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Changing Family Functions From the critical view of sociology and according to structural-functional paradigm, the family performs many vital tasks. In fact, the family is a backbone of society. Being a central element of society, the family have several important functions. Socialization function means that the family is the first and most important setting for child rearing.
Ideally, parents help children become well-integrated and contributing members of society. Of course, family socialization continues throughout the life cycle. Adults change within marriage, and as any parent knows, mothers and fathers learn as much from their children as the children learn from them. Another function of the family is to regulate the sexual activity. Every culture regulates sexual activity in the interest of maintaining kinship organization and property rights.
Reproduction between close relatives can physically or mentally impair offspring. Yet, only humans observe an incest taboo, suggesting that the key reason for controlling incest is social. Social placement function means that families are not needed for people to reproduce, but they help maintain social organization. Parents confer their social identity in terms of race, ethnicity, religion, and social class on children at birth. Family provides also a material and emotional security.
To many, the family is a heaven in heartless world, offering physical protection, emotional support, and financial assistance. Thus, people living in families tend to be healthier than people living alone. The term traditional family means placing high value on becoming and remaining married, men and women putting children ahead their own careers, and favoring two-parent families over various alternative lifestyles. David Popenoe warns that there has been as serious erosion of traditional family since 1960. He sees a fundamental shift from a culture of marriage to a culture of divorce as a main reason for such a trend. Indeed, research by the US National Center for Health indicated the tenfold increase in the US divorce rate over the last century.
By 1997, more than four in ten marriages were ending in divorce (US Bureau of the Census, 1998). Although, he divorce rate has recently stabilized, it is unlikely that marriages will again be as durable as it was in the 1950 s. Most of contemporary sociologists claim that the main peculiarity of family life in new century is that it obtained many variables. Cohabiting couples, one-parent families, gay and lesbian families, blended families are usual today. Most families are still based on marriage, and most married couples still have children. However, taken together, the variety of family forms implied a belief that family life is a matter of individual choice.
Another important feature of contemporary family is that men began to play a limited role in child rearing. Starting from the end of 1950 s, a decade many people consider golden age of families, men began to withdraw from active parenting. In addition, the high divorce rate and increase in single motherhood point to more children growing up with weaker ties to fathers. At the same time evidence is building that the absence of fathers is detrimental to children.
More changes in values and norms were influenced by the effects of economic change in families. In many homes, both household partners work, rendering marriage the interaction of weary men and women who try to squeeze in a little quality time for their children. Finally, during past years new reproductive technology increased, which tremendously altered the traditional meanings of parenthood. Does a shifting from traditional family mean necessarily negative?
Judith Stacey claims that there is a reason to reject the traditional family. During many years the traditional family has been perpetuating social inequality. Such families played a key role in maintaining the class hierarchy, transferring wealth as well as cultural capital from one generation to another. Moreover, in diverse society where both men and women work for income, the concept of traditional family is irrelevant. She insisted that what society needs is not to return to some golden age of the family but to experience political and economic change, including universal health care, income parity for woman, programs to reduce unemployment, and expanded sex education in school. According to Stacey, the shift from traditional family does not impact the main functions of family as a social institution.
She indicates that family had experienced many changes during the progress and transformation of society. Current changes are natural and unavoidable. References: Newsweek, 2 / 2, 1990, 2 / 4, 1993, articles by Judith Stacey David Popenoe, Functional Family, Brooks, 1993
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Research essay sample on Men And Women Traditional Family
