Family Related to Traditional, Modern and Postmodern Societies - Essay Example

Cohabitation has become increasingly common in many industrial countries. Alternative forms of social and sexual relationships are likely to flourish in the future. Yet marriage and the family remain firmly established institutions. My attitude towards the setting of families is quite conservative. I believe that a family is a group of people directly linked by kinship, the adult members of which assume responsibility for the care of their children. Kinship consists of genetic ties or ties resulting from marriage.

Marriage is a socially acknowledged and approved sexual union between two adults. Among many settings now popular in family-related issues, I give preference to monogamy families, which are culturally approved sexual relationships between one man and one woman. Many cultures tolerate or encourage polygamy when a person may be married to two or more spouses at the same time. I find it a negative and destructive contribution to society and assume that sooner or later it will destroy the wholly unit disposed of by the traditional family.

And it allows from one of the sociological perspectives, the so-called functionalist perspective, that defended the point of the family performing an important task that in the end contributed to society's basic needs and helped perpetuate social order. Talcott Parsons argues that the family performs two main functions: primary socialization and personality stabilization. Primary socialization is the process by which children learn the cultural norms of the society in which they are born. Personality stabilization refers to the role that the family plays in assisting adult family members emotionally.

Feminist perspectives argue that the presence of unequal power relationships within the family means that certain family members tend to benefit more than others. They focus on three issues: domestic division of labor, unequal power relationships, and caring activities. Because there are so many different opinions about the way families should be set as well as because there are several changes in the family setting throughout the centuries and over the countries, the topic of family-related issues extends from the discussion of one author to another.

Changes in family patterns are generated by such factors as the development of a centralized government, the expansion of towns and cities, and employment within organizations outside family influence. "Few popular ideas are more widespread than the belief that the importance of the family in human affairs has been weakening, that the family as an institution is under great strain. . . ." So said sociologist Alex Inkeles, echoing a familiar and probably accurate perception.

This postulation of a decline in the institution of the family is buttressed by compelling evidence that the family in advanced societies has undergone greater change, and at a faster rate, in the past several decades than in any previous period of similar length in human history, except after some major catastrophes.