (White & Klein 2002, 157). In addition, the family was able to focus on the challenging marital relationship. The family offered the child and the adult the emotional and physical assistance required for their functions in society. According to White and Klein (2002, 157), it offered as well the encouragement to be productive in a competitive world which gives emphasis on success by individual capacity. On the other hand, the Marxist theory of family is unconventional and critical. The family, according to the Marxists, is not essentially a sanctuary of affection and security from the cruel social world, but instead a site of oppression, that is intended and works to satisfy the requirements of the capitalist system (Georgas 2006, 9). It has four major premises. First, the family is a mechanism of reproduction. Marxists argued that with the emergence of capitalism the family becomes vital to the reproduction of proletarians, or the workforce. Second, the family is a mechanism of economic creation. Pre-capitalist civilisations required the production of basic necessities such as food, shelter, and clothing. Thus people prefer to have many children. More children implied a larger labour pool. Third, the family is a mechanism of female suppression. Marxists argued that the family exploits women, because women supply free labour, especially in domestic chores. And fourth, the family supports the capitalism. Marxists claim that the family acts as a foundation of capitalism (Georgas 2006, 7-9). Capitalism gains from the free labour given by children and women within the family. In the meantime, later developments in psychoanalysis create additional connections to family therapy and theory. The emphasis of Erikson on the effect of cultural and social forces on development and his idea of a ‘widening social radius’ situate the family in a chain of interconnected social relations (Bowden & Greenberg 2009, 106). Several other findings provide particular inputs for our knowledge of family relations: the effect of family and social relations on the responses to crises, and the impact of unconscious parental aspirations on the behaviour of the child. The pattern seems obvious in current studies that consider family concerns openly in the explanation of psychoanalytic phenomena. These psychoanalytic studies of the family have tries to make sense of the different features of families and have mostly concentrated on explaining several specific issues or inconsistency in family dynamics (Bowden & Greenberg 2009, 106-107). Several have focused on patterns of communication, some on family equilibrium and disequilibrium (p. 107). Likewise, symbolic interactionism has been a major theoretical approach in family research. A great deal of contemporary family studies within the symbolic interactionist tradition focuses on some form of role identifications, like how the roles of wife and husband are identified throughout family life stages; how role-specific factors influence the belief, actions, and self-images of the members of the family; how internal and external forces influence role assignments, outcome, pressure, or conflict; and how ideas of gender role influence the designations of the roles of husband and wife (White & Klein 2002, 84). But the major part of symbolic interactionist studies focuses on socialisation—the mechanism through which self-images are created, behaviours and morals are passed on, and the traditions of one generation are transmitted to the next (White & Klein 2002, 84). I prefer the functionalist view of the family because of its positive interpretation of the evolution of family structure. For instance, the contemporary British family was viewed as an achievement by Fletcher. He presented a conclusive functionalist definition of the British family (Wilson 1985, 23): (1) of long duration, since it was founded at an early age; (2) small in size because it was consciously planned; (3) separately housed in an improved material environment; (4) economically self-responsible, self-providing, and independent of wider kin; (5) founded and maintained by partners of equal status enjoying a marital relationship based increasingly on mutuality of consideration; (6) democratically managed in that husband and wife, and frequently children, were all taken into account in family decision-making; (7) centrally concerned with the care and upbringing of children; (8) aided in achieving this health and stability by a wide range of public provision, both statutory and voluntary. The functionalist approach, in comparison to the other perspectives, has presented an important paradigm for an inclusive or wide-ranging picture of family life. Historical Review of Western Family The major feature of the ‘traditional’ Western family is a network of ‘independent’ connections. It is nuclear in form and isolated from one another with definite boundaries. It could be claimed that not every Western family matches this arrangement fully, which is definitely valid. However, this is the arrangement that has been endorsed, particularly in psychology, demonstrating the Western individualistic principles (Hantrais 2004, 140). According to the modernisation theory, patterns of Western families have shifted to individualistic and nuclear forms as an unavoidable result of industrialisation. Hence, it is argued that industrialisation will also bring about these similar developments in family structures in non-Western societies (Georgas 2006, 239). According to Hantrais (2004), this general idea is also intensely questioned nowadays by much historical scholarship, which strongly shows that individualism and nuclear family structure came first before industrialisation in Western Europe. The study of Razi (1993 as cited in Georgas 2006, 81) has demonstrated that the traditional British family structure was nuclear instead of extended; the connection between land and family was not that strong; broader kinship were shaky so that community members depend on institutional assistance instead of family support; women do not marry early and some choose to never marry. These patterns relate to demographic-structural features of individualistic, nuclear, and independent familial and human relational systems (Scott 1997, 598). Moreover, there is proof of material individualism, independent reproductive control, and late marriage that resulted in the drop of marital fertility since the 18th century (Georgas 2006, 81-82). Even though largely observed in Britain, the same early individualistic patterns emerging before industrialisation in the United States and Western Europe are discovered as well in historical literature (p. 82). Characterisation of Post-Modern Western Family The modern family surfaced when the nuclear family started replacing the extended family structure. However, some claim that there is a stronger shift to a postnuclear, postmodern, family. A scholar argues, “As the post-modern family rushes down upon us, parents are losing their role as educators. The task passes instead to the peers” (Shorter 1975, 276). Shorter (1975) had presented in the 1970s a description of the developing post-modern family. He emphasised three major features, namely, (1) weakening of the idea of nuclear family structure with women’s emancipation, (2) growing marital conflicts, attended by drastically increasing rates of divorce; and (3) apathy of adolescents/teenagers to the identity of the family. During that period, Shorter observed slight alteration in child socialisation trends (p. 276-277). Gergen (1991) used the expression ‘the saturated family’ to illustrate the post-modern Western family, because its members see their lives dispersing in heightened demands of family and work life (p. 65). The instruments of social saturation, such as television, automobiles, and, now, the social media, have produced family disorder and a sense of instability, turmoil, and disorientation. Cultural Comparison of your Culture of Origin with Western Family I have been raised in Britain and I can definitely say, based on the features and arrangement of my own family, that British families are still largely influenced by the past. In comparison to other societies, especially to developing countries like China or India, the identity of the family is somewhat undeveloped in Britain. Obviously, the family remains the fundamental living structure for the majority of the population. However, in England, mainly, this certainly implies a nuclear family structure, composed of the mother, father, and children. The number of siblings range from one to four on average. For a nuclear family this number is typical. The extended family structure is weak in Britain, with the exception of several ethnic or racial groups like Afro-Caribbean and Asian people. I have observed that these racial groups have a heightened sense of kinship compared to the British people. This is due, basically, as I have learned in the past, to the economic structures of their societies. Most of these ethnic groups lived in a mostly agricultural society where an extended family is more appropriate than a nuclear one, whereas in developed countries, like Britain and the United States, the nuclear family is more popular due to the demands of waged employment and individualistic forces. However, British families are changing. The traditional British family has gone through significant transformations throughout the past decades. As I have read in newspapers, there has been an increase in the prevalence of cohabitation and single-person families. These trends would have been denounced by British people in the past. Even the traditional nuclear family is increasingly weakened. Divorce rates are increasing. Nevertheless, these patterns do not automatically imply that the nuclear family is vanishing. Prevalence of divorce has intensified, but most marriages in England do not collapse. Conjugal relations are monogamous, unlike among the Muslim people in Britain who are polygamous. Serial monogamy is also on the rise in Britain and the United States. With regard to the relationship and attachment among family members, I can say that the British family is quite traditional in comparison to other cultures. For instance, British children leave their homes or live independently once they reach adolescence. They work to support themselves. Unlike children of other ethnic groups, like the Chinese, who stay with their parents as long as they want to. They are given financial and emotional support by their families while they are unemployed or unable to provide for themselves. With regard to the elderly members of the family, the British family usually provide financial assistance and emotional support to them. Some care for their elderly, but others put them in retirement homes. In relation to gender equality, similar to the American family, and unlike the highly differentiated Indian family, British family is largely characterised by equality between the roles of the husband and wife and among the siblings. Of course, there is no equality in the power structure governing parent-children relationship. But British wives have equal opportunities as their husband in terms of authority in the family and employment or financial decisions. Therefore, I can safely say that the British family has changed drastically but at the same time stayed committed to its traditional features. Perhaps these changes are not only brought about by internal changes in Britain, like the growing demand for labour, but also by external changes, like the migration of different nationalities to Britain. These ethnic/racial groups carried with them their own family patterns and structures which could have been influenced the very structure of the British family. However, from what I have observed, changes in the British family is more a product of increasing economic, political, and social demands than its interaction with different cultures. Family and Criminal Behaviour To several scholars an emphasis on connections between families and criminal behaviours may appear not to demand any explanation at all. In any case, the assumption that the family serves a major function in creating criminal behaviours would be a matter of common sense for a lot of people. As stressed by Wilson and Herrnstein (1985), “if asked why some persons are more likely than others to commit crimes, the average parent would very likely attribute these individual differences to family experiences” (p. 213). Numerous findings indicate that parents are correct in this assumption. Inadequacies in family system and arrangement seem to have much to do with the reason some mothers and daughters or fathers and sons are predisposed to criminal actions. However, from another point of view, there is something disturbing about connecting families with criminal behaviour (Jones 2008, 5). According to Collins (1975), the “family has always been regarded through a murk of sentimentality” (as cited in Fox and Benson 2001, 1). Romanticised or promoted cultural illustrations of the family claim strength, harmony, and agreement are ill-fitted to the conflict-burdened, miserable, and dreadful world of crime. Healthy families do not raise and shelter offenders and they are not part of the criminal justice system (Fox & Benson 2001, 1). Hence, an effort to explore the connections of families with criminal behaviour and delinquency demands clarity and explanation. Even sociologists believed that failures of the socialisation process were plausible. These failures were viewed as more probable when the structure of the family diverged from what was thought to be most appropriate, namely, a two-parent family where in one parent focus on waged employment and the other focused on free labour required in the domestic or household domain (Wilson & Herrnstein 1985, 213-214). In addition, socialisation breakdowns were more possible when the grownup members were indifferent or detached from primary social institutions, like religion, political system, and the economy. In order to help families that were not successful in controlling and socialising their members, the justice system was conceived as the substitute control agent. In concert the justice systems and the family were involved in what Parsons called ‘pattern maintenance’ (Fox & Benson 2001, 4), or the strengthening and preservation of socially proper standards of behaviour, feelings, and thought. Control theory has been helpful in illustrating the connection between the justice systems and the family. Moreover, it has motivated most of the existing research literature on the function of families in the creation of criminal behaviours and wrongdoing (Fox & Benson 2001, 4). Among the major effects that this theoretical paradigm has had on the disciplines of family research and criminology are the ideas that delinquency and criminal behaviour embodies a socialisation breakdown and that those concerned with the growth of criminal activities should examine first the family for proof of breakdown of socialisation (p. 4). Furthermore, it has guided scholars and professionals to an emphasis on ‘family failures’, or deviations from what were believed to be ‘normal’ family arrangements and attributes (Murray & Farrington 2010, 635). According to Fox and Benson (2001, 4-5), the importance that researchers of crime and delinquency have given to these variables as lack of emotional attachments and respect across generations, shaky parental dedications to traditional norms, the joblessness of fathers, parental failures in the control and care of their children, the participation of mothers in the labour market, and single-parent families—all exist in this theoretical perspective. Of similar outcome is that the control theory made it simpler for researchers to disregard defective mechanisms in traditionally structured families, like violence and aggression among members of the family, severe parental discipline, and marital problems—all features of family mechanism that current studies have discovered to be major precursors of antisocial or delinquent actions (Jones 2008, 8). Furthermore, it obscured the fact that within given situations criminal deeds among adolescents could embody successes, instead of failures, in the process of familial socialisation. In particular, as argued by Murray and Farrington (2010, 640), the emphasis of the this theoretical perspective on explaining the creation of normative orthodoxy was not able to recognise that the same mechanisms and arrangements that are found in healthy families also could be existent in families who socialize their members into delinquency and crime. Conclusions In conclusion, the movement of international settlers, global conflict, and societal problems largely influence the contexts in which families reside. Families interacting with different cultures and ways of life that are immensely distinct from their own exert great efforts to obtain new prospects and to preserve their own racial individualities and character. Major social occurrences give families the chance to rebuild and modernise their traditions, patterns, and identities. References Bowden, V. & Greenberg, C. (2009) Children and their Families: The Continuum of Care, Philadelphia: Lippincott Williams and Wilkins. Chambers, D. (2001) Representing the Family, London: SAGE. Dowd, N. (1999) In Defense of Single-Parent Families, New York: NYU Press. Erera, P. (2002) Family Diversity: Continuity and Change in the Contemporary Family, London: SAGE. Fox, G. & Benson, M. (2001) Families, Crime and Criminal Justice, New York: Emerald Group Publishing. Georgas, J. (2006) Families across Cultures: A 30-Nation Psychological Study, California: Basic Books. Gergen, K. (1991) The Saturated Self: Dilemmas of Identity in Contemporary Life, California: Basic Books. Hantrais, L. (2004) Family Policy Matters: Responding to family change in Europe, Bristol: The Policy Press. Hunt, S. (2005) The Life Course: A Sociological Introduction, Basingstoke: Palgrave. Jones, D. (2008) Understanding Criminal Behaviour: Psychosocial Approaches to Criminality, Willan Press: Cullompton. Murray, J. & Farrington, D. (2010) ‘Risk Factors for Conduct Disorder and Delinquency: Key Findings from Longitudinal Studies’, The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry 55(10): 633-642. Scott, J. (1997) ‘Changing households in Britain: Do families still matter?’, Sociological Review 45 (4): 591-620. Settles, B.H. (1999) Concepts and Definitions of Family for the 21st Century, London: Routledge. Shorter, E. (1975) The making of the modern family. California: Basic Books. White, J. & Klein, D. (2002) Family Theories, London: SAGE. Wilson, A. (1985) Family, London: Taylor & Francis. Wilson, J. & Herrnstein, R. (1985) Crime and human nature, London: Simon & Schuster. Winnicott, D.W. (1969) The Child, The Family and the Outside World, London: Penquin Read More