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15.2 Sociological Perspectives on the Family

Learning objective.

Summarize understandings of the family as presented by functional, conflict, and social interactionist theories.

Sociological views on today’s families generally fall into the functional, conflict, and social interactionist approaches introduced earlier in this book. Let’s review these views, which are summarized in Table 15.1 “Theory Snapshot” .

Table 15.1 Theory Snapshot

Social Functions of the Family

Recall that the functional perspective emphasizes that social institutions perform several important functions to help preserve social stability and otherwise keep a society working. A functional understanding of the family thus stresses the ways in which the family as a social institution helps make society possible. As such, the family performs several important functions.

First, the family is the primary unit for socializing children . As previous chapters indicated, no society is possible without adequate socialization of its young. In most societies, the family is the major unit in which socialization happens. Parents, siblings, and, if the family is extended rather than nuclear, other relatives all help socialize children from the time they are born.

One of the most important functions of the family is the socialization of children. In most societies the family is the major unit through which socialization occurs.

Colleen Kelly – Kids Playing Monopoly Chicago – CC BY 2.0.

Second, the family is ideally a major source of practical and emotional support for its members. It provides them food, clothing, shelter, and other essentials, and it also provides them love, comfort, help in times of emotional distress, and other types of intangible support that we all need.

Third, the family helps regulate sexual activity and sexual reproduction . All societies have norms governing with whom and how often a person should have sex. The family is the major unit for teaching these norms and the major unit through which sexual reproduction occurs. One reason for this is to ensure that infants have adequate emotional and practical care when they are born. The incest taboo that most societies have, which prohibits sex between certain relatives, helps minimize conflict within the family if sex occurred among its members and to establish social ties among different families and thus among society as a whole.

Fourth, the family provides its members with a social identity . Children are born into their parents’ social class, race and ethnicity, religion, and so forth. As we have seen in earlier chapters, social identity is important for our life chances. Some children have advantages throughout life because of the social identity they acquire from their parents, while others face many obstacles because the social class or race/ethnicity into which they are born is at the bottom of the social hierarchy.

Beyond discussing the family’s functions, the functional perspective on the family maintains that sudden or far-reaching changes in conventional family structure and processes threaten the family’s stability and thus that of society. For example, most sociology and marriage-and-family textbooks during the 1950s maintained that the male breadwinner–female homemaker nuclear family was the best arrangement for children, as it provided for a family’s economic and child-rearing needs. Any shift in this arrangement, they warned, would harm children and by extension the family as a social institution and even society itself. Textbooks no longer contain this warning, but many conservative observers continue to worry about the impact on children of working mothers and one-parent families. We return to their concerns shortly.

The Family and Conflict

Conflict theorists agree that the family serves the important functions just listed, but they also point to problems within the family that the functional perspective minimizes or overlooks altogether.

First, the family as a social institution contributes to social inequality in several ways. The social identity it gives to its children does affect their life chances, but it also reinforces a society’s system of stratification. Because families pass along their wealth to their children, and because families differ greatly in the amount of wealth they have, the family helps reinforce existing inequality. As it developed through the centuries, and especially during industrialization, the family also became more and more of a patriarchal unit (see earlier discussion), helping to ensure men’s status at the top of the social hierarchy.

Second, the family can also be a source of conflict for its own members. Although the functional perspective assumes the family provides its members emotional comfort and support, many families do just the opposite and are far from the harmonious, happy groups depicted in the 1950s television shows. Instead, and as the news story that began this chapter tragically illustrated, they argue, shout, and use emotional cruelty and physical violence. We return to family violence later in this chapter.

Families and Social Interaction

Social interactionist perspectives on the family examine how family members and intimate couples interact on a daily basis and arrive at shared understandings of their situations. Studies grounded in social interactionism give us a keen understanding of how and why families operate the way they do.

Some studies, for example, focus on how husbands and wives communicate and the degree to which they communicate successfully (Tannen, 2001). A classic study by Mirra Komarovsky (1964) found that wives in blue-collar marriages liked to talk with their husbands about problems they were having, while husbands tended to be quiet when problems occurred. Such gender differences seem less common in middle-class families, where men are better educated and more emotionally expressive than their working-class counterparts. Another classic study by Lillian Rubin (1976) found that wives in middle-class families say that ideal husbands are ones who communicate well and share their feelings, while wives in working-class families are more apt to say that ideal husbands are ones who do not drink too much and who go to work every day.

Other studies explore the role played by romantic love in courtship and marriage. Romantic love , the feeling of deep emotional and sexual passion for someone, is the basis for many American marriages and dating relationships, but it is actually uncommon in many parts of the contemporary world today and in many of the societies anthropologists and historians have studied. In these societies, marriages are arranged by parents and other kin for economic reasons or to build alliances, and young people are simply expected to marry whoever is chosen for them. This is the situation today in parts of India, Pakistan, and other developing nations and was the norm for much of the Western world until the late 18th and early 19th centuries (Lystra, 1989).

Key Takeaways

The family ideally serves several functions for society. It socializes children, provides practical and emotional support for its members, regulates sexual reproduction, and provides its members with a social identity.
Reflecting conflict theory’s emphases, the family may also produce several problems. In particular, it may contribute for several reasons to social inequality, and it may subject its members to violence, arguments, and other forms of conflict.
Social interactionist understandings of the family emphasize how family members interact on a daily basis. In this regard, several studies find that husbands and wives communicate differently in certain ways that sometimes impede effective communication.

For Your Review

As you think how best to understand the family, do you favor the views and assumptions of functional theory, conflict theory, or social interactionist theory? Explain your answer.
Do you think the family continues to serve the function of regulating sexual behavior and sexual reproduction? Why or why not?

Komarovsky, M. (1964). Blue-collar marriage . New York, NY: Random House.

Lystra, K. (1989). Searching the heart: Women, men, and romantic love in nineteenth-century America . New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Rubin, L. B. (1976). Worlds of pain: Life in the working-class family . New York, NY: Basic Books.

Tannen, D. (2001). You just don’t understand: Women and men in conversation . New York, NY: Quill.

Module 10: Marriage and Family

Defining family, learning outcomes.

Describe family as a social institution

Family is a key social institution in all societies, which makes it a cultural universal. Similarly, values and norms surrounding marriage are found all over the world in every culture, so marriage and family are both cultural universals. Statuses (i.e., wife, husband, partner, mom, dad, brother, sister, etc.) are created and sanctioned by societies. While marriage and family have historically been closely linked in U.S. culture, with marriages creating new families, their connection is becoming more complex, as illustrated by the opening vignette and in the subsequent data on cohabitation.

Sociologists are interested in the relationship between the institution of marriage and the institution of family because families are the most basic social unit upon which society is built, but also because marriage and family are linked to other social institutions such as the economy, government, and religion. So what is a family? F amily is a socially recognized group (usually joined by blood, marriage, cohabitation, or adoption) that forms an emotional connection among its members and that serves as an economic unit of society. Sociologists identify different types of families based on how one enters into them. A family of orientation refers to the family into which a person is born. A family of procreation describes one that is formed through marriage. These distinctions have cultural significance related to issues of lineage.

Marriage is a legally recognized social contract between two people, traditionally based on a sexual relationship and implying a permanence of the union. Marriage is a cultural universal, and like family, it takes many forms. Who gets married, what the marriage means to the couple and to the society, why people get married (i.e., economic reasons, political reasons, or for love), and how it occurs (i.e., wedding or other ceremony) vary widely within and between societies. In practicing cultural relativism, we should also consider variations, such as whether a legal union is required (think of “common law” marriage and its equivalents), or whether more than two people can be involved (consider poly gamy). Other variations on the definition of marriage might include whether spouses are of opposite sexes or the same sex, and how one of the traditional expectations of marriage–that children will be produced–is understood today.

Photo (a) shows a family walking with a dog on a beach. Photo (b) shows a child in a stroller with stuffed animals, balloons, and an LGBTQ flag being pushed by two men.

Figure 1. The modern concept of family is far more encompassing than in past decades, which is evidenced in both laws (formal norms) and social control (both formal and informal). (Photo (a) courtesy Gareth Williams/flickr; photo (b) courtesy Guillaume Paumier/ Wikimedia Commons)

The sociological understanding of what constitutes a family can be explained by the paradigms of symbolic interactionism and functionalism. These two theories indicate that families are groups in which participants view themselves as family members and act accordingly. In other words, families are arrangements in which people come together to form a strong primary group connection and to maintain emotional ties with one another. Such families may include groups of close friends or teammates.

Chart "For children, growing diversity in family living arrangements." It compares the years 1960, 1980, and 2014, showing a decrease in family living arrangements to 46% (down from 73%) in the percentage of children living in a home with two parents in their first marriage. In 2014, 15% live with two parents in a remarriage, 7% with cohabiting parents (up from zero in 1960), 26% with a single parent (up from 9% in 1960), and 5% with no parent (up from 4% in 1960).

Figure 2. Family dynamics have shifted significantly in the past sixty years, with fewer children living in two-parent households.

In addition, the functionalist perspective views families as groups that perform vital roles for society—both internally (for the family itself) and externally (for society as a whole). Families provide for one another’s physical, emotional, and social well-being. Parents care for and socialize children. Later in life, adult children often care for elderly parents. While interactionism helps us understand the symbolic, subjective experience and meaning of belonging to a “family,” functionalism illuminates the many purposes of families and their roles in the maintenance of a balanced society (Parsons and Bales 1956).

Diverse Family Units

Irrespective of what form a family takes, it constitutes a basic social unit upon which societies are based, and can reflect other societal changes. For example, the bar graph shows how much the family structure has changed in a relatively short period of time. What trends do you see in the bar graph? What variables might help explain the increase in single parents between 1960 and 1980 and 2014? What variables might help explain the decrease in children living in two parent/first marriage families? Which theoretical perspectives can help explain this phenomenon?

People in the United States as a whole are somewhat divided when it comes to determining what does and what does not constitute a family. In a 2010 survey conducted by professors at the University of Indiana, nearly all participants (99.8 percent) agreed that a husband, wife, and children constitute a family. Ninety-two percent stated that a husband and a wife without children still constitute a family. The numbers drop for less traditional structures: unmarried couples with children (83 percent), unmarried couples without children (39.6 percent), gay male couples with children (64 percent), and gay male couples without children (33 percent) (Powell et al. 2010). This survey revealed that children tend to be the key indicator in establishing “family” status: the percentage of individuals who agreed that unmarried couples and gay couples constitute a family nearly doubled when children were added.

The study also revealed that 60 percent of U.S. respondents agreed that if you consider yourself a family, you are a family (a concept that reinforces an interactionist perspective) (Powell 2010). The government, however, is not so flexible in its definition of “family.” The U.S. Census Bureau defines a family as “a group of two people or more (one of whom is the householder) related by birth, marriage, or adoption and residing together” (U.S. Census Bureau 2010). While this structured definition can be used as a means to consistently track family-related patterns over several years, it excludes individuals such as cohabitating unmarried couples. Legality aside, sociologists would argue that the general concept of family is more diverse and less structured than in years past. Society has given more leeway to the design of a family making room for what works for its members (Jayson 2010).

Family is, indeed, a subjective concept, but it is a fairly objective fact that family (whatever one’s concept of it may be) is very important to people in the United States. In a 2010 survey by Pew Research Center in Washington, DC, 76 percent of adults surveyed stated that family is “the most important” element of their life—just one percent said it was “not important” (Pew Research Center 2010). It is also very important to society. President Ronald Reagan notably stated, “The family has always been the cornerstone of American society. Our families nurture, preserve, and pass on to each succeeding generation the values we share and cherish, values that are the foundation of our freedoms” (Lee 2009). While the design of the family may have changed in recent years, the fundamentals of emotional closeness and support are still present. Most responders to the Pew survey stated that their family today is at least as close (45 percent) or closer (40 percent) than the family with which they grew up (Pew Research Center 2010).

As you may have seen in the chapter on Aging and the Elderly, different generations have varying living situations and views on aging. The same goes for living situations with family. The Pew Research Center analyzed living situation of 40-year-olds from different generations. At that age, Millennials indicated that 45 percent of them were not living in a family of their own. In contrast, when Gen Xers and Baby Boomers were about 40 years old (around 2003 and 1987, respectively), an average of 33 percent of them lived outside of a family (Barroso 2020). The dynamic of nearly a 50-50 split between family/non-family for Millennials is very different from a two-third/one third split of Boomers and Gen X.

The data also show that women are having children later in life and that men are much less likely to live in a household with their own children. In 2019, 32 percent of Millennial men were living in a household with their children, compared to 41 percent of Gen X men in 2003 and 44 percent of Boomer men in 1987 (Barroso 2020). Again, the significant drop off in parenting roles likely has an impact on attitudes toward family.

First Families

Photos of President Trump with his family at his inauguration and of President Obama with his family in the White House.

Figure 2. First families. (a) President Trump with his wife, Melania, and five kids. (b) President Obama with his wife, Michelle, and kids Malia and Sasha.

When a political candidate runs for office in the United States, there is a lot of attention paid to the candidate’s family because this is thought to be a reflection of the candidate and the candidate’s values.

When former U.S. President Barack Obama ran for office, many questioned his Kenyan lineage through his father’s side, as well as his upbringing in Hawaii and Indonesia, where his mother was doing anthropological work. His parents separated when he was young, and he was raised by his white mother. Michelle Obama, originally from the south side of Chicago, was educated at Princeton and Harvard, then held a prestigious position at the University of Chicago, which she left once her husband was elected. The former first couple married in 1992 and have two children who were born in 1998 and 2001.

President Donald Trump grew up in New York City (in Queens) to Fred, a real estate developer, and Mary Anne Trump. He was married and divorced twice, and had four children (three with Ivana Trump and one with Marla Maples) before marrying current First Lady Melania Trump, with whom he has a fifth child, Barron Trump. Both Ivana and Melania were models and were both born in Eastern Europe (Czechoslovakia and Slovenia respectively). Three marriages and five children make the First Family quite unique in U.S. Presidential history.

Think It Over

Think about family composition (i.e., makeup) from 1960 to 2014 using the bar graph above. Can you predict what the family structure will be like in 2030? What variables might influence family structure going forward?
According to research, what are people’s general thoughts on family in the United States? How do they view nontraditional family structures? How do you think these views might change in twenty years?

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11.3: Sociological Perspectives on the Family

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Learning Objectives

Summarize understandings of the family as presented by functional, conflict, and social interactionist theories.

Table 11.1 Theory Snapshot

Social Functions of the Family

Figure 11.3

One of the most important functions of the family is the socialization of children. In most societies the family is the major unit through which socialization occurs.

Third, the family helps regulate sexual activity and sexual reproduction . All societies have norms governing with whom and how often a person should have sex. The family is the major unit for teaching these norms and the major unit through which sexual reproduction occurs. One reason for this is to ensure that infants have adequate emotional and practical care when they are born. The incest taboo that most societies have, which prohibits sex between certain relatives, helps to minimize conflict within the family if sex occurred among its members and to establish social ties among different families and thus among society as a whole.

Fourth, the family provides its members with a social identity . Children are born into their parents’ social class, race and ethnicity, religion, and so forth. As we have seen in earlier chapters, social identity is important for our life chances. Some children have advantages throughout life because of the social identity they acquire from their parents, while others face many obstacles because the social class or race and ethnicity into which they are born is at the bottom of the social hierarchy.

The Family and Conflict

Families and Social Interaction

Some studies, for example, focus on how husbands and wives communicate and the degree to which they communicate successfully (Tannen, 2001).Tannen, D. (2001). You just don’t understand: Women and men in conversation . New York, NY: Quill. A classic study by Mirra Komarovsky (1964)Komarovsky, M. (1964). Blue-collar marriage . New York, NY: Random House. found that wives in blue-collar marriages liked to talk with their husbands about problems they were having, while husbands tended to be quiet when problems occurred. Such gender differences seem less common in middle-class families, where men are better educated and more emotionally expressive than their working-class counterparts. Another classic study by Lillian Rubin (1976)Rubin, L. B. (1976). Worlds of pain: Life in the working-class family . New York, NY: Basic Books. found that wives in middle-class families say that ideal husbands are ones who communicate well and share their feelings, while wives in working-class families are more apt to say that ideal husbands are ones who do not drink too much and who go to work every day.

The family ideally serves several functions for society. It socializes children, provides practical and emotional support for its members, regulates sexual reproduction, and provides its members with a social identity.
Reflecting conflict theory’s emphases, the family may also produce several problems. In particular, it may contribute for several reasons to social inequality, and it may subject its members to violence, arguments, and other forms of conflict.
Social interactionist understandings of the family emphasize how family members interact on a daily basis. In this regard, several studies find that husbands and wives communicate differently in certain ways that sometimes impede effective communication.

For Your Review

As you think how best to understand the family, do you favor the views and assumptions of functional theory, conflict theory, or social interactionist theory? Explain your answer.
Do you think the family continues to serve the function of regulating sexual behavior and sexual reproduction? Why or why not?

Want to create or adapt books like this? Learn more about how Pressbooks supports open publishing practices.

Sociological Perspectives on the Family

Learning objective.

Summarize understandings of the family as presented by functional, conflict, and social interactionist theories.

Table 15.1 Theory Snapshot

Social Functions of the Family

Colleen Kelly – Kids Playing Monopoly Chicago – CC BY 2.0.

The Family and Conflict

Families and Social Interaction

Key Takeaways

The family ideally serves several functions for society. It socializes children, provides practical and emotional support for its members, regulates sexual reproduction, and provides its members with a social identity.
Reflecting conflict theory’s emphases, the family may also produce several problems. In particular, it may contribute for several reasons to social inequality, and it may subject its members to violence, arguments, and other forms of conflict.
Social interactionist understandings of the family emphasize how family members interact on a daily basis. In this regard, several studies find that husbands and wives communicate differently in certain ways that sometimes impede effective communication.

For Your Review

Komarovsky, M. (1964). Blue-collar marriage . New York, NY: Random House.

Lystra, K. (1989). Searching the heart: Women, men, and romantic love in nineteenth-century America . New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Rubin, L. B. (1976). Worlds of pain: Life in the working-class family . New York, NY: Basic Books.

Tannen, D. (2001). You just don’t understand: Women and men in conversation . New York, NY: Quill.

Introduction to Sociology: Understanding and Changing the Social World Copyright © 2016 by University of Minnesota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Chapter 14. Marriage and Family

Learning objectives, 14.1. what is marriage what is a family.

Describe society’s current understanding of family
Recognize changes in marriage and family patterns
Differentiate between lines of decent and residence

14.2. Variations in Family Life

Recognize variations in family life
Understand the prevalence of single parents, cohabitation, same-sex couples, and unmarried individuals
Discuss the social impact of changing family structures

14.3. Challenges Families Face

Understand the social and interpersonal impact of divorce
Describe the social and interpersonal impact of family abuse

Introduction to Marriage and Family

Christina and James met in college and have been dating for more than five years. For the past two years, they have been living together in a condo they purchased jointly. While Christina and James were confident in their decision to enter into a commitment like a 20-year mortgage, they are unsure if they want to enter into marriage . The couple had many discussions about marriage and decided that it just did not seem necessary. Wasn’t it only a piece of paper? And didn’t half of all marriages end in divorce?

Neither Christina nor James had seen much success with marriage while growing up. Christina was raised by a single mother. Her parents never married, and her father has had little contact with the family since she was a toddler. Christina and her mother lived with her maternal grandmother, who often served as a surrogate parent. James grew up in a two-parent household until age seven, when his parents divorced. He lived with his mother for a few years, and then later with his mother and her boyfriend until he left for college. James remained close with his father who remarried and had a baby with his new wife.

Recently, Christina and James have been thinking about having children and the subject of marriage has resurfaced. Christina likes the idea of her children growing up in a traditional family, while James is concerned about possible marital problems down the road and negative consequences for the children should that occur. When they shared these concerns with their parents, James’s mom was adamant that the couple should get married. Despite having been divorced and having a live-in boyfriend of 15 years, she believes that children are better off when their parents are married. Christina’s mom believes that the couple should do whatever they want but adds that it would “be nice” if they wed. Christina and James’s friends told them, married or not married, they would still be a family.

Christina and James’s scenario may be complicated, but it is representative of the lives of many young couples today, particularly those in urban areas (Useem 2007). Statistics Canada (2012) reports that the number of unmarried, common-law couples grew by 35 percent between 2001 and 2011 to make up a total of 16.7 percent of all families in Canada. Cohabitating, but unwed, couples account for 16.7 percent of all families in Canada. Some may never choose to wed (Jayson 2008). With fewer couples marrying, the traditional Canadian family structure is becoming less common. Nevertheless, although the percentage of traditional married couples has declined as a proportion of all families, at 67 percent of all families, it is still by far the predominant family structure.

Marriage and family are key structures in most societies. While the two institutions have historically been closely linked in Canadian culture, their connection is becoming more complex. The relationship between marriage and family is an interesting topic of study to sociologists.

What is marriage? Different people define it in different ways. Not even sociologists are able to agree on a single meaning. For our purposes, we will define marriage as a legally recognized social contract between two people, traditionally based on a sexual relationship and implying a permanence of the union. In creating an inclusive definition, we should also consider variations, such as whether a legal union is required (think of “common- law” marriage and its equivalents), or whether more than two people can be involved (consider polygamy). Other variations on the definition of marriage might include whether spouses are of opposite sexes or the same sex, and how one of the traditional expectations of marriage (to produce children) is understood today.

Sociologists are interested in the relationship between the institution of marriage and the institution of family because, historically, marriages are what create a family, and families are the most basic social unit upon which society is built. Both marriage and family create status roles that are sanctioned by society.

So what is a family? A husband, a wife, and two children—maybe even a pet—served as the model for the traditional Canadian family for most of the 20th century. But what about families that deviate from this model, such as a single-parent household or a homosexual couple without children? Should they be considered families as well?

The question of what constitutes a family is a prime area of debate in family sociology, as well as in politics and religion. Social conservatives tend to define the family in terms of structure with each family member filling a certain role (like father, mother, or child). Sociologists, on the other hand, tend to define family more in terms of the manner in which members relate to one another than on a strict configuration of status roles. Here, we will define family as a socially recognized group (usually joined by blood, marriage, or adoption) that forms an emotional connection and serves as an economic unit of society. Sociologists identify different types of families based on how one enters into them. A family of orientation refers to the family into which a person is born. A family of procreation describes one that is formed through marriage. These distinctions have cultural significance related to issues of lineage.

Drawing on the three sociological paradigms we have been studying in this introduction to sociology, the sociological understanding of what constitutes a family can be explained by symbolic interactionism, critical sociology, and functionalism. Symbolic interactionist theories indicate that families are groups in which participants view themselves as family members and act accordingly. In other words, families are groups in which people come together to form a strong primary group connection, maintaining emotional ties to one another over a long period of time. Such families could potentially include groups of close friends as family. Critical sociology emphasizes that the forms that define the “typical” family unit are not independent of historical changes in the economic structures and relations of power in society. The typical large, extended family of the rural, agriculture-based economy 100 years ago in Canada was much different from the single breadwinner-led “nuclear” family of the Fordist economy following World War II and different again from today’s families who have to respond to economic conditions of precarious employment, fluid modernity, and norms of gender and sexual equality.

In addition, the functionalist perspective views families as groups that perform vital roles for society—both internally (for the family itself) and externally (for society as a whole). Families provide for one another’s physical, emotional, and social well-being. Parents care for and socialize children, a function that prepares new members of society for their future roles. While interactionism helps us to understand the subjective experience of belonging to a “family” and critical sociology focuses on how families configure themselves in response to political-economic pressures and changes, functionalism illuminates the many purposes of families and their role in the maintenance of a balanced society (Parsons and Bales 1956). We will go into more detail about how these theories apply to family in later sections.

Challenges Families Face

North Americans are somewhat divided when it comes to determining what does and what does not constitute a family. In a 2010 survey conducted by Ipsos Reid, participants were asked what they believed constituted a family unit. Eighty percent of respondents agreed that a husband, wife, and children constitute a family. Sixty-six percent stated that a common-law couple with children still constitutes a family. The numbers drop for less traditional structures: a single mother and children (55 percent), a single father and children (54 percent), grandparents raising children (50 percent), common-law or married couples without children (46 percent), gay male couples with children (45 percent) (Postmedia News 2010). This survey revealed that children tend to be the key indicator in establishing “family” status: the percentage of individuals who agreed that unmarried couples constitute a family nearly doubled when children were added.

Another study also revealed that 60 percent of North Americans agreed that if you consider yourself a family, you are a family (a concept that reinforces an interactionist perspective) (Powell et al. 2010). Canadian statistics are based on the more inclusive definition of “census families.” Statistics Canada defines a census family as “composed of a married or common-law couple, with or without children, or of a lone parent living with at least one child in the same dwelling. Couples can be of the opposite sex or of the same sex” (Statistics Canada 2012). Census categories aside, sociologists would argue that the general concept of family is more diverse and less structured than in years past. Society has given more leeway to the design of a family making room for what works for its members (Jayson 2010).

Family is, indeed, a subjective concept, but it is a fairly objective fact that family (whatever one’s concept of it may be) is very important to North Americans. In a 2010 survey by Pew Research Center in Washington, D.C., 76 percent of adults surveyed stated that family is “the most important” element of their life—just 1 percent said it was “not important” (Pew Research Center 2010). It is also very important to society. American President Ronald Reagan notably stated, “The family has always been the cornerstone of American society. Our families nurture, preserve, and pass on to each succeeding generation the values we share and cherish, values that are the foundation of our freedoms” (Lee 2009). The dark side of this importance can also be seen in Reagan’s successful use of “family values” rhetoric to attack welfare mothers. His infamous “welfare queen” story about a black single mother in Chicago, who supposedly defrauded the government of $150,000 in welfare payments, was a complete fabrication that nevertheless “worked” politically because of social anxieties about the decline of the family. While the design of the family may have changed in recent years, the fundamentals of emotional closeness and support are still present. Most responders to the Pew survey stated that their family today is at least as close (45 percent) or closer (40 percent) than the family with which they grew up (Pew Research Center 2010).

Alongside the debate surrounding what constitutes a family is the question of what North Americans believe constitutes a marriage. Many religious and social conservatives believe that marriage can only exist between man and a woman, citing religious scripture and the basics of human reproduction as support. As Prime Minister Stephen Harper put it, “I have no difficulty with the recognition of civil unions for nontraditional relationships but I believe in law we should protect the traditional definition of marriage” ( Globe and Mail 2010). Social liberals and progressives, on the other hand, believe that marriage can exist between two consenting adults—be they a man and a woman, a woman and a woman, or a man and a man —and that it would be discriminatory to deny such a couple the civil, social, and economic benefits of marriage.

Marriage Patterns

With single parenting and cohabitation (when a couple shares a residence but not a marriage) becoming more acceptable in recent years, people may be less motivated to get married. In a recent survey, 39 percent of respondents answered “yes” when asked whether marriage is becoming obsolete (Pew Research Center 2010). The institution of marriage is likely to continue, but some previous patterns of marriage will become outdated as new patterns emerge. In this context, cohabitation contributes to the phenomenon of people getting married for the first time at a later age than was typical in earlier generations (Glezer 1991). Furthermore, marriage will continue to be delayed as more people place education and career ahead of “settling down.”

One Partner or Many?

North Americans typically equate marriage with monogamy , when someone is married to only one person at a time. In many countries and cultures around the world, however, having one spouse is not the only form of marriage. In a majority of cultures (78 percent), polygamy , or being married to more than one person at a time, is accepted (Murdock 1967), with most polygamous societies existing in northern Africa and east Asia (Altman and Ginat 1996). Instances of polygamy are almost exclusively in the form of polygyny. Polygyny refers to a man being married to more than one woman at the same time. The reverse, when a woman is married to more than one man at the same time, is called polyandry . It is far less common and only occurs in about 1 percent of the world’s cultures (Altman and Ginat 1996). The reasons for the overwhelming prevalence of polygamous societies are varied but they often include issues of population growth, religious ideologies, and social status.

While the majority of societies accept polygyny, the majority of people do not practise it. Often fewer than 10 percent (and no more than 25 to 35 percent) of men in polygamous cultures have more than one wife; these husbands are often older, wealthy, high-status men (Altman and Ginat 1996). The average plural marriage involves no more than three wives. Negev Bedouin men in Israel, for example, typically have two wives, although it is acceptable to have up to four (Griver 2008). As urbanization increases in these cultures, polygamy is likely to decrease as a result of greater access to mass media, technology, and education (Altman and Ginat 1996).

In Canada, polygamy is considered by most to be socially unacceptable and it is illegal. The act of entering into marriage while still married to another person is referred to as bigamy and is prohibited by Section 290 of the Criminal Code of Canada (Minister of Justice 2014). Polygamy in Canada is often associated with those of the Mormon faith, although in 1890 the Mormon Church officially renounced polygamy. Fundamentalist Mormons, such as those in the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS), on the other hand, still hold tightly to the historic Mormon beliefs and practices and allow polygamy in their sect.

The prevalence of polygamy among Mormons is often overestimated due to sensational media stories such as the prosecution of polygamous sect leaders in Bountiful, B.C., theYearning for Zion ranch raid in Texas in 2008, and popular television shows such as HBO’s Big Love and TLC’s Sister Wives . It is estimated that there are about 37,500 fundamentalist Mormons involved in polygamy in the United States, Canada, and Mexico, but that number has shown a steady decrease in the last 100 years (Useem 2007).

North American Muslims, however, are an emerging group with an estimated 20,000 practicing polygamy. Again, polygamy among North American Muslims is uncommon and occurs only in approximately 1 percent of the population (Useem 2007). For now polygamy among North American Muslims has gone fairly unnoticed by mainstream society, but like fundamentalist Mormons whose practices were off the public’s radar for decades, they may someday find themselves at the centre of social debate.

Residency and Lines of Descent

When considering their lineage, most Canadians look to both their father’s and mother’s sides. Both paternal and maternal ancestors are considered part of one’s family. This pattern of tracing kinship is called bilateral descent . Note that kinship , or one’s traceable ancestry, can be based on blood, marriage or adoption. Sixty percent of societies, mostly modernized nations, follow a bilateral descent pattern. Unilateral descent (the tracing of kinship through one parent only) is practised in the other 40 percent of the world’s societies, with high concentration in pastoral cultures (O’Neal 2006).

There are three types of unilateral descent: patrilineal , which follows the father’s line only; matrilineal , which follows the mother’s side only; and ambilineal , which follows either the father’s only or the mother’s side only, depending on the situation. In partrilineal societies, such as those in rural China and India, only males carry on the family surname. This gives males the prestige of permanent family membership while females are seen as only temporary members (Harrell 2001). North American society assumes some aspects of partrilineal decent. For instance, most children assume their father’s last name even if the mother retains her birth name.

In matrilineal societies, inheritance and family ties are traced to women. Matrilineal descent is common in Native American societies, notably the Crow and Cherokee tribes. In these societies, children are seen as belonging to the women and, therefore, one’s kinship is traced to one’s mother, grandmother, great grandmother, and so on (Mails 1996). In ambilineal societies, which are most common in Southeast Asian countries, parents may choose to associate their children with the kinship of either the mother or the father. This choice may be based on the desire to follow stronger or more prestigious kinship lines or on cultural customs such as men following their father’s side and women following their mother’s side (Lambert 2009).

Tracing one’s line of descent to one parent rather than the other can be relevant to the issue of residence. In many cultures, newly married couples move in with, or near to, family members. In a patrilocal residence system it is customary for the wife to live with (or near) her husband’s blood relatives (or family or orientation). Patrilocal systems can be traced back thousands of years. In a DNA analysis of 4,600-year-old bones found in Germany, scientists found indicators of patrilocal living arrangements (Haak et al. 2008). Patrilocal residence is thought to be disadvantageous to women because it makes them outsiders in the home and community; it also keeps them disconnected from their own blood relatives. In China, where patrilocal and patrilineal customs are common, the written symbols for maternal grandmother ( wáipá ) are separately translated to mean “outsider” and “women” (Cohen 2011).

Similarly, in matrilocal residence systems, where it is customary for the husband to live with his wife’s blood relatives (or her family of orientation), the husband can feel disconnected and can be labelled as an outsider. The Minangkabau people, a matrilocal society that is indigenous to the highlands of West Sumatra in Indonesia, believe that home is the place of women and they give men little power in issues relating to the home or family (Joseph and Najmabadi 2003). Most societies that use patrilocal and patrilineal systems are patriarchal, but very few societies that use matrilocal and matrilineal systems are matriarchal, as family life is often considered an important part of the culture for women, regardless of their power relative to men.

Stages of Family Life

As we have established, the concept of family has changed greatly in recent decades. Historically, it was often thought that most (certainly many) families evolved through a series of predictable stages. Developmental or “stage” theories used to play a prominent role in family sociology (Strong and DeVault 1992). Today, however, these models have been criticized for their linear and conventional assumptions as well as for their failure to capture the diversity of family forms. While reviewing some of these once-popular theories, it is important to identify their strengths and weaknesses.

The set of predictable steps and patterns families experience over time is referred to as the family life cycle . One of the first designs of the family life cycle was developed by Paul Glick in 1955. In Glick’s original design, he asserted that most people will grow up, establish families, rear and launch their children, experience an “empty nest” period, and come to the end of their lives. This cycle will then continue with each subsequent generation (Glick 1989). Glick’s colleague, Evelyn Duvall, elaborated on the family life cycle by developing these classic stages of family (Strong and DeVault 1992):

Table 14.1. Stage Theory. This table shows one example of how a “stage” theory might categorize the phases a family goes through.

The family life cycle was used to explain the different processes that occur in families over time. Sociologists view each stage as having its own structure with different challenges, achievements, and accomplishments that transition the family from one stage to the next. For example, the problems and challenges that a family experiences in Stage 1 as a married couple with no children are likely much different than those experienced in Stage 5 as a married couple with teenagers. The success of a family can be measured by how well they adapt to these challenges and transition into each stage. While sociologists use the family life cycle to study the dynamics of family over time, consumer and marketing researchers have used it to determine what goods and services families need as they progress through each stage (Murphy and Staples 1979).

As early “stage” theories have been criticized for generalizing family life and not accounting for differences in gender, ethnicity, culture, and lifestyle, less rigid models of the family life cycle have been developed. One example is the family life course , which recognizes the events that occur in the lives of families but views them as parting terms of a fluid course rather than in consecutive stages (Strong and DeVault 1992). This type of model accounts for changes in family development, such as the fact that today, childbearing does not always occur with marriage. It also sheds light on other shifts in the way family life is practised. Society’s modern understanding of family rejects rigid “stage” theories and is more accepting of new, fluid models. In fact contemporary family life has not escaped the phenomenon that Zygmunt Bauman calls fluid (or liquid ) modernity , a condition of constant mobility and change in relationships (2000).

Making Connections: Sociology in the Real World

The evolution of television families.

Whether you grew up watching the Cleavers, the Waltons, the Huxtables, or the Simpsons, most of the iconic families you saw in television sitcoms included a father, a mother, and children cavorting under the same roof while comedy ensued. The 1960s was the height of the suburban American nuclear family on television with shows such as The Donna Reed Show and Father Knows Best . While some shows of this era portrayed single parents ( My Three Sons and Bonanza , for instance), the single status almost always resulted from being widowed, not divorced or unwed.

Although family dynamics in real North American homes were changing, the expectations for families portrayed on television were not. North America’s first reality show, An American Family (which aired on PBS in 1973) chronicled Bill and Pat Loud and their children as a “typical” American family. Cameras documented the typical coming and going of daily family life in true cinéma-vérité style. During the series, the oldest son, Lance, announced to the family that he was gay, and at the series’ conclusion, Bill and Pat decided to divorce. Although the Loud’s union was among the 30 percent of marriages that ended in divorce in 1973, the family was featured on the cover of the March 12 issue of Newsweek with the title “The Broken Family” (Ruoff 2002).

Less traditional family structures in sitcoms gained popularity in the 1980s with shows such as Diff’rent Strokes (a widowed man with two adopted African American sons) and One Day at a Time (a divorced woman with two teenage daughters). Still, traditional families such as those in Family Ties and The Cosby Show dominated the ratings. The late 1980s and the 1990s saw the introduction of the dysfunctional family. Shows such as Roseanne , Married with Children , and The Simpsons portrayed traditional nuclear families, but in a much less flattering light than those from the 1960s did (Museum of Broadcast Communications 2011).

Over the past 10 years, the nontraditional family has become somewhat of a tradition in television. While most situation comedies focus on single men and women without children, those that do portray families often stray from the classic structure: they include unmarried and divorced parents, adopted children, gay couples, and multigenerational households. Even those that do feature traditional family structures may show less traditional characters in supporting roles, such as the brothers in the highly rated shows Everybody Loves Raymond and Two and Half Men . Even wildly popular children’s programs as Disney’s Hannah Montana and The Suite Life of Zack & Cody feature single parents.

In 2009, ABC premiered an intensely nontraditional family with the broadcast of Modern Family . The show follows an extended family that includes a divorced and remarried father with one stepchild, and his biological adult children—one of who is in a traditional two-parent household, and the other who is a gay man in a committed relationship raising an adopted daughter. While this dynamic may be more complicated than the typical “modern” family, its elements may resonate with many of today’s viewers. “The families on the shows aren’t as idealistic, but they remain relatable,” states television critic Maureen Ryan. “The most successful shows, comedies especially, have families that you can look at and see parts of your family in them” (Respers France 2010).

The combination of husband, wife, and children that 80 percent of Canadians believes constitutes a family is not representative of the majority of Canadian families. According to 2011 census data, only 31.9 percent of all census families consisted of a married couple with children, down from 37.4 percent in 2001. Sixty-three percent of children under age 14 live in a household with two married parents. This is a decrease from almost 70 percent in 1981 (Statistics Canada 2012). This two-parent family structure is known as a nuclear family , referring to married parents and children as the nucleus, or core, of the group. Recent years have seen a rise in variations of the nuclear family with the parents not being married. The proportion of children aged 14 and under who live with two unmarried cohabiting parents increased from 12.8 percent in 2001 to 16.3 percent in 2011 (Statistics Canada 2012).

Single Parents

Single-parent households are also on the rise. In 2011, 19.3 percent of children aged 14 and under lived with a single parent only, up slightly from 18 percent in 2001. Of that 19.3 percent, 82 percent live with their mother (Statistics Canada 2012).

Stepparents are an additional family element in two-parent homes. A stepfamily is defined as “a couple family in which at least one child is the biological or adopted child of only one married spouse or common-law partner and whose birth or adoption preceded the current relationship” (Statistics Canada 2012). Among children living in two parent households, 10 percent live with a biological or adoptive parent and a stepparent (Statistics Canada 2012).

In some family structures a parent is not present at all. In 2010, 106,000 children (1.8 percent of all children) lived with a guardian who was neither their biological nor adoptive parent. Of these children, 28 percent lived with grandparents, 44 percent lived with other relatives, and 28 percent lived with non-relatives or foster parents. If we also include families in which both parents and grandparents are present (about 4.8 percent of all census families with children under the age of 14), this family structure is referred to as the extended family , and may include aunts, uncles, and cousins living in the same home. Foster children account for about 0.5 percent of all children in private households.

In the United States, the practice of grandparents acting as parents, whether alone or in combination with the child’s parent, is becoming more common (about 9 percent) among American families (De Toledo and Brown 1995). A grandparent functioning as the primary care provider often results from parental drug abuse, incarceration, or abandonment. Events like these can render the parent incapable of caring for his or her child. However, in Canada, census evidence indicates that the percentage of children in these “skip-generation” families remained more or less unchanged between 2001 and 2011 at 0.5 percent (Statistics Canada 2012).

Changes in the traditional family structure raise questions about how such societal shifts affect children. Research, mostly from American sources, has shown that children living in homes with both parents grow up with more financial and educational advantages than children who are raised in single-parent homes (U.S. Census Bureau 2010). The Canadian data is not so clear. It is true that children growing up in single-parent families experience a lower economic standard of living than families with two parents. In 2008, female lone-parent households earned an average of $42,300 per year, male lone-parent households earned $60,400 per year, and two-parent families earned $100,200 per year (Williams 2010). However, in the lowest 20 percent of families with children aged four to five years old, single parent families made up 48.9 percent of households while intact or blended households made up 51.1 percent (based on 1998/99 data). Single parent families do not make up a larger percentage of low-income families (Human Resources Development Canada 2003). Moreover, both the income (Williams 2010) and the educational attainment (Human Resources Development Canada 2003) of single mothers in Canada has been increasing, which in turn is linked to higher levels of life satisfaction.

In research published from the National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth, a long-term study initiated in 1994 that is following the development of a large cohort of children from birth to the age of 25, the evidence is ambiguous as to whether having single or dual parents has a significant effect on child development outcomes. For example, indicators of vocabulary ability of children aged four to five years old did not differ significantly between single- and dual-parent families. However, aggressive behaviour (reported by parents) in both girls and boys aged four to five years old was greater in single-parent families (Human Resources Development Canada 2003). In fact, significant markers of poor developmental attainment were more related to the sex of the child (more pronounced in boys), maternal depression, low maternal education, maternal immigrant status, and low family income (To et al. 2004). We will have to wait for more research to be published from the latest cycle of the National Longitudinal Survey to see whether there is more conclusive evidence concerning the relative advantages of dual- and single-parent family settings.

Nevertheless, what the data show is that the key factors in children’s quality of life are the educational levels and economic condition of the family, not whether children’s parents are married, common-law, or single. For example, young children in low-income families are more likely to have vocabulary problems, and young children in higher-income families have more opportunities to participate in recreational activities (Human Resources Development Canada 2003). This is a matter related more to public policy decisions concerning the level of financial support and care services (like public child care) provided to families than different family structures per se. In Sweden, where the government provides generous paid parental leave after the birth of a child, free health care, temporary paid parental leave for parents with sick children, high-quality subsidized daycare, and substantial direct child-benefit payments for each child, indicators of child well-being (literacy, levels of child poverty, rates of suicide, etc.) score very high regardless of the difference between single- and dual-parent family structures (Houseknecht and Sastry 1996).

Cohabitation

Living together before or in lieu of marriage is a growing option for many couples. Cohabitation, when a man and woman live together in a sexual relationship without being married, was practised by an estimated 1.6 million people (16.7 percent of all census families) in 2011, which shows an increase of 13.9 percent since 2006 (Statistics Canada 2012). This surge in cohabitation is likely due to the decrease in social stigma pertaining to the practice. In Quebec in particular, researchers have noted that it is common for married couples under the age of 50 to describe themselves in terms used more in cohabiting relationships than marriage: mon conjoint (partner) or mon chum (intimate friend) rather than mon mari (my husband) (Le Bourdais and Juby 2002). In fact, cohabitation or common-law marriage is much more prevalent in Quebec (31.5 percent of census families) and the northern territories (from 25.1 percent in Yukon to 32.7 percent in Nunavut) than in the rest of the country (13 percent in British Columbia, for example) (Statistics Canada 2012).

Cohabitating couples may choose to live together in an effort to spend more time together or to save money on living costs. Many couples view cohabitation as a “trial run” for marriage. Today, approximately 28 percent of men and women cohabitated before their first marriage. By comparison, 18 percent of men and 23 percent of women married without ever cohabitating (U.S. Census Bureau 2010). The vast majority of cohabitating relationships eventually result in marriage; only 15 percent of men and women cohabitate only and do not marry. About one-half of cohabitators transition into marriage within three years (U.S. Census Bureau 2010).

While couples may use this time to “work out the kinks” of a relationship before they wed, the most recent research has found that cohabitation has little effect on the success of a marriage. Those who do not cohabitate before marriage have slightly better rates of remaining married for more than 10 years (Jayson 2010). Cohabitation may contribute to the increase in the number of men and women who delay marriage. The average age of first marriage has been steadily increasing. In 2008, the average age of first marriage was 29.6 for women and 31 for men, compared to 23 for women and 25 for men through most of the 1960s and 1970s (Milan 2013).

Same-Sex Couples

The number of same-sex couples has grown significantly in the past decade. The Civil Marriage Act (Bill C-38) legalized same sex marriage in Canada on July 20, 2005. Some provinces and territories had already adopted legal same-sex marriage, beginning with Ontario in June 2003. In 2011, Statistics Canada reported 64,575 same-sex couple households in Canada, up by 42 percent from 2006. Of these about three in ten were same-sex married couples compared to 16.5 percent in 2006 (Statistics Canada 2012). These increases are a result of more coupling, the change in the marriage laws, growing social acceptance of homosexuality, and a subsequent increase in willingness to report it.

In Canada, same-sex couples make up 0.8 percent of all couples. Unlike in the United States where the distribution of same-sex couples nationwide is very uneven, ranging from as low as 0.29 percent in Wyoming to 4.01 percent in the District of Columbia (U.S. Census Bureau 2011), the distribution of same-sex couples in Canada by province or territory is similar to that of opposite-sex couples. However, same-sex couples are more highly concentrated in big cities. In 2011, 45.6 percent of all same-sex sex couples lived in Vancouver, Toronto, and Montreal, compared to 33.4 percent of opposite-sex couples (Statistics Canada 2012). In terms of demographics, Canadian same-sex couples tended to be younger than opposite-sex couples. Twenty-five percent of individuals in same-sex couples were under the age of 35 compared to 17.5 percent of individuals in opposite-sex couples. There were more male-male couples (54.5 percent) than female-female couples (Milan 2013). Additionally, 9.4 percent of same-sex couples were raising children, 80 percent of whom were female-female couples (Statistics Canada 2012).

While there is some concern from socially conservative groups, especially in the United States, regarding the well-being of children who grow up in same-sex households, research reports that same-sex parents are as effective as opposite-sex parents. In an analysis of 81 parenting studies, sociologists found no quantifiable data to support the notion that opposite-sex parenting is any better than same-sex parenting. Children of lesbian couples, however, were shown to have slightly lower rates of behavioural problems and higher rates of self-esteem (Biblarz and Stacey 2010).

Staying Single

Gay or straight, a new option for many Canadians is simply to stay single. In 2011, about one-fifth of all individuals over the age of 15 did not live in a couple or family (Statistics Canada 2012). Never-married individuals accounted for 73.1 percent of young adults in the 25 to 29 age bracket, up from 26 percent in 1981 (Milan 2013). More young men in this age bracket are single than young women—78.8 percent to 67.4 percent—reflecting the tendency for men to marry at an older age and to marry women younger than themselves (Milan 2013).

Although both single men and single women report social pressure to get married, women are subject to greater scrutiny. Single women are often portrayed as unhappy “spinsters” or “old maids” who cannot find a man to marry them. Single men, on the other hand, are typically portrayed as lifetime bachelors who cannot settle down or simply “have not found the right girl.” Single women report feeling insecure and displaced in their families when their single status is disparaged (Roberts 2007). However, single women older than 35 report feeling secure and happy with their unmarried status, as many women in this category have found success in their education and careers. In general, women feel more independent and more prepared to live a large portion of their adult lives without a spouse or domestic partner than they did in the 1960s (Roberts 2007).

The decision to marry or not to marry can be based a variety of factors including religion and cultural expectations. Asian individuals are the most likely to marry while black North Americans are the least likely to marry (Venugopal 2011). Additionally, individuals who place no value on religion are more likely to be unmarried than those who place a high value on religion. For black women, however, the importance of religion made no difference in marital status (Bakalar 2010). In general, being single is not a rejection of marriage; rather, it is a lifestyle that does not necessarily include marriage. By age 40, according to census figures, 20 percent of women and 14 of men will have never married (U.S. Census Bureau 2011).

Making Connections: Sociological Research

Deceptive divorce rates.

It is often cited that half of all marriages end in divorce. This statistic has made many people cynical when it comes to marriage, but it is misleading. A closer look at the data reveals a different story.

Using Statistics Canada data from 2008 that show a marriage rate of 4.4 (per 1,000 people) and a divorce rate of 2.11, it would appear that slightly less than one-half of all marriages failed (Employment and Social Development Canada 2014a, 2014b). Similar United States data for 2003 showed more or less exactly 50 percent of marriages ending in divorce (Hurley 2005). This reasoning is deceptive, however, because instead of tracing actual marriages to see their longevity (or lack thereof), this compares what are unrelated statistics: that is, the number of marriages in a given year does not have a direct correlation to the divorces occurring that same year. American research published in the New York Times took a different approach—determining how many people had ever been married, and of those, how many later divorced. The result? According to this analysis, American divorce rates have only gone as high as 41 percent (Hurley 2005).

Another way to calculate divorce rates is the total divorce rate , which projects how many new marriages would be expected to fail after 30 years based on the divorce rate by marriage duration observed in a given year. In Canada, the total divorce rate figure reached a high of 50.6 percent in 1987 after the Divorce Act was amended to allow divorces after just one year of separation (rather than the mandatory three years previously). Since then, the total divorce rate has remained steady at between 35 percent and 42 percent. In 2008, 40.7 percent of marriages were projected to end before their 30th anniversary (Employment and Social Development Canada 2014a).

Sociologists can also calculate divorce rates through a cohort study. For instance, we could determine the percentage of marriages that are intact after, say, five or seven years, compared to marriages that have ended in divorce after five or seven years. Sociological researchers must remain aware of research methods and how statistical results are applied. As illustrated, different methodologies and different interpretations can lead to contradictory, and even misleading, results.

Theoretical Perspectives on Marriage and Family

Sociologists study families on both the macro and micro level to determine how families function. Sociologists may use a variety of theoretical perspectives to explain events that occur within and outside of the family. In this Introduction to Sociology , we have been focusing on three perspectives: structural functionalism, critical sociology, and symbolic interactionism.

Functionalism

When considering the role of family in society, functionalists uphold the notion that families are an important social institution and that they play a key role in stabilizing society. They also note that family members take on status roles in a marriage or family. The family—and its members—perform certain functions that facilitate the prosperity and development of society.

Sociologist George Murdock conducted a survey of 250 societies and determined that there are four universal residual functions of the family: sexual, reproductive, educational, and economic (Lee 1985). In each society, although the structure of the family varies, the family performs these four functions. According to Murdock, the family (which for him includes the state of marriage) regulates sexual relations between individuals. He does not deny the existence or impact of premarital or extramarital sex, but states that the family offers a socially legitimate sexual outlet for adults (Lee 1985). This outlet gives way to reproduction, which is a necessary part of ensuring the survival of society.

Once children are produced, the family plays a vital role in training them for adult life. As the primary agent of socialization and enculturation, the family teaches young children the ways of thinking and behaving that follow social and cultural norms, values, beliefs, and attitudes. Parents teach their children manners and civility. A well-mannered child reflects a well-mannered parent.

Parents also teach children gender roles. Gender roles are an important part of the economic function of a family. In each family, there is a division of labour that consists of instrumental and expressive roles. Men tend to assume the instrumental roles in the family, which typically involve work outside of the family that provides financial support and establishes family status. Women tend to assume the expressive roles, which typically involve work inside of the family, which provides emotional support and physical care for children (Crano and Aronoff 1978). According to functionalists, the differentiation of the roles on the basis of sex ensures that families are well balanced and coordinated. Each family member is seen as performing a specific role and function to maintain the functioning of the family as a whole.

When family members move outside of these roles, the family is thrown out of balance and must recalibrate in order to function properly. For example, if the father assumes an expressive role such as providing daytime care for the children, the mother must take on an instrumental role such as gaining paid employment outside of the home in order for the family to maintain balance and function.

Critical Sociology

Critical sociologists are quick to point out that North American families have been defined as private entities, the consequence of which historically has been to see family matters as issues concerning only those within the family. Serious issues including domestic violence and child abuse, inequality between the sexes, the right to dispose of family property equally, and so on, have been historically treated as being outside of state, legal, or police jurisdiction. The feminist slogan of the 1960s and 1970s—“the personal is the political”—indicates how feminists began to draw attention to the broad social or public implications of matters long considered private or inconsequential. As women’s roles had long been relegated to the private sphere, issues of power that affected their lives most directly were largely invisible. Speaking about the lives of middle-class women in mid-century North America, Betty Friedan described this problem as “the problem with no name”:

The problem lay buried, unspoken, for many years in the minds of American women. It was a strange stirring, a sense of dissatisfaction, a yearning that women suffered in the middle of the 20th century in the United States. Each suburban wife struggled with it alone. As she made the beds, shopped for groceries, matched slipcover material, ate peanut butter sandwiches with her children, chauffeured Cub Scouts and Brownies, lay beside her husband at night—she was afraid to ask even of herself the silent question—“Is this all?” (1963, p. 15).

One focus of critical sociology therefore is to highlight the political-economic context of the inequalities of power in family life. The family is often not a haven but rather an arena where the effects of societal power struggles are felt. This exercise of power often entails the differentiation and performance of family status roles. Why are women expected to perform the “expressive” roles in the family while the men perform “instrumental” roles, and what are the implications of this division of labour? Critical sociologists therefore study conflicts as simple as the enforcement of rules from parent to child, or more serious issues such as domestic violence (spousal and child), sexual assault, marital rape, and incest, as products of power structures in broader society. Blood and Wolfe’s classic (1960) study of marital power found that the person with the most access to value resources held the most power. As money is one of the most valuable resources, men who worked in paid labour outside of the home held more power than women who worked inside the home. Disputes over the division of household labour tend also to be a common source of marital discord. Household labour offers no wages and, therefore, no power. Studies indicate that when men do more housework, women experience more satisfaction in their marriages, reducing the incidence of conflict (Coltrane 2000).

The political and economic context is also key to understanding changes in the structure of the family over the 20th and 21st centuries. The debate between functionalist and critical sociologists on the rise of non-nuclear family forms is a case in point. Since the 1950s, the functionalist approach to the family has emphasized the importance of the nuclear family—a married man and woman in a socially approved sexual relationship with at least one child—as the basic unit of an orderly and functional society. Although only 39 percent of families conformed to this model in 2006, in functionalist approaches, it often operates as a model of the normal family, with the implication that non-normal family forms lead to a variety of society-wide dysfunctions. On the other hand, critical perspectives emphasize that the diversity of family forms does not indicate the “decline of the family” (i.e., of the ideal of the nuclear family) so much as the diverse response of the family form to the tensions of gender inequality and historical changes in the economy and society. The nuclear family should be thought of less as a normative model for how families should be and more as an historical anomaly that reflected the specific social and economic conditions of the two decades following the World War II.

Symbolic Interactionism

Interactionists view the world in terms of symbols and the meanings assigned to them (LaRossa and Reitzes 1993). The family itself is a symbol. To some, it is a father, mother, and children; to others, it is any union that involves respect and compassion. Interactionists stress that family is not an objective, concrete reality. Like other social phenomena, it is a social construct that is subject to the ebb and flow of social norms and ever-changing meanings.

Consider the meaning of other elements of family: “parent” was a symbol of a biological and emotional connection to a child. With more parent-child relationships developing through adoption, remarriage, or change in guardianship, the word “parent” today is less likely to be associated with a biological connection than with whoever is socially recognized as having the responsibility for a child’s upbringing. Similarly, the terms “mother” and “father” are no longer rigidly associated with the meanings of caregiver and breadwinner. These meanings are more free-flowing through changing family roles.

Interactionists also recognize how the family status roles of each member are socially constructed, playing an important part in how people perceive and interpret social behaviour. Interactionists view the family as a group of role players or “actors” that come together to act out their parts in an effort to construct a family. These roles are up for interpretation. In the late 19th and early 20th century, a “good father,” for example, was one who worked hard to provided financial security for his children. Today, a “good father” is one who takes the time outside of work to promote his children’s emotional well-being, social skills, and intellectual growth—in some ways, a much more daunting task.

Symbolic interactionism therefore draws our attention to how the norms that define what a “normal” family is and how it should operate come into existence. The rules and expectations that coordinate the behaviour of family members are products of social processes and joint agreement, even if the agreements are tacit or implicit. In this perspective, norms and social conventions are not regarded as permanently fixed by functional requirements or unequal power relationships. Rather, new norms and social conventions continually emerge from ongoing social interactions to make family structures intelligible in new situations and to enable them to operate and sustain themselves.

14.3. Challenges Families Face

As the structure of family changes over time, so do the challenges families face. Events like divorce and remarriage present new difficulties for families and individuals. Other long-standing domestic issues such as abuse continue to strain the health and stability of families.

Divorce and Remarriage

Divorce, while fairly common and accepted in modern Canadian society, was once a word that would only be whispered and was accompanied by gestures of disapproval. Prior to the introduction of the Divorce Act in 1968 there was no federal divorce law in Canada. In provincial jurisdictions where there were divorce laws, spouses had to prove adultery or cruelty in court. The 1968 Divorce Act broadened the grounds for divorce to include mental and physical cruelty, desertion, and/or separation for more than three years, and imprisonment. In 1986 the Act was amended again to make “breakdown of marriage” the sole ground for divorce. Couples could divorce after one year’s separation, and there was no longer a requirement to prove “fault” by either spouse.

These legislative changes had immediate consequences on the divorce rate. In 1961, divorce was generally uncommon, affecting only 36 out of every 100,000 married persons. In 1969, the year after the introduction of the Divorce Act, the number of divorces doubled from from 55 divorces per 100,000 population to 124. The divorce rate peaked in 1987 after the 1986 amendment at 362 divorces per 100,000 population. Over the last quarter century, divorce rates have dropped steadily reaching 221 divorces per 100,000 population in 2005 (Kelly 2010). The dramatic increase in divorce rates after the 1960s has been associated with the liberalization of divorce laws (as noted above) and the shift in societal makeup including the increase of women entering the workforce (Michael 1978) and marital breakdowns in the large cohort of baby boomers (Kelly 2010). The decrease in divorce rates can be attributed to two probable factors: an increase in the age at which people get married, and an increased level of education among those who marry—both of which have been found to promote greater marital stability.

So what causes divorce? While more young people are choosing to postpone or opt out of marriage, those who enter into the union do so with the expectation that it will last. A great deal of marital problems can be related to stress, especially financial stress. According to researchers participating in the University of Virginia’s National Marriage Project, couples who enter marriage without a strong asset base (like a home, savings, and a retirement plan) are 70 percent more likely to be divorced after three years than are couples with at least $10,000 in assets. This is connected to factors such as age and education level that correlate with low incomes.

The addition of children to a marriage creates added financial and emotional stress. Research has established that marriages enter their most stressful phase upon the birth of the first child (Popenoe and Whitehead 2001). This is particularly true for couples who have multiples (twins, triplets, and so on). Married couples with twins or triplets are 17 percent more likely to divorce than those with children from single births (McKay 2010). Another contributor to the likelihood of divorce is a general decline in marital satisfaction over time. As people get older, they may find that their values and life goals no longer match up with those of their spouse (Popenoe and Whitehead 2004).

Divorce is thought to have a cyclical pattern. Children of divorced parents are 40 percent more likely to divorce than children of married parents. And when we consider children whose parents divorced and then remarried, the likelihood of their own divorce rises to 91 percent (Wolfinger 2005). This might result from being socialized to a mindset that a broken marriage can be replaced rather than repaired (Wolfinger 2005). That sentiment is also reflected in the finding that when both partners of a married couple have been previously divorced, their marriage is 90 percent more likely to end in divorce (Wolfinger 2005).

Samuel Johnson is quoted as saying that getting married a second time was “the triumph of hope over experience.” In fact, according to the 2001 Statistics Canada General Social Survey, 43 percent of individuals whose first marriage failed married again, while 16 percent married again after the death of their spouse. Another 1 percent of the ever-married population aged 25 and over had been married more than twice (Clark and Crompton 2006). American data show that most men and women remarry within five years of a divorce, with the median length for men (three years) being lower than for women (4.4 years). This length of time has been fairly consistent since the 1950s. The majority of those who remarry are between the ages of 25 and 44 (Kreider 2006).

Marriage the second time around (or third or fourth) can be a very different process than the first. Remarriage lacks many of the classic courtship rituals of a first marriage. In a second marriage, individuals are less likely to deal with issues like parental approval, premarital sex, or desired family size (Elliot 2010). Clark and Crompton suggest that second marriages tend to be more stable than first marriages, largely because the spouses are older and more mature. At the time of the Statistics Canada General Social Survey, 71 percent of the remarried couples surveyed were still together and had been for an average of 13 years. Couples tend to marry a second time more for intimacy-based reasons rather than external reasons and therefore enjoy a greater quality of relationship (Clark and Crompton 2006).

Children of Divorce and Remarriage

Divorce and remarriage can be stressful for partners and children alike. Divorce is often justified by the notion that children are better off in a divorced family than in a family with parents who do not get along. Others argue that parents who divorce sacrifice their children’s well-being to pursue their own happiness. Research suggests that separating out particular factors of the divorce, especially whether or not the divorce is accompanied by parental conflict, is key to determining whether divorce has a significant negative impact on children (Amato and Keith 1991). Certainly while marital conflict does not provide an ideal childrearing environment, going through a divorce can also be damaging. Children are often confused and frightened by the threat to their family security. They may feel responsible for the divorce and attempt to bring their parents back together, often by sacrificing their own well-being (Amato 2000). Only in high-conflict homes do children benefit from divorce and the subsequent decrease in conflict. The majority of divorces come out of lower-conflict homes, and children from those homes are more negatively impacted by the stress of the divorce than the stress of unhappiness in the marriage (Amato 2000). On the other hand, Amato and Keith have argued that the overall the effect of divorce on children’s well-being is relatively weak and has been declining over time (Amato and Keith 1991).

Children’s ability to deal with a divorce may depend on their age. Research has found that divorce may be most difficult for school-aged children, as they are old enough to understand the separation but not old enough to understand the reasoning behind it. Older teenagers are more likely to recognize the conflict that led to the divorce but may still feel fear, loneliness, guilt, and pressure to choose sides. Infants and preschool-age children may suffer the heaviest impact from the loss of routine that the marriage offered (Temke 2006).

Proximity to parents also makes a difference in a child’s well-being after divorce. Boys who live or have joint arrangements with their fathers show less aggression than those who are raised by their mothers only. Similarly, girls who live or have joint arrangements with their mothers tend to be more responsible and mature than those who are raised by their fathers only. Nearly 70 percent of the children of parents who are divorced have their primary residence with their mother, leaving many boys without a father figure residing in the home. Another 15 percent of the children lived with their father and 9 percent moved back and forth between both parents equally (Sinha 2014). Still, researchers suggest that a strong parent-child relationship can greatly improve a child’s adjustment to divorce (Temke 2006).

There is empirical evidence that divorce has not discouraged children in terms of how they view marriage and family. In a survey conducted by researchers from the University of Michigan, about three-quarters of high school students said it was “extremely important” to have a strong marriage and family life. And over half believed it was “very likely” that they would be in a lifelong marriage (Popenoe and Whitehead 2001). These numbers have continued to climb over the last 25 years.

Violence and Abuse

Violence and abuse are among the most disconcerting of the challenges that today’s families face. Abuse can occur between spouses, between parent and child, as well as between other family members. The frequency of violence among families is a difficult to determine because many cases of spousal abuse and child abuse go unreported. In any case, studies have shown that abuse (reported or not) has a major impact on families and society as a whole.

Domestic Violence

Domestic violence is a significant social problem in Canada. One in four victims of violent crime in Canada was victimized by a spouse or family member in 2010 (Sinha 2012). Domestic violence is often characterized as violence between household or family members, specifically spouses. To include unmarried, cohabitating, and same-sex couples, family sociologists have created the term intimate partner violence (IPV) . Women are the primary victims of intimate partner violence. It is estimated that 1 in 4 women has experienced some form of IPV in her lifetime (compared to 1 in 7 men) (Catalano 2007). In 2011, women in Canada had more than double the risk of men of becoming a victim of police-reported family violence (Sinha 2012). IPV may include physical violence, such as punching, kicking, or other methods of inflicting physical pain; sexual violence, such as rape or other forced sexual acts; threats and intimidation that imply either physical or sexual abuse; and emotional abuse, such as harming another’s sense of self-worth through words or controlling another’s behaviour. IPV often starts as emotional abuse and then escalates to other forms or combinations of abuse (Centers for Disease Control 2012).

In 2010, of IPV acts that involved physical actions against women, 71 percent involved physical assault (57 percent were common assault including punching, slapping, and pushing, while another 10 percent were major assaults involving a weapon or causing major bodily injury); 3 percent involved sexual assault; 10 percent involved uttering threats; 5 percent indecent or threatening phone calls; and 9 percent criminal harassment or stalking (Sinha 2012). This is slightly different than IPV abuse patterns for men, which show that 79 percent of acts of IPV take the form of physical violence and less than 1 percent involve sexual assault (Sinha 2012). Interestingly, in 2011, a slightly larger proportion of physical assaults against male intimate partners resulted in injury (55 percent) compared to female intimate partners (51 percent) (Sinha 2013). IPV affects women at greater rates than men because women often take the passive role in relationships and may become emotionally dependent on their partner. Perpetrators of IPV work to establish and maintain such dependence in order to hold power and control over their victims, making them feel stupid, crazy, or ugly—in some way worthless. Between 2000 and 2010, nearly one-quarter of women murdered by their intimate partners were murdered for reasons of jealousy (compared to 10 percent of male victims) (Sinha 2012).

IPV affects different segments of the population at different rates. The rate of self-reported IPV for aboriginal women is about 2.5 times higher than for non-aboriginal women (Sinha 2013). The severity of intimate partner violence also differed. Nearly 6 in 10 aboriginal women reported injury as a result of IPV compared to 4 in 10 non-aboriginal women. As a result, aboriginal female victims were also much more likely to report that they feared for their lives as a result of IPV (52 percent compared to 31 percent of non-aboriginal women) (Sinha 2013). On the other hand, visible minority and immigrant groups do not have significantly different levels of self-reported spousal violence than the rest of the population (Statistics Canada 2011).

Those who are separated report higher rates of abuse than those with other marital statuses, as conflict is typically higher in those relationships. Similarly, those who are cohabitating or living in a common-law relationship are more likely than those who are married to experience IPV (Statistics Canada 2011). American researchers have found that the rate of IPV doubles for women in low-income disadvantaged areas when compared to IPV experienced by women who reside in more affluent areas (Benson and Fox 2004). In Canada, the statistics do not bear this relationship out. Household income and education levels appear to have little effect on experiencing spousal violence. Regardless of income level, the proportion of reported spousal violence was between 1 and 2 percent. However, rates of IPV were nearly double in rural Canada than in the major metropolitan areas (542 incidents per 100,000 population compared to 294). Overall, women ages 25 to 34 are at the greatest risk of physical or sexual assault by an intimate partner (Statistics Canada 2011).

Accurate statistics on IPV are difficult to determine, as less than one-quarter of victims report incidents to the police (Statistics Canada 2011). It is not until victims choose to report crimes that patterns of abuse are exposed. Two-thirds of victims in Statistics Canada self-reported victimization studies stated that abuse had occurred more than once prior to their first police report. Nearly 3 in 10 stated that they had been abused more than 10 times prior to reporting (Statistics Canada 2011).

According to the Statistics Canada General Social Survey (2009) , victims cite varied reason why they are reluctant to report abuse, as shown in Table 14.3.

IPV has significant long-term effects on individual victims and on society. Studies have shown that IPV damage extends beyond the direct physical or emotional wounds. Extended IPV has been linked to unemployment among victims, as many have difficulty finding or holding employment. Additionally, nearly all women who report serious domestic problems exhibit symptoms of major depression (Goodwin, Chandler, and Meisel 2003). Female victims of IPV are also more likely to abuse alcohol or drugs, suffer from eating disorders, and attempt suicide (Silverman et al. 2001).

IPV is indeed something that impacts more than just intimate partners. In a survey, 34 percent of respondents said they have witnessed IPV, and 59 percent said that they know a victim personally (Roper Starch Worldwide 1995). Many people want to help IPV victims but are hesitant to intervene because they feel that it is a personal matter or they fear retaliation from the abuser—reasons similar to those of victims who do not report IPV.

Child Abuse and Corporal Punishment

Children are among the most helpless victims of abuse. In 2010, more than 18,000 children and youth under the age of 17 were victims of police-reported family violence in Canada, accounting for nearly a quarter of all violent offences against children and youth (Sinha 2012). Child abuse may come in several forms, the most common being neglect, followed by physical abuse, sexual abuse, psychological maltreatment, and medical neglect (Child Help 2011). Whereas the overall rate of violent crime involving children and youth is lower than the rate for the population as a whole, the rate of sexual assault is five times higher (Sinha 2012). Level 1 sexual assault (not involving a weapon or aggravated assault) comprised 75 percent of these offences, while child-specific sexual crimes including sexual interference, invitation to sexual touching, luring a child via a computer, and corrupting children comprised another 22 percent. Girls were 37 percent more likely than boys to be the victim of family violence (and almost twice as likely by the time they reached ages 12 to 17). In large part this is because girls are almost four times as likely to be a victim of sexual assault by a family member than boys are.

Twenty-five percent of all violent crime against children and youth was perpetrated by a family member (parent, sibling, extended family member, or spouse), while another 54 percent involved an accused known to the victim (casual acquaintances, close friends, or dating partners) (Sinha 2012). Fifty-nine percent of family violence against children was committed by parents, 19 percent by siblings, and 22 percent by other family members (Statistics Canada 2011). Understandably, these figures vary with the age of the child. As Sinha (2012) notes, “among youth aged 12 to 17 who had been victimized, about one in five (18%) were violently victimized by someone within their own family network. This compares to 47% of child victims aged 3 to 11 years, and 70% of infant and toddler victims under the age of 3 years” (p. 58).

In terms of child abuse reported to provincial and territorial child welfare authorities, infants (children less than 1 year old) were the most victimized population with an incident rate of 52 investigations per 1,000 children (compared to 43 per 1,000 for 1 to 3 year olds, the next highest category) (Public Health Agency of Canada 2010). Infants younger than 1 year are also the most vulnerable to family homicide, 98 percent of which were committed by parents (27 per million between 2000 and 2010, compared to 9 per million for 1 to 3 year olds, the next highest category) (Sinha 2012). This age group is particularly vulnerable to neglect because they are entirely dependent on parents for care. Some parents do not purposely neglect their children; factors such as cultural values, standard of care in a community, and poverty can lead to hazardous level of neglect. If information or assistance from public or private services are available and a parent fails to use those services, child welfare services may intervene (Public Health Agency of Canada 2010).

Infants are also often victims of physical abuse, particularly in the form of violent shaking. This type of physical abuse is referred to as shaken-baby syndrome , which describes a group of medical symptoms such as brain swelling and retinal hemorrhage resulting from forcefully shaking or causing impact to an infant’s head. A baby’s cry is the number one trigger for shaking. Parents may find themselves unable to soothe a baby’s concerns and may take their frustration out on the child by shaking him or her violently. Other stress factors such as a poor economy, unemployment, and general dissatisfaction with parental life may contribute to this type of abuse. Shaken-baby syndrome was attributed as the cause of nearly one-third (31 percent) of family-related homicides of infants less than 1 year between 2000 and 2010 (Sinha 2012).

Making Connections: Social Policy and Debate

Corporal punishment.

News reports in June 2013 broke the sensational story of dozens of children being apprehended by Child and Family Services from a small Old Order Mennonite community in southern Manitoba. Several members of the community were charged by police with assault when they received reports that children had been disciplined using a leather strap, whip, and cattle prod (Hitchen 2013). At one point, all the children except for one 17 year old had be apprehended by authorities (CBC News 2013). The 1892 law that permits the use of corporal punishment for children in Canada was upheld by a Supreme Court ruling in 2004 within certain restrictions, but corporal punishment remains a controversial issue in Canada (CBC News 2004).

Physical abuse of children may come in the form of beating, kicking, throwing, choking, hitting with objects, burning, or other methods. Injury inflicted by such behaviour is considered abuse even if the parent or caregiver did not intend to harm the child. Other types of physical contact that are characterized as discipline (spanking, for example) are not considered abuse as long as no injury results. The Supreme Court ruling stated that teachers and parents can use reasonable corrective force against children between the ages of 2 and 12 years old as long as the force is “minor” and of “a transitory and trifling nature” (CBC News 2004). The court ruled that it was unacceptable to strike a child with an object, like a strap or whip, and striking a child in the head was also unacceptable.

This issue is rather controversial among modern-day Canadians. While some parents feel that physical discipline, or corporal punishment, is an effective way to respond to bad behaviour, others feel that it is a form of abuse. According to a 2005 study of mothers with preschoolers in Manitoba and Ontario, 70 percent of respondents reported using corporal punishment. One-third of them used it at least once a week. A poll conducted by the Globe and Mail in 2007 found that 78 percent of Canadian parents with children under 18 believed that parents do not discipline their children enough and another 42 percent believed spanking benefited child development (Pearce 2012).

However, studies have shown that spanking is not an effective form of punishment and may lead to aggression by the victim, particularly in those who are spanked at a young age (Berlin 2009). A meta-analysis of research conducted over two decades published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal found that spanking was no better than other parenting methods at eliciting compliance in children and was in fact linked not only to increased levels of childhood aggression but also to long-term effects such as depression, emotional and behavioural problems, and drug and alcohol use in adulthood (Durrant and Ensom 2012). This research led the editor-in-chief of the journal to call for the repeal of the spanking law from the Criminal Code. “It is time for Canada to remove this anachronistic excuse for poor parenting from the statute book” (Fletcher 2012, p. 1339).

ambilineal a type of unilateral descent that follows either the father’s or the mother’s side exclusively

bigamy the act of entering into marriage while still married to another person

bilateral descent the tracing of kinship through both parents’ ancestral lines

cohabitation when a couple shares a residence but is not married

extended family a household that includes at least one parent and child as well as other relatives like grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins

family socially recognized groups of individuals who may be joined by blood, marriage, or adoption and who form an emotional connection and an economic unit of society

family life course a sociological model of family that sees the progression of events as fluid rather than as occurring in strict stages

family life cycle a set of predictable steps and patterns families experience over time

family of orientation the family into which one is born

family of procreation a family that is formed through marriage

fluid modernity a condition of constant mobility and change in relationships within contemporary society

intimate partner violence (IPV) violence that occurs between individuals who maintain a romantic or sexual relationship; includes unmarried, cohabiting, and same-sex couples as well as heterosexual married couples

kinship a person’s traceable ancestry (by blood, marriage, and/or adoption)

liquid modernity see fluid modernity

marriage a legally recognized contract between two or more people in a sexual relationship who have an expectation of permanence about their relationship

matrilineal descent a type of unilateral descent that follows the mother’s side only

matrilocal residence a system in which it is customary for a husband to live with his wife’s family

monogamy when someone is married to only one person at a time

nuclear family two parents (traditionally a married husband and wife) and children living in the same household

patrilineal descent a type of unilateral descent that follows the father’s line only

patrilocal residence a system in which it is customary for the a wife to live with (or near) her husband’s family

polyandry a form of marriage in which one woman is married to more than one man at one time

polygamy the state of being committed or married to more than one person at a time

polygyny a form of marriage in which one man is married to more than one woman at one time

shaken-baby syndrome a group of medical symptoms such as brain swelling and retinal hemorrhage resulting from forcefully shaking or impacting an infant’s head

total divorce rate projects how many new marriages would be expected to fail after 30 years based on the divorce rate by marriage duration observed in a given year

unilateral descent the tracing of kinship through one parent only.

Section Summary

14.1. What Is Marriage? What Is a Family? Sociologists view marriage and families as societal institutions that help create the basic unit of social structure. Both marriage and a family may be defined differently—and practised differently—in cultures across the world. Families and marriages, like other institutions, adapt to social change.

14.2. Variations in Family Life Canadians’ concepts of marriage and family are changing. Increases in cohabitation, same-sex partners, and singlehood are altering of our ideas of marriage. Similarly, single parents, same-sex parents, cohabitating parents, and unwed parents are changing our notion of what it means to be a family. While many children still live in opposite-sex, two-parent, married households, these are no longer viewed as the only type of nuclear family.

14.3. Challenges Families Face Families face a variety of challenges, including divorce, domestic violence, and child abuse. While divorce rates have decreased in the last 25 years, many family members, especially children, still experience the negative effects of divorce. Children are also negatively impacted by violence and abuse within the home, with 18,000 children victimized by family violence each year.

Section Quiz

14.1. What Is Marriage? What Is a Family? 1. Sociologists tend to define family in terms of

How a given society sanctions the relationships of people who are connected through blood, marriage, or adoption
The connection of bloodlines
The status roles that exist in a family structure
How closely members adhere to social norms

2. Research suggests that people generally feel that their current family is _______ than the family they grew up with.

At least as close
None of the above

3. A woman being married to two men would be an example of:

cohabitation

4. A child who associates his line of descent with his father’s side only is part of a _____ society.

Matrilineal
Patrilineal

5. Which of the following is a criticism of the family life cycle model?

It is too broad and accounts for too many aspects of family.
It is too narrowly focused on a sequence of stages.
It does not serve a practical purpose for studying family behaviour.
It is not based on comprehensive research.

14.2. Variations in Family Life 6. The majority of Canadian children live in ______.

Two-parent households
One-parent households
No-parent households
Multigenerational households

7. According to the study cited from Statistics Canada, children who live with ______ grow up with more advantages than children who live with ______.

One unwed parent; one divorced parent
One divorced parent; two married parents
One grandparent; two married parents
One divorced parent; one unwed parent

8. Couples who cohabitate before marriage are ______ couples who did not cohabitate before marriage to be married at least 10 years.

Far more likely than
Far less likely than
Slightly less likely than
Equally as likely as

9. Same-sex couple households account for _____ percent of Canadian households.

10. The median age of first marriage has ______ in the last 50 years.

Increased for men but not women
Decreased for men but not women
Increased for both men and women
Decreased for both men and women

14.3. Challenges Families Face 11. Current divorce rates are _______.

At an all-time high
At an all-time low
Steadily increasing
Steadily declining

12. Children of divorced parents are _______ to divorce in their own marriage than children of parents who stayed married.

More likely
Less likely
Equally likely

13. In general, children in ______ households benefit from divorce.

Multigenerational
High-conflict
Low-conflict

14. Which of the following is true of intimate partner violence (IPV)?

IPV victims are more frequently men than women.
One in 10 women is a victim of IPV.
Aboriginal women are nearly 2.5 times more likely to be a victim of IPV than non-aboriginal women.
Rape is the most common form of IPV.

15. Which type of child abuse is most prevalent in Canada?

Physical abuse
Shaken-baby syndrome
Internet stalking

Short Answer

14.1. What Is Marriage? What Is a Family?

According to research, what are Canadians’ general thoughts on family? How do they view nontraditional family structures? How do you think these views might change in 20 years?
Explain the difference between bilateral and unilateral descent. Using your own association with kinship, explain which type of descent applies to you.

14.2. Variations in Family Life

Explain the different variations of the nuclear family and the trends that occur in each.
Why are some couples choosing to cohabit before marriage? What effect does cohabitation have on marriage?
Explain how financial status impacts marital stability. What other factors are associated with a couple’s financial status?
Explain why more than half of intimate partner violence goes unreported? Why are those who are abused unlikely to report the abuse?

Further Research

14.1. What Is Marriage? What Is a Family? For more information on family development and lines of descent, visit the Library and Archives Canada “Genealogy and Family History” website to find out how to research family genealogies in Canada. http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/022/index-e.html

For more statistics on marriage and family, see the Statistics Canada report based on the 2011 census: Portrait of Families and Living Arrangements in Canada: Families, households and marital status, 2011 Census of Population . http://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2011/as-sa/98-312-x/98-312-x2011001-eng.pdf

To find more information on child abuse, visit the Canadian Child Welfare Research portal at http://cwrp.ca/child-abuse-neglect

14.. Introduction to Marriage and Family Jayson, Sharon. 2008. “Census Reports More Unmarried Couples Living Together.” USA Today , July 28. Retrieved February 12, 20212 ( http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/census/2008-07-28-cohabitation-census_N.htm ).

Statistics Canada. 2012. Portrait of Families and Living Arrangements in Canada: Families, households and marital status, 2011 Census of Population . Statistics Canada Catalogue no. 98-312-X2011001. Retrieved July 2, 2014, from http://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2011/as-sa/98-312-x/98-312-x2011001-eng.pdf

Useem, Andrea. 2007. “What to Expect When You’re Expecting a Co-Wife.” Slate , July 24. Retrieved January 16, 2012 ( http://www.slate.com/articles/life/faithbased/2007/07/what_to_expect_when_youre_expecting_a_cowife.html ).

14.1. What Is Marriage? What Is a Family? Altman, Irwin and Joseph Ginat. 1996. Polygamous Families in Contemporary Society . New York: Cambridge University Press.

Bauman, Zymunt. 2000. Liquid Modernity . Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. Retrieved Sept 2014 from http://english.360elib.com/datu/J/EM353297.pdf

Cohen, Philip. 2011. “Chinese: Maternal Grandmothers, Outside Women.” FamilyInequality.com , Retrieved February 13, 2012 ( http://familyinequality.wordpress.com/2011/11/16/chinese-maternal-grandmothers-outside-women/ ).

Glezer, Helen. 1991. “Cohabitation.” Family Matters 30:24–27.

Glick, Paul. 1989. “The Family Life Cycle and Social Change.” Family Relations 38(2):123–129.

Globe and Mail . 2010. “The quotable Stephen Harper: Not exactly Churchill, but not bad either.” The Toronto Globe and Mail. October 8. Retrieved July 2, 2014, from http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/books-and-media/the-quotable-stephen-harper-not-exactly-churchill-but-not-bad-either/article1214563/

Griver, Simon. 2008. “One Wife Isn’t Enough … So They Take Two or Three.” The Jewish Chronicle Online , April 24. Retrieved February 13, 2012 ( http://www.thejc.com/lifestyle/lifestyle-features/one-wife-isn’t-enough-so-they-take-two-or-three ).

Haak, Wolfgang et al. 2008. “Ancient DNA Reveals Male Diffusion through the Neolithic Mediterranean Route.” Proceedings of the National Association of Sciences , November 17. Retrieved February 13, 2012 ( http://www.pnas.org/content/105/47/18226 ).

Harrell, Stevan. 2001. “Mountain Patterns: The Survival of Nuosu Culture in China.” Journal of American Folklore 114:451.

Jayson, Sharon. 2010. “What Does a ‘Family’ Look Like Nowadays?” USA Today , November 25. Retrieved February 13, 2012 ( http://www.usatoday.com/yourlife/sex-relationships/marriage/2010-11-18-pew18_ST_N.htm ).

Joseph, Suad and Afsaneh Najmabadi. 2003. “Kinship and State: Southeast Asia, East Asia, Australia and the Pacific.” Pp. 351–355 in Encyclopedia of Women and Islamic Cultures: Family, Law, and Politics . Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill Academic Publishers.

Lambert, Bernd. 2009. “Ambilineal Descent Groups in the Northern Gilbert Islands.” American Anthropologist 68(3):641–664.

Lee, Richard. 2009. The American Patriot’s Bible: The Word of God and the Shaping of America . Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson.

Mails, Thomas E. 1996. The Cherokee People: The Story of the Cherokees from Earliest Origins to Contemporary Times . New York: Marlowe & Co.

Minister of Justice. 2014. Criminal Code R.S., c. C-34, s. 1. Minister of Justice. July 11. Retrieved September 23, 2014, from http://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/PDF/C-46.pdf

Murdock, George P. 1967. Ethnographic Atlas: A Summary . Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press.

Murphy, Patrick and William Staples. 1979. “A Modernized Family Life Cycle.” Journal of Consumer Research 6(1):12–22.

Museum of Broadcast Communications. 2010. “Family on Television.” Retrieved January 16, 2012.

O’Neal, Dennis. 2006. “Nature of Kinship.” Palomar College. Retrieved January 16, 2012 ( http://anthro.palomar.edu/kinship/kinship_2.htm ).

Parsons, Talcott and Robert Bales. 1955. Family Socialization and Interaction Process . London: Routledge.

Pew Research Center. 2010. “The Decline of Marriage and Rise of New Families.” November 18. Retrieved February 13, 2012 ( http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1802/decline-marriage-rise-new-families ).

Postmedia News. 2010. “Poll: How Canadians see the family.” Canada.com. October 5. Retrieved July 2, 2014, from http://www.canada.com/life/Poll+Canadians+family/3604119/story.html

Powell, Brian, Catherine Bolzendahl, Claudia Geist, and Lala Carr Steelman. 2010. Counted Out: Same-Sex Relations and Americans’ Definitions of Family . New York: Russell Sage Foundation.

Respers France, Lisa. 2010. “The Evolution of the TV Family.” CNN , September 1. Retrieved February 13, 2012 ( http://www.cnn.com/2010/SHOWBIZ/TV/09/01/families.on.tv/index.html ).

Ruoff, Jeffrey. 2002. An American Family: A Televised Life . Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Strong, B. and C. DeVault. 1992. The Marriage and Family Experience . 5th ed. St. Paul, MN: West Publishing Company.

14.2. Variations in Family Life Bakalar, Nicholas. 2010. “Education, Faith, and a Likelihood to Wed.” New York Times , March 22. Retrieved February 14, 2012 ( http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/23/health/23stat.html ).

Biblarz, Tim. J. and Judith Stacey. 2010. “How Does the Gender of Parents Matter?” Journal of Marriage and Family 72:3–22.

Blood, Robert Jr. and Donald Wolfe. 1960. Husbands and Wives: The Dynamics of Married Living . Glencoe, IL: The Free Press.

Coltrane, Scott. 2000. “Research on Household Labor: Modeling and Measuring the Social Embeddedness of Routine Family Work.” Journal of Marriage and the Family 62:1209–1233.

Crano, William and Joel Aronoff. 1978. “A Cross-Cultural Study of Expressive and Instrumental Role Complementarity in the Family.” American Sociological Review 43:463–471.

De Toledo, Sylvie and Deborah Edler Brown. 1995. Grandparents as Parents: A Survival Guide for Raising a Second Family . New York: Guilford Press.

Employment and Social Development Canada. 2014a. “Indicators of Well-Being in Canada: Family Life – Divorce.” Employment and Social Development Canada. Retrieved July 5, 2014, from http://www4.hrsdc.gc.ca/[email protected]?iid=76

Employment and Social Development Canada. 2014b. “Indicators of Well-Being in Canada: Family Life – Marriage.” Employment and Social Development Canada. Retrieved July 5, 2014, from http://www4.hrsdc.gc.ca/[email protected]?iid=78

Friedan, Betty. 1963. The Feminine Mystique. (NY: W.W. Norton & Company)

Houseknecht, Sharon and Jaya Sastry. 1996. “Family ‘Decline’ and Child Well-Being.” Journal of Marriage and the Family. 58: 726-739.

Human Resources Development Canada. 2003. A New Generation of Canadian Families Raising Young Children: A New Look at Data from National Surveys. Human Resources Development Canada: Applied Research Branch. September. Retrieved July 4, 2014, from http://www.gov.mb.ca/healthychild/ecd/raising_young_children.pdf

Hurley, Dan. 2005. “Divorce Rate: It’s Not as High as You Think.” New York Times , April 19 . Retrieved February 14, 2012 ( http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/19/health/19divo.html ).

Jayson, Sharon. 2010. “Report: Cohabiting Has Little Effect on Marriage Success.” USA Today, October 14. Retrieved February 14, 2012 ( http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2010-03-02-cohabiting02_N.htm ).

LaRossa, Ralph and Donald Reitzes. 1993. “Symbolic Interactionism and Family Studies.” Sourcebook of Family Theories and Methods: A Contextual Approach . New York: Plenum Press.

Le Bourdais, Celine and Heather Juby. 2002. “The Impact of Cohabitation on the Family Life Course in Contemporary North America: Insights from across the Border.” Pp. 107-118 in Booth, Alan and Ann Crouter (ed.s). Just Living Together: Implications of Cohabitation for Children, Family and Social Policy. (NY: Psychology Press).

Lee, Gary. 1982. Family Structure and Interaction: A Comparative Analysis . Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.

Milan, Anne. 2013. Marital Status: Overview, 2011. Statistics Canada Catalogue no. 91-209-X. July. Retrieved July 4, 2014, from http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/91-209-x/2013001/article/11788-eng.pdf

Roberts, Sam. 2007. “51% of Women Are Now Living Without a Spouse.” New York Times , January 16. Retrieved from February 14, 2012 ( http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/16/us/16census.html?pagewanted=all0 ).

To, Teresa, Astrid Guttmann, Paul Dick, Jay Rosenfield, Patricia Parkin, Marjan Tassoudji, Tatiana Vydykhan, Hongmei Cao, Jennifer K. Harris. 2004. “Risk Markers for Poor Developmental Attainment in Young Children: Results from a Longitudinal National Survey.” Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine. 158(7):643-649.

U.S. Census Bureau. 2010. “Current Population Survey (CPS).” Retrieved January 16, 2012 ( http://www.census.gov/population/www/cps/cpsdef.html ).

U.S. Census Bureau. 2011. “America’s Children: Key National Indicators of Well-Being. Forum on Child and Family Statistics. Retrieved January 16, 2012 ( http://www.childstats.gov/americaschildren/famsoc1.asp ).

Venugopal, Arun. 2011. “New York Leads in Never-Married Women.” WNYC , December 10. Retrieved February 14, 2012 ( http://www.wnyc.org/blogs/wnyc-news-blog/2011/sep/22/new-york-never-married-women/ ).

Williams, Cara. 2010. “Economic Well-Being” Women in Canada: A Gender –based Statistical Report. Statistics Canada Catalogue no. 89-503-X. December. Retrieved July 4, 2014, from http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/89-503-x/2010001/article/11388-eng.pdf

14.3. Challenges Families Face Amato, Paul. 2000. “What Children Learn From Divorce.” Journal of Family Issues 21(8):1061–1086.

Amato, Paul and Bruce Keith. 1991. “Parental Divorce and the Well-Being of Children: A Meta-Analysis.” Psychological Bulletin. 110: 26-46.

Benson, Michael and Greer Fox. 2004. When Violence Hits Home: How Economics and Neighborhood Play a Role . Washington, DC: National Institutes of Justice.

Berlin, Lisa. 2009. “Correlates and Consequences of Spanking and Verbal Punishment for Low-Income White, African American, and Mexican American Toddlers.” Child Development 80(5):1403–1420.

Catalano, S. 2007. Intimate Partner Violence in the United States . Washington, DC: US Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics. Retrieved April 30, 2012 ( http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/pub/pdf/ipvus.pdf ).

CBC News. 2004. “Supreme Court upholds spanking law.” CBC News. January 30. Retrieved July 6, 2014, from http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/supreme-court-upholds-spanking-law-1.496454

CBC News. 2013. “Dozens of children seized from Manitoba Mennonite community: RCMP lay multiple assault charges against 3 men and a woman.” CBC News. June 19. Retrieved July 6, 2014, from http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/dozens-of-children-seized-from-manitoba-mennonite-community-1.1323892

Centers for Disease Control. 2012. “Understanding Intimate Partner Violence.” Retrieved January 16, 2012 ( http://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/pdf/ipv_factsheet-a.pdf ).

Clark, Warren and Susan Crompton. 2006. “Till death do us part? The risk of first and second marriage dissolution.” Canadian Social Trends. Statistics Canada — Catalogue No. 11-008. Summer. Retrieved July 5, 2014, from http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/11-008-x/2006001/pdf/9198-eng.pdf

Durrant, Joan and Ron Ensom. 2012. “Physical Punishment of Children: Lessons from 20 Years of Research.” Canadian Medical Association Journal. 184(12): 1373–1377. Retrieved July 6, 2014, from http://www.cheo.on.ca/uploads/Durrant%20EnsomCMAJ2012.pdf

Elliot, Diana. 2010. “Embracing the Institution of Marriage: The Characteristics of Remarried Americans.” U.S. Census Bureau.

Fletcher, John. 2012. “Positive parenting, not physical punishment.” Canadian Medical Association Journal. 184(12): 1339.

Goodwin, S.N., S. Chandler, and J. Meisel. 2003. “Violence Against Women: The Role of Welfare Reform.” Final Report to the National Institute of Justice.

Hitchen, Ian. 2013. “Community’s children apprehended by province: Four Old Order Mennonite members accused of assaulting youths.” Winnipeg Free Press. June 6. Retrieved July 6, 2014, from http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/local/communitys-children-apprehended-by-province-212106141.html

Kelly, Mary Bess. 2010. “The processing of divorce cases through civil court in seven provinces and territories.” Statistics Canada Juristat Article. 30 (1): Spring. Retrieved July 5, 2014, from http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/85-002-x/2010001/article/11158-eng.pdf

Kreider, Rose. 2006. “Remarriage in the United States.” U.S. Census Bureau.

McKay, Stephen. 2010. “The Effects of Twins and Multiple Births on Families and Their Living Standards.” University of Birmingham. Retrieved February 24, 2012 ( http://www.tamba.org.uk/document.doc?id=268 ).

Michael, Robert. 1978. “The Rise in Divorce Rates, 1960–1974: Age-Specific Components.” Demography 15(2):177–182.

Pearce, Tralee. 2012. “Spanking your kid: Does it help or hurt?” The Toronto Globe and Mail. Sept. 6. Retrieved July 6, 2014, from http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/parenting/spanking-your-kid-does-it-help-or-hurt/article543483/

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Popenoe, David and Barbara D. Whitehead. 2004. “Ten Important Research Findings on Marriage and Choosing a Marriage Partner.” University of Virginia/National Marriage Project/The State of Our Unions. Retrieved January 16, 2012.

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Roper Starch Worldwide. 1995. Domestic Violence: Views on Campus Survey . New York: Liz Claiborne.

Silverman, J.G., A. Raj, L. A. Mucci, and J. E. Hathaway. 2001. “Dating Violence Against Adolescent Girls and Associated Substance Abuse, Unhealthy Weight Control, Sexual Risk Behavior, Pregnancy and Suicide.” Journal of the American Medical Association 286:572–579.

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Sinha, Maire (ed.). 2013. “Measuring violence against women: Statistical trends.” Statistics Canada . Catalogue no. 85-224-X. February 25. Retrieved July 5, 2014, from http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/85-002-x/2013001/article/11766-eng.pdf

Sinha, Maire. 2014. “Parenting and Child Support after Separation or Divorce.” Statistics Canada Catalogue no. 89‑652‑X–No. 001. February. Retrieved July 5, 2014, from http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/89-652-x/89-652-x2014001-eng.pdf

Statistics Canada. 2011. “Family Violence in Canada: A Statistical Profile.” Statistics Canada Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics. Catalogue no. 85-224-X. January. Retrieved July 5, 2014, from http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/85-224-x/85-224-x2010000-eng.pdf

Temke, Mary W. 2006. “The Effects of Divorce on Children.” Durham: University of New Hampshire. Retrieved January 16, 2012.

Wolfinger, Nicholas. 2005. Understanding the Divorce Cycle . New York: Cambridge University Press.

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14.1 What Is Marriage? What Is a Family?

Learning objectives.

By the end of this section, you should be able to:

Describe society’s current understanding of family
Recognize changes in marriage and family patterns
Differentiate between lines of descent and residence

Marriage and family are key structures in many societies. Many of us learn from a young age that finding and joining the right person is a key to happiness and security. We’re told that children need two parents. Many of the tax laws, medical laws, retirement benefit laws, and banking and loan processes seem to favor or assume marriage. Should those assumptions be changed? Is marriage still the foundation of the family and our society?

In 1960, 66 percent of households in America were headed by a married couple. That meant that most children grew up in such households, as did their friends and extended families. Marriage could certainly be seen as the foundation of the culture. By 2010, that number of households headed by married couples had dropped to 45 percent (Luscombe 2014). The approximately 20 percent drop is more than just a statistic; it has significant practical effects. It means that nearly every child in most parts of America is either in or is close to a family that is not headed by a married couple. It means that teachers and counselors and even people who meet children in a restaurant can’t assume they live with two married parents. Some view this decline as a problem with outcomes related to values, crime, financial strength, and mental health. Sociologists may study that viewpoint to determine if it is actually true.

What is marriage? Not even sociologists are able to agree on a single meaning. For our purposes, we’ll define marriage as a legally recognized social contract between two people, traditionally based on a sexual relationship and implying a permanence of the union. In practicing cultural relativism, we should also consider variations, such as whether a legal union is required, whether more than two people can be involved, or whether the marriage is a religious one or a civil one.

The question of what constitutes a family may be an even more difficult one to answer; it’s a prime area of debate in family sociology, as well as in politics and religion. Social conservatives tend to define the family in terms of structure with each family member filling a certain role (like father, mother, or child). Sociologists, on the other hand, tend to define family more in terms of the manner in which members relate to one another than on a strict configuration of status roles. Here, we’ll define family as a socially recognized group (usually joined by blood, marriage, cohabitation, or adoption) that forms an emotional connection and serves as an economic unit of society. Sociologists identify different types of families based on how one enters into them. A family of orientation refers to the family into which a person is born. A family of procreation describes one that is formed through marriage. These distinctions have cultural significance related to issues of lineage.

Drawing on two sociological paradigms, the sociological understanding of what constitutes a family can be explained by symbolic interactionism as well as functionalism. These two theories indicate that families are groups in which participants view themselves as family members and act accordingly. In other words, families are groups in which people come together to form a strong primary group connection and maintain emotional ties to one another over a long period of time. Such families may include groups of close friends or teammates. In addition, the functionalist perspective views families as groups that perform vital roles for society—both internally (for the family itself) and externally (for society as a whole). Families provide for one another’s physical, emotional, and social well-being. Parents care for and socialize children. Later in life, adult children often care for elderly parents. While interactionism helps us understand the subjective experience of belonging to a “family,” functionalism illuminates the many purposes of families and their roles in the maintenance of a balanced society (Parsons and Bales 1956). We will go into more detail about how these theories apply to family in the following pages.

Challenges Families Face

Alongside the debate surrounding what constitutes a family is the question of what people in the United States believe constitutes a marriage. Many religious and social conservatives believe that marriage can only exist between a man and a woman, citing religious scripture and the basics of human reproduction as support. Social liberals and progressives, on the other hand, believe that marriage can exist between two consenting adults—be they a man and a woman, or a woman and a woman—and that it would be discriminatory to deny such a couple the civil, social, and economic benefits of marriage.

Marriage Patterns

One Partner or Many?

People in the United States typically equate marriage with monogamy , when someone is married to only one person at a time. In many countries and cultures around the world, however, having one spouse is not the only form of accepted marriage, even if it is the most common. Polygamy , or being married to more than one person at a time, is accepted to varying degrees around the world, with most polygamous societies existing in northern Africa and east Asia (OECD 2019). Instances of polygamy are almost exclusively in the form of a man being married to more than one woman at the same time, rather than a woman being married to more than one man (Altman and Ginat 1996).

While the majority of societies accept polygamy, the majority of people do not practice it. Even in the regions where it is most common, only an average of 11 percent of the population lives in arrangements that include more than one spouse (Kramer 2020). In these relationships, the husbands are often older, wealthy, high-status men (Altman and Ginat 1996). The average plural marriage involves no more than three wives. Negev Bedouin men in Israel, for example, typically have two wives, although it is acceptable to have up to four (Griver 2008). As urbanization increases in these cultures, polygamy is likely to decrease as a result of greater access to mass media, technology, and education (Altman and Ginat 1996).

In the United States, polygamy is illegal. A recent Gallup poll showed that 21 percent of people believe polygamy is morally acceptable, which is a major increase since earlier versions of the same poll. But the poll also found that polygamy was among the least acceptable behaviors considered in the study; for example, polygamy was far less acceptable than consensual sex between teenagers, though it was more acceptable than a married person having an affair (Brenan 2020). The act of entering into marriage while still married to another person is referred to as bigamy and is considered a felony in most states.

Residency and Lines of Descent

When considering one’s lineage, most people in the United States look to both their father’s and mother’s sides. Both paternal and maternal ancestors are considered part of one’s family. This pattern of tracing kinship is called bilateral descent . Note that kinship , or one’s traceable ancestry, can be based on blood or marriage or adoption. Sixty percent of societies, mostly modernized nations, follow a bilateral descent pattern. Unilateral descent (the tracing of kinship through one parent only) is practiced in the other 40 percent of the world’s societies, with high concentration in pastoral cultures (O’Neal 2006).

There are three types of unilateral descent: patrilineal , which follows the father’s line only; matrilineal , which follows the mother’s side only; and ambilineal , which follows either the father’s only or the mother’s side only, depending on the situation. In patrilineal societies, such as those in rural China and India, only males carry on the family surname. This gives males the prestige of permanent family membership while females are seen as only temporary members (Harrell 2001). U.S. society assumes some aspects of patrilineal decent. For instance, most children assume their father’s last name even if the mother retains her birth name.

Tracing one’s line of descent to one parent rather than the other can be relevant to the issue of residence. In many cultures, newly married couples move in with, or near to, family members. In a patrilocal residence system it is customary for the wife to live with (or near) her husband’s blood relatives (or family of orientation). Patrilocal systems can be traced back thousands of years. In a DNA analysis of 4,600-year-old bones found in Germany, scientists found indicators of patrilocal living arrangements (Haak et al 2008). Patrilocal residence is thought to be disadvantageous to women because it makes them outsiders in the home and community; it also keeps them disconnected from their own blood relatives. In China, where patrilocal and patrilineal customs are common, the written symbols for maternal grandmother ( wáipá ) are separately translated to mean “outsider” and “women” (Cohen 2011).

Similarly, in matrilocal residence systems, where it is customary for the husband to live with his wife’s blood relatives (or her family of orientation), the husband can feel disconnected and can be labeled as an outsider. The Minangkabau people, a matrilocal society that is indigenous to the highlands of West Sumatra in Indonesia, believe that home is the place of women and they give men little power in issues relating to the home or family (Joseph and Najmabadi 2003). Most societies that use patrilocal and patrilineal systems are patriarchal, but very few societies that use matrilocal and matrilineal systems are matriarchal, as family life is often considered an important part of the culture for women, regardless of their power relative to men.

Stages of Family Life

As we’ve established, the concept of family has changed greatly in recent decades. Historically, it was often thought that many families evolved through a series of predictable stages. Developmental or “stage” theories used to play a prominent role in family sociology (Strong and DeVault 1992). Today, however, these models have been criticized for their linear and conventional assumptions as well as for their failure to capture the diversity of family forms. While reviewing some of these once-popular theories, it is important to identify their strengths and weaknesses.

As early “stage” theories have been criticized for generalizing family life and not accounting for differences in gender, ethnicity, culture, and lifestyle, less rigid models of the family life cycle have been developed. One example is the family life course , which recognizes the events that occur in the lives of families but views them as parting terms of a fluid course rather than in consecutive stages (Strong and DeVault 1992). This type of model accounts for changes in family development, such as the fact that in today’s society, childbearing does not always occur with marriage. It also sheds light on other shifts in the way family life is practiced. Society’s modern understanding of family rejects rigid “stage” theories and is more accepting of new, fluid models.

Sociology in the Real World

The evolution of television families.

Whether you grew up watching the Huxtables, the Simpsons, the Kardashians, or the Johnsons, most of the drama or comedy you saw involved the relationships, tensions, challenges, and sometimes ridiculousness of family life. You may have also seen a great deal of change. The 1960s was the height of the suburban U.S. nuclear family on television with shows such as The Donna Reed Show and Father Knows Best . While some shows of this era portrayed single parents ( My Three Sons and Bonanza , for instance), the single status almost always resulted from being widowed—not divorced or unwed.

Although family dynamics in real U.S. homes were changing, the expectations for families portrayed on television were not. The United States’ first reality show, An American Family aired on PBS in 1973. The show chronicled Bill and Pat Loud and their children. During the series, the oldest son, Lance, announced to the family that he was gay, and at the series’ conclusion, Bill and Pat decided to divorce. Although the Loud’s union was among the 30 percent of marriages that ended in divorce in 1973, the family was featured on the cover of the March 12 issue of Newsweek with the title “The Broken Family” (Ruoff 2002).

In the early 2000s, the nontraditional family has become somewhat of a tradition in television. While many situation comedies focus on single men and women without children, those that do portray families often stray from the classic structure: they include unmarried and divorced parents, adopted children, gay or lesbian couples, and multigenerational households.

In 2009, ABC emphasized the changes in family dynamics with their choice of title for Modern Family . The show follows an extended family—which is a household that includes at least one parent and child as well as other relatives like grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins—that consists of a divorced and remarried father with one stepchild and his biological adult children, one of whom is in a traditional two-parent household and the other who is a gay man in a committed relationship raising an adopted daughter. Black-ish , which portrays an extended family of African Americans, has at many times dealt with the issue implied by its name: That sometimes what it means to be Black can bring issues of interpretation conflict, especially across generations. For example, the children of the central family have shown interest in “blending in” with their White friends, which brings negative reactions from their grandparents.

Other shows, such as Shameless , interweave family diversity with complex and painful issues such as addiction. The series has a large cast of characters representing different groups, and central to the series are the roles of children, rather than parents, as family leaders. “The families on shows like this one aren’t as idealistic, but they remain relatable,” states television critic Maureen Ryan. “The most successful shows, comedies especially, have families that you can look at and see parts of your family in them” (Respers France 2010).

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The Functionalist View of Family in Sociology

In the field of sociology, the functionalist perspective provides a unique lens through which to understand the role and significance of the family in society. Functionalism is a theoretical framework that emphasizes the importance of social institutions, such as the family, in maintaining social order and stability. This perspective views the family as a vital component of society, serving various functions that contribute to the overall well-being and functioning of individuals and the larger community.

Overview of Functionalism

Functionalism , also known as structural functionalism, is a sociological theory developed by scholars such as Emile Durkheim and Talcott Parsons. It posits that society is a complex system made up of interrelated parts that work together to maintain social equilibrium. According to functionalists, social institutions, including the family , have specific functions that contribute to the smooth functioning and stability of society.

The Divorce Rate: Exploring its Causes, Consequences, and Solutions

A man with a purple suitcase experiencing divorce

The Concept of Divorce in Sociology and its Implications

The functions of family.

The functionalist view of the family highlights several key functions that it fulfills within society:

1. Reproduction and Socialization

One of the primary functions of the family is to reproduce and socialize new members of society. Through the institution of marriage, families provide a socially accepted framework for procreation. Additionally, parents play a crucial role in socializing children, teaching them the norms , values, and behaviors necessary for their integration into society.

2. Economic Support

The family serves as an economic unit, providing financial support and resources to its members. Within the family, individuals contribute to the overall economic well-being through their work and income. This economic support ensures the fulfillment of basic needs, such as food, shelter, and clothing, and contributes to the overall stability of society.

3. Emotional Support

The family is a primary source of emotional support and nurturance for its members. This support system helps individuals cope with challenges, provides a sense of belonging and identity, and fosters emotional well-being. The emotional support within families contributes to the overall mental health and stability of individuals and society as a whole.

4. Social Control

The family plays a crucial role in maintaining social control and regulating behavior. Through socialization and the internalization of norms and values , families instill a sense of discipline and moral guidance in their members. This social control helps individuals conform to societal expectations, contributing to the overall order and stability of society.

5. Status Placement

The family also plays a role in determining an individual’s social status and position within society. Inheritance of social and economic resources, as well as social connections and networks, are often influenced by family ties. The family’s role in status placement contributes to the social stratification and hierarchy within society.

Critiques of the Functionalist View

While the functionalist view of the family provides valuable insights into its functions within society, it has also faced criticism. Critics argue that functionalism tends to idealize the family as a harmonious and stable institution, overlooking issues such as domestic violence, inequality, and the changing dynamics of modern families. Moreover, functionalism may neglect the agency and diversity of individuals and families, assuming a one-size-fits-all approach.

In conclusion, the functionalist view of the family provides a comprehensive understanding of its functions within society . From reproduction and socialization to economic and emotional support, the family plays a vital role in maintaining social order and stability. However, it is essential to recognize the limitations of this perspective and acknowledge the complexities and diversity of family structures and dynamics in contemporary society.

Mr Edwards has a PhD in sociology alongside 10 years of experience in sociological knowledge

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Last Updated: Jun 17, 2023

Family has always been a cornerstone of human civilization, serving a crucial role in defining our relationships, interactions, and identity. This article delves into the sociological and anthropological understanding of ‘family,’ supplemented by case studies from various cultures.

What is Family in Anthropology & Sociology

Definition of Family

A family is commonly understood as a group of individuals related by consanguinity (blood relation), affinity (marriage), or co-residence.
This simplistic view, however, is expanded and complicated when examined from sociological and anthropological perspectives, which take into account the vast cultural diversity and dynamism that characterize human societies.

Origin of Family

The origins of the family as a social institution are deeply entwined with human evolution, the development of social structures, and the rise of agricultural societies. However, it’s important to note that our understanding of the emergence of the family institution is largely speculative, based on anthropological, archaeological, and historical data.

Family in Prehistoric Societies

Hunter-Gatherer Societies : In early hunter-gatherer societies, it’s thought that individuals lived in small groups based on kinship, due to the shared responsibilities of survival. It is likely that these groups consisted of families in the most basic sense, bound by shared genetics and mutual dependence.
Development of Agriculture : The advent of agriculture around 10,000 BCE fundamentally transformed human social structures. With the ability to produce food and remain in one place, communities grew larger and more complex, leading to the development of more defined family structures. The family unit became vital for labor division, property ownership, and inheritance practices.

Emergence of the Nuclear Family

The nuclear family, consisting of two parents and their children, is often considered the ‘traditional’ family structure in many societies, particularly in the West. Its development is attributed to several key historical shifts:

Industrial Revolution : The Industrial Revolution in the 18th and 19th centuries further solidified the nuclear family structure. Industrialization led to increased urbanization, with families moving to cities for work. This often meant leaving the extended family behind, leading to a focus on the immediate, nuclear family.
Modernization and Changing Social Norms : Over the 19th and 20th centuries, societal changes such as increased mobility, reduced fertility, and changing gender roles further reinforced the nuclear family model. This was particularly prevalent in Western societies.

Evolution of the Family Institution

However, the family as an institution has continued to evolve and diversify. In many cultures, extended families, including grandparents, uncles, aunts, and cousins, remain the norm. In recent decades, we’ve also seen an increase in single-parent families, same-sex families, and non-marital cohabitation.

Overall, the institution of family emerged out of practical necessity, cultural evolution, and social transformations. It continues to adapt to changing societal norms, illustrating the dynamic nature of human social organization.

Family from an Anthropological Perspective

Anthropologists study the human species in terms of biological, social, and cultural aspects. Hence, their understanding of family is largely based on kinship and descent patterns, along with the associated social norms.

The Eskimo system (common in Western cultures) focuses on the nuclear family.
The Hawaiian system recognizes only generational differences, without distinguishing between cousins and siblings.
The Sudanese system is highly detailed, with specific terms for each family member (Holy, 1996) .
Descent Patterns : Anthropologists also study whether societies follow matrilineal, patrilineal, or bilateral descent, i.e., tracing lineage through the mother, father, or both parents respectively (Parkin, 1997) .

Case Studies

The Nayar of India : The Nayar, a matrilineal society in Kerala, India, have an unusual family structure, where women can have multiple partners, and lineage is traced through the mother. Children belong to their mother’s family, and men have minimal roles in their biological children’s lives (Gough, 1961) .
The Mosuo of China : This is another matrilineal society where women head the family, and men are only ‘visiting husbands.’ This structure has resulted in what’s known as the ‘walking marriage’.
The Inuit of Arctic Canada : They follow the Eskimo kinship system, emphasizing nuclear families while recognizing more distant relatives. They place great importance on sharing resources within the family (Balikci, 1970) .

Family from a Sociological Perspective

Sociologists view family as a social institution performing specific functions in society. Their approach focuses on roles, relationships, and impacts on broader social structures.

Functionalism : This theory posits that families perform vital roles such as socialization, regulation of sexual behavior, and provision of social status. Talcott Parsons is a key proponent of this view.
Conflict Theory : This perspective, rooted in the work of Karl Marx, suggests that families can reflect and exacerbate social inequalities (Engels, 1884) .
Symbolic Interactionism : Here, focus is on interpersonal dynamics within the family, how individuals interpret their roles, and how these roles shape identity and behavior (LaRossa & Reitzes, 1993) .
American Nuclear Families : This case showcases the functionalist perspective, where families socialize children, regulate sexual activity, provide emotional support, and contribute to social order.
Victorian England Families : In these families, the conflict perspective is highlighted, with the patriarchal family structure mirroring and reinforcing class and gender inequalities (Engels, 1884) .
Gay and Lesbian Families in the U.S. : This case exemplifies symbolic interactionism, where individuals negotiate roles and meanings within their family structures, often challenging traditional family norms.

‘Family’ is a complex, multifaceted concept, shaped by diverse cultural, biological, and sociopolitical factors. Anthropologists and sociologists provide rich insights into how families are structured, function, and evolve, illuminating the fascinating tapestry of human social organization.

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How to Write a Sociological Essay: Explained with Examples

This article will discuss “How to Write a Sociological Essay” with insider pro tips and give you a map that is tried and tested. An essay writing is done in three phases: a) preparing for the essay, b) writing the essay, and c) editing the essay. We will take it step-by-step so that nothing is left behind because the devil, as well as good grades and presentation, lies in the details.

Writing is a skill that we learn throughout the courses of our lives. Learning how to write is a process that we begin as soon as we turn 4, and the learning process never stops. But the question is, “is all writing the same?”. The answer is NO. Do you remember your initial lessons of English when you were in school, and how the teacher taught various formats of writing such as formal, informal, essay, letter, and much more? Therefore, writing is never that simple. Different occasions demand different styles and commands over the writing style. Thus, the art of writing improves with time and experience.

Those who belong to the world of academia know that writing is something that they cannot escape. No writing is the same when it comes to different disciplines of academia. Similarly, the discipline of sociology demands a particular style of formal academic writing. If you’re a new student of sociology, it can be an overwhelming subject, and writing assignments don’t make the course easier. Having some tips handy can surely help you write and articulate your thoughts better.

[Let us take a running example throughout the article so that every point becomes crystal clear. Let us assume that the topic we have with us is to “Explore Culinary Discourse among the Indian Diasporic Communities” .]

Phase I: Preparing for the Essay

Step 1: make an outline.

So you have to write a sociological essay, which means that you already either received or have a topic in mind. The first thing for you to do is PLAN how you will attempt to write this essay. To plan, the best way is to make an outline. The topic you have, certainly string some thread in your mind. They can be instances you heard or read, some assumptions you hold, something you studied in the past, or based on your own experience, etc. Make a rough outline where you note down all the themes you would like to talk about in your essay. The easiest way to make an outline is to make bullet points. List all the thoughts and examples that you have in find and create a flow for your essay. Remember that this is only a rough outline so you can always make changes and reshuffle your points.

[Explanation through example, assumed topic: “Explore Culinary Discourse among the Indian Diasporic Communities” . Your outline will look something like this:

Importance of food
Definition of Diaspora
Relationship between food and culture
Relationship between food and nation
Relationship between food and media
Relationship between food and nostalgia
How food travels with people
Is food practices different for different sections of society, such as caste, class, gender ]

Step 2: Start Reading

Once you have prepared an outline for your essay, the next step is to start your RESEARCH . You cannot write a sociological essay out of thin air. The essay needs to be thoroughly researched and based on facts. Sociology is the subject of social science that is based on facts and evidence. Therefore, start reading as soon as you have your outline determined. The more you read, the more factual data you will collect. But the question which now emerges is “what to read” . You cannot do a basic Google search to write an academic essay. Your research has to be narrow and concept-based. For writing a sociological essay, make sure that the sources from where you read are academically acclaimed and accepted.

Some of the websites that you can use for academic research are:

Google Scholar
Shodhganga

[Explanation through example, assumed topic: “Explore Culinary Discourse among the Indian Diasporic Communities” .

For best search, search for your articles by typing “Food+Diaspora”, “Food+Nostalgia”, adding a plus sign (+) improves the search result.]

Step 3: Make Notes

This is a step that a lot of people miss when they are preparing to write their essays. It is important to read, but how you read is also a very vital part. When you are reading from multiple sources then all that you read becomes a big jumble of information in your mind. It is not possible to remember who said what at all times. Therefore, what you need to do while reading is to maintain an ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY . Whenever you’re reading for writing an academic essay then have a notebook handy, or if you prefer electronic notes then prepare a Word Document, Google Docs, Notes, or any tool of your choice to make notes.

As you begin reading, note down the title of the article, its author, and the year of publication. As you read, keep writing down all the significant points that you find. You can either copy whole sentences or make shorthand notes, whatever suits you best. Once you’ve read the article and made your notes, write a summary of what you just read in 8 to 10 lines. Also, write keywords, these are the words that are most used in the article and reflect its essence. Having keywords and a summary makes it easier for you to revisit the article. A sociological essay needs a good amount of research, which means that you have to read plenty, thus maintaining an annotated bibliography helps you in the greater picture.

Annotate and divide your notes based on the outline you made. Having organized notes will help you directly apply the concepts where they are needed rather than you going and searching for them again.]

Phase II: Write a Sociological Essay

A basic essay includes a title, an introduction, the main body, and a conclusion. A sociological essay is not that different as far as the body of contents goes, but it does include some additional categories. When you write a sociological essay, it should have the following contents and chronology:

Subtitle (optional)
Introduction

Conclusion

References/ Bibliography

Now let us get into the details which go into the writing of a sociological essay.

Step 4: Writing a Title, Subtitle, Abstract, and Keywords

The title of any document is the first thing that a reader comes across. Therefore, the title should be provocative, specific, and the most well-thought part of any essay. Your title should reflect what your essay will discuss further. There has to be a sync between the title and the rest of your content. The title should be the biggest font size you use in your essay.

Pro Tip by Sociology Group: A title preferably should not exceed 5 to 7 words.

This is an optional component of any essay. If you think that your title cannot justify the rest of the contents of your essay, then you opt for a subtitle. The subtitle is the secondary part of the title which is used to further elucidate the title. A subtitle should be smaller in font than the Title but bigger than the rest of the essay body.

Pro Tip by Sociology Group: Make the font color of your subtitle Gray instead of Black for it to stand out.

The abstract is a 6 to 10 line description of what you will talk about in your essay. An abstract is a very substantial component of a sociological essay. Most of the essays written in academia exceed the word limit of 2000 words. Therefore, a writer, i.e., you, provides the reader with a short abstract at the beginning of your essay so that they can know what you are going to discuss. From the point of view of the reader, a good abstract can save time and help determine if the piece is worth reading or not. Thus, make sure to make your abstract as reflective to your essay as possible using the least amount of words.

Pro Tip by Sociology Group: If you are not sure about your abstract at first, it is always great to write the abstract in the end after you are done with your essay.

Your abstract should highlight all the points that you will further discuss. Therefore your abstract should mention how diasporic communities are formed and how they are not homogeneous communities. There are differences within this large population. In your essay, you will talk in detail about all the various aspects that affect food and diasporic relationships. ]

Keywords are an extension of your abstract. Whereas in your abstract you will use a paragraph to tell the reader what to expect ahead, by stating keywords, you point out the essence of your essay by using only individual words. These words are mostly concepts of social sciences. At first, glance, looking at your keywords, the reader should get informed about all the concepts and themes you will explain in detail later.

Pro Tip by Sociology Group: Bold your Keywords so that they get highlighted.

Your keywords could be: Food, Diaspora, Migration, and so on. Build on these as you continue to write your essay.]

Step 5: Writing the Introduction, Main Body, and Conclusion

Introduction

Your introduction should talk about the subject on which you are writing at the broadest level. In an introduction, you make your readers aware of what you are going to argue later in the essay. An introduction can discuss a little about the history of the topic, how it was understood till now, and a framework of what you are going to talk about ahead. You can think of your introduction as an extended form of the abstract. Since it is the first portion of your essay, it should paint a picture where the readers know exactly what’s ahead of them.

Pro Tip by Sociology Group: An apt introduction can be covered in 2 to 3 paragraphs (Look at the introduction on this article if you need proof).

Since your focus is on “food” and “diaspora”, your introductory paragraph can dwell into a little history of the relationship between the two and the importance of food in community building.]

This is the most extensive part of any essay. It is also the one that takes up the most number of words. All the research and note-making which you did was for this part. The main body of your essay is where you put all the knowledge you gathered into words. When you are writing the body, your aim should be to make it flow, which means that all paragraphs should have a connection between them. When read in its entirety, the paragraphs should sing together rather than float all around.

The main body is mostly around 4 to 6 paragraphs long. A sociological essay is filled with debates, theories, theorists, and examples. When writing the main body it is best to target making one or two paragraphs about the same revolving theme. When you shift to the other theme, it is best to connect it with the theme you discussed in the paragraph right above it to form a connection between the two. If you are dividing your essay into various sub-themes then the best way to correlate them is starting each new subtheme by reflecting on the last main arguments presented in the theme before it. To make a sociological essay even more enriching, include examples that exemplify the theoretical concepts better.

Pro Tip by Sociology Group: Though there is no word limit to the length of the paragraphs, if you keep one paragraph between 100 to 200 words, it makes the essay look more organized.

The main body can here be divided into the categories which you formed during the first step of making the rough outline. Therefore, your essay could have 3 to 4 sub-sections discussing different themes such as: Food and Media, Caste and Class influence food practices, Politics of Food, Gendered Lens, etc.]

This is the section where you end your essay. But ending the essay does not mean that you lose your flair in conclusion. A conclusion is an essential part of any essay because it sums up everything you just wrote. Your conclusion should be similar to a summary of your essay. You can include shortened versions of the various arguments you have referred to above in the main body, or it can raise questions for further research, and it can also provide solutions if your topic seeks one. Hence, a conclusion is a part where you get the last chance to tell your reader what you are saying through your article.

Pro Tip by Sociology Group: As the introduction, the conclusion is smaller compared to the main body. Keep your conclusion within the range of 1 to 2 paragraphs.

Your conclusion should again reiterate all the main arguments provided by you throughout the essay. Therefore it should bind together everything you have written starting from your introduction to all the debates and examples you have cited.]

Step 6: Citation and Referencing

This is the most academic part of your sociological essay. Any academic essay should be free of plagiarism. But how can one avoid plagiarism when their essay is based on research which was originally done by others. The solution for this is to give credit to the original author for their work. In the world of academia, this is done through the processes of Citation and Referencing (sometimes also called Bibliography). Citation is done within/in-between the text, where you directly or indirectly quote the original text. Whereas, Referencing or Bibliography is done at the end of an essay where you give resources of the books or articles which you have quoted in your essay at various points. Both these processes are done so that the reader can search beyond your essay to get a better grasp of the topic.

There are many different styles of citations and you can determine which you want to follow. Some of the most common styles of citation and referencing are MLA, APA, and Chicago style. If you are working on Google Docs or Word then the application makes your work easier because they help you curate your citations. There are also various online tools that can make citing references far easier, faster, and adhering to citation guidelines, such as an APA generator. This can save you a lot of time when it comes to referencing, and makes the task far more manageable.

How to add citations in Google Doc: Tools → Citation

How to add citations in Word Document: References → Insert Citations

But for those who want to cite manually, this is the basic format to follow:

Author’s Name with Surname mentioned first, then initials
Article’s Title in single or double quotes
Journal Title in Italics
Volume, issue number
Year of Publication

Example: Syrkin, A. 1984. “Notes on the Buddha’s Threats in the Dīgha Nikāya ”, Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies , vol. 7(1), pp.147-58.

Pro Tip by Sociology Group: Always make sure that your Bibliography/References are alphabetically ordered based on the first alphabet of the surname of the author and NOT numbered or bulleted.

Phase III: Editing

Step 7: edit/review your essay.

The truth of academic writing is that it can never be written in one go. You need to write, rewrite, and revisit your material more than once. Once you have written the first draft of your essay, do not revise it immediately. Leave it for some time, at least for four hours. Then revisit your essay and edit it based on 3 criteria. The first criteria you need to recheck for is any grammatical and/or spelling mistakes. The second criteria are to check the arguments you have posed and if the examples you have cited correlate or not. The final criteria are to read the essay as a reader and read it objectively.

Pro Tip by Sociology Group: The more you edit the better results you get. But we think that your 3rd draft is the magic draft. Draft 1: rough essay, Draft 2: edited essay, Draft 3: final essay.

Hello! Eiti is a budding sociologist whose passion lies in reading, researching, and writing. She thrives on coffee, to-do lists, deadlines, and organization. Eiti's primary interest areas encompass food, gender, and academia.

ReviseSociology

A level sociology revision – education, families, research methods, crime and deviance and more!

The Marxist Perspective on The Family

Engels believed the nuclear family emerged with capitalism and private property, contemporary Marxists argue the family performs ideological functions.

Table of Contents

Last Updated on October 4, 2023 by Karl Thompson

Marxists argue that the nuclear family performs ideological functions for Capitalism – the family acts as a unit of consumption and teaches passive acceptance of hierarchy. It is also the institution through which the wealthy pass down their private property to their children, thus reproducing class inequality.

The Marxist Perspective on the Family an Overview:

We start with an overview of the Marxist perspective in general
Engel’s theory of the emergence of the nuclear family
The family as an ideological apparatus
The family as a unit of consumption
Criticisms of the Marxist view of the family.

This post has been written primarily for students studying the families and household option as part of A-level sociology.

Before reading this post, you might like to look at this summary of the key ideas of Marxism .

Overview of the Marxist Perspective

Marxism is a ‘structural conflict’ perspective. They see society as structured along class lines with institutions generally working in the interests of the small elite class who have economic power (the ‘Bourgeoisie’) and the much larger working class (the ‘Proletariat’). The Bourgeoise gain their wealth from exploiting the proletariat. There is thus a conflict of interests between the Bourgeoise and the Proletariat.

However, this conflict of interests rarely boils over into revolution because institutions such as the family perform the function of ‘ideological control’, or convincing the masses that the present unequal system is inevitable, natural and good.

Something else Marxists suggest about the family (like the Functional Fit theory ) is that the family type generally changes with society – more specifically, the nuclear family emerges not because of the needs of industrialisation, but because of the needs of the capitalist system.

Engels – The Emergence of the Nuclear Family

According to Engels, the monogamous nuclear family only emerged with Capitalism. Before Capitalism, traditional, tribal societies were classless and they practised a form of ‘primitive communism’ in which there was no private property. In such societies, property was collectively owned, and the family structure reflected this – there were no families as such, but tribal groups existed in a kind of ‘promiscuous horde’ in which there were no restrictions on sexual relationships.

However, with the emergence of Capitalism in the 18th Century, society and the family changed. Capitalism is based on a system of private ownership – The bourgeois use their own personal wealth to personally invest in businesses in order to make a profit, they don’t invest for the benefit of everyone else.

Eventually the Bourgeois started to look for ways to pass on their wealth to the next generation, rather than having it shared out amongst the masses, and this is where the monogamous nuclear family comes from. It is the best way of guaranteeing that you are passing on your property to your son, because in a monogamous relationship you have a clear idea of who your own children are.

Ultimately what this arrangement does is to reproduce inequality – The children of the rich grow up into wealth, while the children of the poor remain poor. Thus the nuclear family benefits the Bourgeois more than the proletariat.

Criticisms of Engels

Gender inequality clearly preceded Capitalism….. The vast majority of tribes in Africa and Asia are patriarchal, with women being barred from owning property, having no political power, and having to do most of the child care and hard physical labour.

Wealthy Capitalist economies such as the UK and USA have seen the fastest improvements in gender equality over the last 100 years. Capitalism, increasing wealth and gender equality within a nation seem to be correlated.

The family as an Ideological Apparatus

The modern nuclear family functions to promote values that ensure the reproduction and maintenance of capitalism. The family is described as an ideological apparatus – this means it socialises people to think in a way that justifies inequality and encourages people to accept the capitalist system as fair, natural and unchangeable.

One way in which this happens is that there is a hierarchy in most families which teaches children to accept there will always be someone in “authority” who they must obey, which then mirrors the hierarchy of boss-worker in paid employment in later life.

The Family as a Unit of Consumption

Capitalists/business owners want to keep workers’ wages down so they can make a profit, but to do so they must also be able to sell the workers goods i.e. they must create demand for their products. The family builds demand for goods in a number of ways

1) Families must keep up with the material goods/services acquired by their neighbours and peers e.g. family holidays, cars – this is known “Keeping up with the Joneses”. There are significant amounts of advertising and TV programmes influencing parents in this way.

2) The media and companies target children in their advertising who then persuade their parents through pester power to buy more expensive items. This is particularly bad in the UK where there few legal restrictions on adverts aimed at children; in Sweden advertising aimed at children under 12 is illegal.

Overall Criticisms of Marxism

It’s too deterministic – it assumes people passively accept socialisation and family life, and that the future is pre-determined. There are plenty of families who reject the consumerist lifestyle and many families bring their children up to be independent thinkers.
The Marxist perspective ignores family diversity in capitalist society, the nuclear family is no longer the main type of family. In fact, family breakdown may be better for Capitalism – as divorce is expensive and more money has to be spent on maintaining family relationships and later on forming new families.
Feminists argue that the Marxist focus on social class inequalities downplays the role of patriarchy , which is the real source of female oppression. Feminists would point out that sex inequalities exist within all families, irrespective of social class background.
Marxism ignores the benefits of nuclear family e.g. both parents support the children. The New Right point out that this is the most functional type of environment in which to raise children, and the nuclear family is found in most societies around the world, suggesting it is something people choose.

A Level Sociology Families and Households Revision Bundle

If you like this sort of thing, then you might like my Sociology Families and Households Revision Bundle

The bundle contains the following:

50 pages of revision notes covering all of the sub-topics within families and households
mind maps in pdf and png format – 9 in total, covering perspectives on the family
short answer exam practice questions and exemplar answers – 3 examples of the 10 mark, ‘outline and explain’ question.
9 essays/ essay plans spanning all the topics within the families and households topic.

Signposting and Related Posts

The Marxist perspective on the family is normally taught after the Functionalist perspective on the Family, and is normally the second of five perspectives on the family within the families and households module in A-level sociology.

Essay plan on the Marxist perspective on the family

Marxist Feminist Perspectives on the Family

Feminist Perspectives on the Family

5 thoughts on “The Marxist Perspective on The Family”

Worth noting that Capitalist power structures and labour relations are foreign concepts to early humans, so it reproducing capitalist power structures are necessary in order to hijack one’s human nature per se (pre-agricultural societies were largely collective), therefore rationalizing it or conditioning consumers.

Hi does anyone knows how to refer this website in Harvard system. I can’t find the author.

I was wondering if you have a list of your sources on this subject as well as the subject of Marxist Sociology in general. I am doing a research project for my high school sociology course, and would like to learn more about this subject.

“Ignores family diversity in capitalist society, and that many women now work full time as well” and “Marxism ignore the benefits of nuclear family e.g. both parents support the children”

disprove each other, how do parents support the children in teaching them right and wrong if both parents are working full time? How do the parents talk to them about life, and take them to the park to play?

“Feminists argue that the Marxist focus on class ignores the inequalities between men and women, which is the real source of female oppression.”

This is a complete mischaracterization of Marxism. Marxism asserts that workers cannot unite if they are divided, and he talks in great deal about the plight of women.

http://monthlyreview.org/2014/06/01/marx-on-gender-and-the-family-a-summary/

Here is also commentary on his ideas and cites the mentioned texts.

well thanks info is quite simple but qualitative

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Psychology Discussion

Essay on family: definition, function, social systems and changes | psychology.

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Essay on ‘Family’ for class 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12. Find paragraphs, long and short essays on ‘Family’ especially written for school and college students.

Essay on Family

Essay # 1. definition of family:.

It is a well-known fact that family is found everywhere and it is concomitant with group life. Society and State derive from a circle of intermarrying families banded together to satisfy their basic needs. Sociologically and historically, the family may be viewed as a group consisting of two or more parents and their children.

Such a view suggests itself because there have been great variations in the number of parties entering into the marriage union. Although the family is universal, no particular form of it is primary or inevitable. Like all other institutions, it is a social product subject to change and modification.

In response to varying conditions, different forms of the family have appeared from time to time. But in the present day world Patriarchal family organised under the system of monogamy is most prevalent institution. In such a kill-group that it is both an association and institution and very essential to the life of society.

Essay # 2. Function of Family:

It is an open secret that family plays an important role in the life of society. There is no other human group that dominates the life of the individuals, more than family. It is in the light of this hard fact that, Maciver says, “Of all the organizations, large or small, which society unfolds, none transcends the family in the intensity of its sociological significance. It influences the whole life of society in innumerable ways, and its changes, reverberate through the whole social structure. It is capable of endless variation and yet reveals a remarkable continuity und persistence through change.”

The family occupies a vital place in the working of social order and it is so because it performs certain characteristically significant functions. Davis has characterized the main social functions of the family in four divisions. These are reproduction, maintenance, placement and socialization of the young. It also performs individual functions but these are the corollary of its social functions.

However, Davis has said, “From a sociological point of view we are mainly concerned with the social functions and consequently we stress the four functions mentioned here as being the core functions with which the family is always and everywhere concerned. There may be great variation from one society to another in the precise manner and degree of fulfilment of the functions, but the four mentioned above seem to be the ones which universally require a family organization.”

Lundberg has also mentioned a number of basic functions of the family. In them he has included the regulation of sexual behaviour and reproduction, care and training of children, co-operation and division of labour and primary group satisfactions. Besides, there are many auxiliary functions as well.

Maciver divides the functions of the family into two categories. They are the essential and non-essential functions of the family. Under the essential he includes three functions- (i) Stable satisfaction of sex need, (ii) Production and rearing of children, and (iii) Provision of a home. Under the nonessential functions he mentions religious, educational, economic, health and recreation, which he says have now been transferred to specialized agencies in society.

In short, the various functions of the family can be mentioned in the following way:

1. Essential Functions of Family:

The essential functions of the family are those functions, which it has to perform exclusively. They can neither be shared with any other group nor can they be delegated to any other association. They are the functions, which in every age and in any form the family must perform and there can be no deviation from them.

Some of them are:

(i) Satisfaction of sex need

(ii) Provision of a home

(iii) Production and rearing of children.

They are in a way the primary functions of the family, for the doing of which some sort of family group has ever to remain in existence.

This fact is aptly testified by Reuben Hill in these words, “Family life is probably more than a social habit. The family may be viewed as a device for solving certain fundamental problem, which must be faced by any group of people who live and work together in a society. As a problem-solving device it has simplified the social life of many of its members. Through it sex partners are sorted out and their sex drives are harnessed and linked with the love sentiments to weld together conjugal units into which children can be born, cared for and reared to adulthood. Within it all the basic elemental needs are met and kept from becoming individual problems, which if left unsolved might demand collective action. It simplifies life to live in a family and that is true for adults as well as for children. Certain basic needs of affection, intimate response, recognition, personality, expression, growth and security are met through the family which are not met satisfactorily elsewhere.”

In view of these facts the important essential functions of the family can be explained in some detail in the following manner:

(i) Satisfaction of Sex Need:

This is the first essential function, which the family performs. Satisfaction of sex instinct brings the desire for life-long partnership among male and female. The satisfaction of sex instinct makes for normal personality. If sex instinct is suppressed, it may produce personality maladjustments and disrupt social relations.

The modern family can satisfy this instinct in greater degree and in a better way than the traditional family. In the old family the sexual act was combined with reproduction and the fear of pregnancy as a result of intercourse prevented the couple to satisfy their sex urge. But in modern family the task of sexual satisfaction has been eased by the invention of contraceptives and other methods of birth-control.

It has now become a primary function of the modern family. According to Reed, “The fundamental function of the family is to regulate and gratify sexual needs. Manu accepts sexual satisfaction besides production as the aim of family. Vatsyayan also regards sexual satisfaction as the primary objective of the family.

(ii) Provision of Home:

The desire for a home is a powerful incentive for men as well as women after marriage. Man after the hard toil of the day returns home where in the midst of his wife and children he sheds off his fatigue.

Though, in modern times there are hotels and clubs which also provide recreation to the man but the joy that a man feels within the congenial circle of women, parents and children stands far above the momentary pleasure, which is provided by club and hotel. In spite of these re-creative agencies the home is still the heaven and sanctuary where its members find comfort and affection.

(iii) Production and Rearing of Children:

The inevitable result of sexual satisfaction is procreation. The task on race perpetuation has always been an important function of the family. It is an institution par excellence for the production and rearing of children. The function of child-rearing is better performed today than in the past because now more skill and knowledge are devoted to the care of the unborn and new-born children.

The infant death rate has shown a market declare. In the achievement of this result specialized agencies like nursing child welfare centres have come to the aid of the family. A close study of the available statistical data reveals that the number of illegitimate children is falling down, the practice of prostitution is vanishing away and the number of marriages is increasing rapidly.

It is a pointer to the fact that the function of procreation of race is only performed through family. In most human societies of the world the child is believed to be the nucleus of the family. Procreation perpetuates the family. It increases the population of the country.

(iv) Protection and Care of the Young:

It is another essential function of the family and it may be said to be a corollary of its sexual and procreative functions. According to Groves the protection and care of children is one necessary function of the family. The human child is the most helpless and weak being. A family is needed in order to maintain its existence and to ensure its coordinated and balanced development.

Its balanced development is achieved with difficulty and that too with the care of the parents and other family members. It is right that in the modern age this function of the family is losing much of its past significance and it is being handed over to the subsidiary agencies. But all the same it still continues to be one of the essential functions of the family and the Indian families are particularly known for this function.

(v) Provision of Psychological Satisfaction and Security :

Another fundamental and universal function of the family is to meet the psychological needs of its members. Ogburn has included affectional functions in the necessary or vital functions of the family. According to Groves it is the functions of the family to provide opportunities for the establishment of intimate relations.

Burgess and Lock have written, “Mutual affection is becoming the essential basis of marriage and family:” The individual receives affection, sympathy, love and psychological security in the family. The relations between man and woman in the family are not exclusively physical. Profound conjugal affection for each other is generated in husband and wife by working together in the family and by sharing each other’s joys and sorrows.

An all-around development of individual is not possible in the absence of family love. The family has an important part to play especially in the development of the child’s personality. Ralph Linton has written that merely the satisfaction of bodily needs is not sufficient for the proper development of the infant.

2. Non-Essential Functions of the Family :

The non-essential functions of the family are those functions which it performed in the traditional society but which it is giving up one by one in the modern times. These functions are being either delegated to the subsidiary agencies or they can be shared with other groups.

They are no longer the exclusive function of the family but still in some societies the family is associated with them in some form or the other. The Indian society is one such example where the family despite so many modifications and being placed under limits has been laying its claims on the so-called non-essential functions along with the essential functions.

Some of the nonessential functions of the family can be enumerated in the following order:

i. An Economic Unit:

A very important non-essential function of the family is that it serves as an economic unit. In the traditional family most of the goods for consumption were made at home. The members of the family were all engaged in the family occupation. The ancient Hindu joint family served as a sort of mutual insurance society. It was a unit of production and the centre of economic activities.

However, in the present time the importance of family as an economic unit has been lessened because most of its economic activities have been taken over by some outside agencies. The members of the modern family do not work together as they did in the old family.

They are engaged in different activities outside the come. Moreover the family has not even remained the unit of production as most the goods for consumption including even the food are purchased ready-made from the market.

But with all these shifts in the family as an economic unit, it has not been reduced to a passive body. This is to say that the old pattern has not been destroyed, it has been merely changed. In the family one or the other profession is still carried on though of a different sort and in a different atmosphere. In the West the family might have lost much of its role as an economic unit but in India it still to a certain extent continues to perform this traditional function.

ii. Centre of Religious Activities:

Another non-essential function, which the family performs is of a religious character. It is a centre for the religious training of the children who learn from their parents various religious virtues. In the old family, different religious practices like idol worship, yagya, religious discourses and sermons by pandits were carried on which made the outlook of the children religious in India. The modern family, however, does not observe religious practices and has become secular in outlook.

iii. Centre of Education:

One more function performed in the family is the education of children. The family is an important education agency. The child learns the first letters under the guidance of parents though today he learns them in a nursery-school. The traditional family was the centre of vocational education because the children from the early childhood were associated with the family task.

The modern family has delegated the task of vocational education to technical institutes and colleges. But despite all this the role of the family as a center of education has not vanished completely and in a somewhat modified form it still continues to perform some of the educational functions.

For instance, it is even now in and through family that the people learn their social habits and moral virtues. It is in no way an in significant function for which the Indian families are conspicuously known and popular.

iv. Guardian of Culture:

The family keeps the culture of society, alive. It moulds its members according to the social culture. The children are educated in the various aspects of culture from their infancy. The family creates such an environment for them that they learn to live and behave in acccordance with their culture.

The elderly members of the family impart training in matters of conduct, thinking religion and ethics etc. to the children. The family is aptly described as the maker and guardian of Culture.

v. Centre of Recreation:

The old family provided recreation to its members. They used to sing and dance together and visit the family relations. In modern times family relationship is individual rather than collective. The present forms of recreation such as bridge tennis carrom and movies, provide for only individual or couple participation.

Moreover, recreation is now had in club or hotel rather than in home. In this way> there has also occurred a shift in the recreational functions of-the family. However, it needs be said that in countries like India having close ties of ancient culture the family is still acting as a centre of recreation at least in the rural areas.

It is clear from the foregoing facts that there has come about a great change in the functions of the family whereas about a hundred years back the family was more of a community, it has become today more of an association. The very importance of the family has been loosened. It is no longer a home for recreation of its members, a school of education for children or a centre for their religious training.

Many family duties, which were performed formerly by the parents have now been transferred to external agencies. The functions of a modern family are very much limited both in their number and extent. Even the task of procreation has suffered a setback. Of course the task of satisfaction of sex need is better performed, by modern family.

In short, the family has lost some of its former functions. It is to be, however, remembered that though there is a loss of functions the family is not going to perish. There are certain functions for this performance of which no human society can do without family. Thus it may be said in the end that despite its structural and functional changes, the family still plays a significant role in social strength and social solidarity.

Essay # 3. Family as a Social System:

It is customary to regard family as a social system. In fact there are many kinds of social systems and these are composed of variety of elements. So far as family is concerned, it fulfils many of the conditions, which go to make it a social system. It is for this reason that family is characterised as being a perfect social system and this notion fully holds good at least in the case of joint family.

Defining social system Talcott Parsons writes, “The social system is composed of the patterned interaction of members. It consists of interaction of a plurality of individual actors, whose relations to each other are mutually oriented through the definition and mediation of a pattern of structured and shared symbols and expectations.”

Similarly C.P. Loomis is also of the opinion, “Sociologists frame of reference is inter action, characterised by patterned social relation that display in their uniformities social elements articulated by social processes, the dynamics of which account for the emergence, maintenance and change of social system.”

When these observations are applied on family, it becomes clear that the family is contained in a number of elements, which are found in every social system. These are some of those elements of which most family groups consist and on the basis of which family is entitled to be called a social system.

Every family consists of a number of persons and all of them have a certain status. This status of the members of a family is normally determined on the basis of age and sex. But sometimes learning and occupation also have some effect in this matter. The status of parents is always higher than that of the children.

Similarly in a family sons enjoy better status than daughters. Status helps in making gradation in the position of the different members of their family and their social relations are determined in accordance with their position.

Since father’s status in the family is the highest of all, he is authorised to perform all the family responsibilities. The eldest son being next in importance to his father automatically obtains the same position after his father’s death.

All the members of the family perform a certain role and it is by this means that the working of the family is made possible. The roles that the different persons perform are determined and conditioned by the status that they hold in the family. In fact every status has a correspondent role attached to it.

Role is the outward manifestation of the status and, thus both of them go together. Every member of the family while performing his role keeps in view his status in the family and does the things accordingly.

The role maintains the balance of status system and thereby keeps intact the structure of the family. Since, there are a variety of status differing from person to person, so there are a number of roles varying from person to person according to his status.

For Instance, the role of parents in the family is quite different from that of the children but it needs be said that the functioning of the family can go well only if all of its members perform their respective roles properly.

3. Privilege:

In a social system every unit is gifted with a certain kind of privileges. These privileges also go with the roles that they perform and the status that they hold in a social structure. It is through the enjoyment of privileges that a unit is enabled to do its responsibilities nicely under all circumstance. It is this element that gives stability and continuity to a social system. The same thing can be said in the case of family as well. The members of the family are always in the enjoyment of certain privileges according to their status. It is by the exercise of these privileges enjoyed by the members that structure and functioning of the family remain intact.

4. Necessities and Aims:

Every social system consists of the needs, aims and ends of the people. They are related to the level of cultural and economic progress of the society. Sometimes they are also concerned with the social development of the people. Men have some basic needs and the fulfilment of them is the chief aim of a social system. For realization of these aims a social system has to set before it its certain ideals and ends.

In this way needs and alms play a vital role in the efficient working of any social system. Family as a social system is concerned with fulfilling some-physical and social needs of the people. There are some basic needs like sex impulse, procreation of race and the provision of home, which cannot be met elsewhere except in the family.

These needs aim at ensuring good life to the people. It is right that in the modern times many of the functions of the family have been taken over by some other associations, but all the same there are some primary functions which must be performed in the family in all civilized societies.

5. Sanctions:

The sanctions determined by the social values and Ideals play in important part in the field of human conduct. The social sanctions make a distinction between what is right and what is wrong in the activities and behaviour of the individuals. Society permits its members to do certain things and forbids them to do others and thereby lays down a standard for the general conduct of its members.

The members are allowed to do only those things, which are beneficial for the life and stability of the social order. In this way sanctions also help a lot in the strengthening of a social system. They maintain discipline and orderly conditions in it. This element is found in abundance in the working of the family as well. There are some set rules and codes of behaviour which are binding on the members and which they cannot ignore easily.

Thus the family as a social system depends largely for its life and sound working on a set of rules, which operate in the form of social sanctions. The more active and forceful are these social sanctions, the more solid and the longer lasting will be the structure of the family. This is why in the past families were more integrated and well-disciplined because there was more force behind the social sanctions.

In every social system there exists a supreme power which acts as a controlling figure in it. It, on the one hand, resolves the conflicts of different units and on the other, keeps intact the unity of that social system. The family as a social system vests its supreme power in the father or husband who supervises and controls the activities of other members.

There can be no challenge or disobedience to the command of the head of the family. Only such families last long in which there is unity of command and a well-knit controlling power.

7. Ideal Principles:

The family, as a social system, derives its life out of the inter-relations and inter-actions of its members. Every member of the family has a special function to do and a particular role to play for its well-being. There is great need of making. It certain that all the members of the family do their part well. For this purpose there exists some ideal principles. These principles maintain solidarity and balance in the family. These principles are in the form on unwritten maxim and are based on common consent. They are so vital to the social life that they cannot be set aside easily and in their absence a good family life cannot be made possible.

8. Sentiments:

Sentiments occupy an important place in a social system. The sentiments especially influence collective life. It is under their influence that an individual gives preference to collective interest over his own individual gain. They develop general working patterns of different groups, which afford stability and uniformity to a social system.

Family as a social system gives expression to a number of sentiments. The chief among these are a sentiment of love, the sentiment of co-operation, sentiment of sympathy and the sentiment of respect. These sentiments form the be all and end all of family life.

Thus it is clear from the above facts that family is truly a social system because it contains most of the basic elements of a social system. It is right that in the modern times family is undergoing great changes. As a result of this fact it is feared that family may not lose in course of time, its character of being a social system.

But such doubts appear to be unfounded because there are so many elements of social system, which cannot vanish from family. Thus in the end it can be said that family is definitely a social system with this much exception that it has been more apparent in a joint family.

Essay # 4. Changes in the Modern Family:

It is a well-known fact that change is the Law of Nature. There is no human organisation on social institution which has remained uniform and static at all times and under all circumstances. It has to move and change with the changing conditions, or it is apt to become obsolete and go out of existence. This rule is fully applicable on the age-old institution of family as well. The family as it is now is much different from what it was a few generations ago.

Several changes have taken place in its nature and structure with the result that it has undergone an overall transformation. Whereas about a century back the family was more of a community, it has become today more of an association.

According to Ogburn and Nimcoff, “The family has changed a good deal in the past and has assumed many different forms and functions. The family has proved to be a very resilient and flexible institution. Despite radical changes in form and function, the family has continued to exist in every society known to us.”

It points to the fact that in the recent times many changes have occurred in the family and some of them may briefly be mentioned here.

Referring to some of the changes occurred in the modern family and the forces bringing about them Davis writes, “Modern civilization characterized by an elaborate industrial technology, a high degree of urbanization, and a great amount of geographical and social ability, has sheered away the extended kingship bonds. The role effective kinship group is now the immediate family and even this unit has lost in size and function. True, the immediate family has gamed in importance by being freed from the control of extended kindred, but it has declined in importance in other ways.”

It is clear from this statement that in the modern time a large number of changes have occurred in the organization and working have the family and several factors has been operating to bring about these changes.

Some of the more important changes in family life need be mentioned here in order to reveal its present position:

(i) To begin with, the joint family system is declining and in its place single-family system is coming into prominence. Unlike the large family of traditional society the modern families are small in size. They consist of the husband, wife and their minor children. This is of course the first and the fundamental change that has occurred in the structure of family.

(ii) In the modern time there has occurred a change in the mutual relation of parents and children. The control of parents over their children has lessened a great deal and now the family discipline is not as tight as it was in the ancient families. The children have become less obedient to their parents and they are very particular about their freedoms and rights.

(iii) There has taken place a change in the mutual relation of husband and wife in the family. Unlike old times women have become independent and self-reliant in many ways. Now that the women have gamed equal fights with men, their mutual relationship has undergone much change. Mowrer has correctly written of modern woman that ‘she is no longer the drudge and slave of other days.’

(iv) The modern family is no longer a permanent association. It is precarious and can be rendered void at any time. Marriage has been reduced to a mere social contract, which it is not difficult to break in the event of even the slightest friction. According to Maciver, “The Modern family in comparison with the ancient and medieval families is very weak and unstable.”

(v) There has come about a good deal of change in the extent of family functions. Many of the functions which family performed previously are no longer under its care. They have been transferred to several external agencies. The family has ceased to be an economic as well as social unit. When compared with the family of medieval times, the functions of the modern family are few. All but gone are its economic educational, religious and protective functions. They have been transferred to the State, the church, the school, and industry.

(vi) The modern family is under less religious control. It has been replaced by legal control. With the decline of the Influence of religion the family morals have also become comparatively loose. The modern family has become secular in outlook and it has given up many of its religious activities.

(vii) The rigidity traditionally associated with marital and sexual relationships no longer characterizes the modern family. The use of contraceptive and means of birth control has rendered the size of the family very small. There is not much affinity among the blood relations of the family. In this way the relations in the family have become more formal and mechanical in Nature.

(viii) The family seems to be coming on the verge of disorganization. The number of divorces is on the increase. The control, which the family exercises over the individual is being lessened rapidly. Thus the family has undergone a good deal of transformation in the present century.

Factors Responsible for Changes in the Family :

It is clear from the foregoing facts that a large number of changes have occurred in the structure of family. This process has not completed yet and is liable to continue till indefinitely even in the unknown future. There is not one but many factors which are working at the root of all these changes.

Referring to some of these factors Jay Rumney and Joseph Maier write, “The modern family which is still essentially patriarchal in character has been shorn of much of its power. The State is tending to become a super-parent, having arrogated to itself much of the patriarch’s authority. Profound economic changes since the Industrial Revolution have deprived the family of its economic functions as a unit of production. It is now mainly a unit of consumption. The new economy, requiring the use of womanpower opened up new occupations to women, they became economically in dependent of their husbands. The political and economic emancipation of woman as well as periods of prolonged unemployment undermined the authority of the father, especially if his earnings were surpassed by those of his wife and children. A new morality emerged in conflict with the traditional moral standards. Large families became rare. Urbanization led to a wide dissemination of contraceptive knowledge. The small independent if it, consisting of parents and one or two offspring became the rule.”

Thus, lit short, some of the causes and factors of family changes may be explained in the following order:

1. Impact of Industrialization:

The first important factor bringing about changes in the structure of family has been the force of industrialization. The Industrial Revolution substituted the power machine for the manual tool. As new techniques of production advanced they shelved the old family of its economic functions. New factories with heavy machines have been set up which have taken both the work and the workers out of the family.

Now cloth is produced not on the family handloom but in the textile mill. Thousands of workers who are drawn out of home are required to work in the factory. Not only males but females also have begun to go to the factory for work. The work of women has become specialized like that of men. They instead of being busy with the multifarious tasks of the family have started going to workshops and factories for work.

As a result of it women have become as good the earning members of the family as men. This earning power of the women has made them free from dependence on men. In this way industrialization has greatly affected the character of modern family. As Maciver says, ” The family has changed from a production to consumption unit.”

2. Decline of Religious Control:

The modern family has become secular in its outlook because of the decline of the force of religions. Marriage has become a civil contract rather than a religious sacrament. It can be broken at any time. The authority of religion over the conditions of marriage and divorce has suffered a great decline.

Divorce is a frequent occurrence in modern family while in traditional family it was a rare phenomenon. Religion has been a great uniting and solidifying factor in the, family. And with the loss of its force the family is bound to undergo disintegration.

3. Effect of Urbanism:

An inevitable result of industrialization has been the, growth of urbanism. Urbanism has materially affected not merely the size of the home but also the essentials of the family life. It has substituted legal controls for informal controls and has brought the family into competition with specialized agencies. The result is that many of the family functions have been taken over by the external agencies.

For example, the educational, health and recreational functions of the family are now performed by schools, hospitals and recreational centres respectively. Under the joint force of industrialization and urbanization the family has ceased to be a social as well as economic unit. The joint family system is vanishing and in its place the single-family system is becoming the order of the day. It has even affected the mutual relations of the different members of the family.

To quote Davis,” It has forced individuals to co-operate with countless person who are not kinsmen. It has also encouraged them to join special interest groups thus drawing them out of the unspecialized and heterogeneous family with its wide sex and age differences.” In this way urbanism and industrialization have caused considerable modifications in the structure of family.

4. Effect of Changing Mores:

The mores concerning family life are constantly changing and this factor has. Also greatly affected the organization of family. Now the mutual relations of different members of the family have undergone remarkable change and it is all the result of changing mores. According to Maciver and Page “The basis of husband wife relationship in the family is no longer domination but cooperation”.

Previously everywhere, the wife was dominated by the husband and so the family stability survived because of the unity of command. But with the removal of this dominance the family organization has been exposed to powerful perils. Thus as a result of all these factors the family organization is not stable and it is undergoing quick modifications. But notwithstanding all these facts the family still continues to be a strategic social Institution.

5. Social Mobility:

The critics are of the opinion that social mobility has cut still deeper into the family organization. In so far as individuals improve their class status by virtue of their own achievement rather than by birth, an intrinsic function of the family is lost to it.

In this connection Davis writes, “In a completely open society where all vertical positions were filled purely by individual accomplishment, there could scarcely be a family organization; each family member would tend to find himself in a different. Social stratum, from the others, and the invidious sentiments thus brought into the family circle would prove incompatible with family sentiment.”

The organizations of the family can remain intact only if its members feel dependent on it for their personal advance in life. If this requirement is fulfilled by some external factors, it adversely affects the family organization. This is exactly what is happening in the present society, people do not feel themselves so much. Attached to family because so many external factors are on their disposal to help them in their individual development.

Essay # 5. Sociology Significance of the Family:

The family is by far the most important primary group in society. Historically it has been transformed from a more or less self-contained unity into a definite and limited organization of minimum size, consisting primarily of the original contracting parties: On the other hand it continues to serve as a total community for the lives born within it, gradually relinquishing this character as they grow toward adulthood. The family more profoundly than any other organization, exists only as a process.

Referring to the sociological of the family Maciver and Page opine, “Of all the organizations, large or small, which society unfolds, none transcends the family in the intensity of its sociological significance. It influences the whole life of society in innumerable ways, and its changes reverberate through the whole social structure. It is capable of endless variation and yet reveals a remarkable continuity and persistence through change”.

Thus, in short, family is the first and foremost organ of society and this fact can be proved by the following arguments:

1. Universal in Character:

The family is the most nearly universal of all social forms. It is found in all societies, at all stages of social development, and exists far below the human level, among a myriad species of animals. Almost every human being is or has been a member of some family. There is no other social group that can equal family in this matter.

2. Formative Influence:

Family is also significant because it exerts the profoundest formative influence on the life of the individuals. It is the earliest social environment of man’s life and plays a vital role in moulding it. No other organization can compete with family in this respect. According to Maciver, “In particular it moulds the character of the individual by the impression both of organic and of mental habits”.

Its influence in infancy determines the personality structure of the individual. It is largely from his parents that the child receives his physical inheritance and mental training, on the basis of which he leads the whole of his life. It is well-said by a critic, “To be well-born is to possess the greatest of all gifts. To be ill-born there is nothing which this world can afford that will be adequate compensation for the lack of good heredity.” Thus family has come to surpass all other social organizations in the matter of formative influence on human personality.

3. Nuclear Position in the Social Structure:

Family is the nucleus of all the social organizations. Frequently in the simpler societies, as well as in the more advanced types of patriarchal society the whole social structure is built of family units. Only in the higher complex civilizations does the family cease to fulfill this function, but even in them the local community, as well as its divisions of social classes tends to remain unions of families. One of the first definitions ever given of a community made it “a union of families” and for the local community the definition, with some qualification, still holds today.

4. Performance of Basic Functions:

The significance of the family as a social institution may be measured by the number of basic functions it performs. Compared with the family of medieval times, the functions of the modern family are few. All but gone are its economic, educational, religious and protective functions. They have been transferred to the State, the church, the school and industry. Notwithstanding the loss of functions, the family remains a strategic social institution. It is our parents that first cure us of our natural wildness, and break in us the spirit of independency we are all born with.

It is to them that we owe the first rudiments of our submission and to the honour and deference which children pay to parents all societies are obliged for the principle of human obedience, writes Mandeville.

In addition to performing this all-important function of socializing the individual, the family regulates sexual relationships, provides for the affectional needs of its members, makes possible the prolonged care, which children require and transmits the values of the culture.

It remains a powerful agent of social and political control and economic differentiation. Children generally stay in the social class to which their parents belonged. They inherit both the property and the cultural advantages, which its possession offers.

5. Proper Organization of Society Dependent upon Family:

Proper social organization largely depends upon sound organization of families. If in a particular society families disintegrate, that society can never be safe and sooner or later it is found to meet its doom. This is why at all times one major cause of social disorganization has been family disorganization.

Families develop the characters of the members of the society. In the opinion of ADLER, a man’s role in the family determines his role in society. There is no exaggeration in calling family a cornerstone of society.

6. An Important Agency of Social Control:

Family is an important agency of social control. Family controls sex passions in society. A strict control over sex relationships is necessary for maintaining the order otherwise society will disintegrate. In all cultures, family exercises some degree of control over the unmarried members from falling into bad habits.

No parents would like their children to adopt the career of crime. The children under the influence of their parents drop bad habits and learn good habits. In the making of great men families have always played a major role. In this way the making of a good citizen in society depends upon the parents.

7. Family is the Conveyer of Culture:

The family not only moulds character and personality of the individuals, but it also imparts its culture to them. It is while living in the family that the child acquires knowledge about the culture of society. It is an efficient vehicle for the transmission of culture from one generation to another. It is a very good socializing agency that makes the people social and cultured beings.

According to Deway and Tufts, “The family is a social agency for the education and protection of the race.” It is through family that the individuals come to know the customs, traditions, social values and cultural background of their community. Family provides them knowledge and understanding of the past or d thereby prepares them to live well in the future. Thus in all these ways family plays a vital role in the field of preservation and transmission of social culture.

8. Family is Vital to the Process of Socialization :

Another point of significance of family is that it plays a vital role in the process of socialization of the individuals. Merrill is of the opinion that family is an enduring association of parent and offspring whose primary functions are the socialization of the child and the satisfaction of the members.

It is in the family that child learns all good and human qualities like sincerity, sympathy, self-submission, consciousness of responsibility and so forth. It is the character developed in the family, which helps the child in becoming an important and responsible member of society.

F. J. Wright was quite correct in saying that in every family, the child gets an opportunity for free expression of thoughts and developing his entire personality. It has been conclusively proved that the proper development of the child is impossible without a good environment in the family. The tendencies and habits, which he acquires in the family remain with him for the whole of his life.

It is in view of this fact that Freud says, “The view-point of a child towards the senior in the family determines his attitude and viewpoint towards the elders in society.” Thus it is obvious that ‘family is the cradle of social virtues and no other social group contributes more than family in the process of socializing the individuals. Confucius remarked quite correctly that if you want to improve society, improve its families. Society will improve automatically when the families improve.”

It is clear from the above account that family is the most important social institution. No other human organization can overshadow it in the matter of sociological significance. This fact is true not only from the structural view-point, but also from the functional stand-point.

There are some functions of the family, which no other group can undertake successfully. There are some clear uses of the family, which no one can derive from any other group. Without family the process of socialization would remain incomplete, the task of preserving and transmitting culture to posterity would be half done and there would be no organization to safeguard their social and cultural values. Its significance also lies in the fact of its being the oldest and universal human organization.

It is even the parent of society whose structure is raised on the foundations of family. If family were to vanish, it would expose the whole human race to the horrors of complete decay. The present changes in the family need not be taken to mean the signal of its possible downfall in the future; it is rather a process of its adjustment to the current needs and the changing times. Family in the past has remained an indispensable social system and it is sure to continue as such in the future as well.

Thus on account of its strategic position the family more than any other group exerts persistent, intimate and far reaching influence on the habits, attitudes and social experiences of the people. It plays the foremost role in the formation of personality. It occupies a key place in social organization.

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What Is The Importance Of Family In Modern Society?

With advancements in technology, changing cultural norms, new priorities, and advanced forms of communication fueled by the internet, you may wonder how family holds up in modern society. The concept of family is likely to continue to be essential for people from all walks of life, despite changing beliefs and customs. Research often demonstrates the importance of family for numerous areas of well-being . No matter how much life changes and the concept of family evolves, it may continue to benefit human health and wellness by offering a sense of belonging and support. If you’re experiencing family-related challenges, it can be helpful to speak to an objective person, such as a licensed therapist, for insight and guidance.

Its definition may evolve, but family may remain essential

The traditional definition of a "nuclear family" typically entailed one man and one woman who were married and had biological children. However, today’s families can be more inclusive and may look different than family stereotypes. Additionally, research usually labels many different types of families.

Benefits of a healthy family

As modern life can add pressure and stress, a healthy family dynamic can have multiple benefits, regardless of whether it's a biological family, adoptive family, or chosen family.

Helps you meet your basic needs

Many years ago, Abraham Maslow created the Hierarchy of Needs . At the bottom of this hierarchy are usually basic needs, including water, food, rest, and health. A family may provide these necessities, which can serve as building blocks for other needs.

Research also suggests that social connection can be considered a need, as it usually improves physical and mental health. Family may offer social connection in abundance.

Allows you to belong to something

A sense of belonging can come from the family, group, or community we belong to, and it can contribute to our emotional well-being by allowing us to feel connected socially.

Offers a built-in support system

Research shows that the support system families provide can have a profound impact throughout different stages of life. Difficult times are often inevitable, but a family may provide a sense of stability and connection that can make it easier to get through them.

Contributes to health

Children might experience a healthy lifestyle when they live in a healthy family. They may eat healthy meals, enjoy time outdoors, and get prompt medical attention when needed.

Health benefits can exist for parents in families, too. Research has shown that people with children in their families tend to live longer , even after the children have grown up and moved away.

Provides support when someone is ill

Facing medical problems alone can be challenging. A family may help alleviate this difficulty by offering support and assistance as you heal.

Offers community benefits

A strong family structure may reduce the likelihood of delinquency and crime. This can mean that the family unit may substantially impact an individual and their community.

Educates children

One way many parents contribute to society is by educating their children. Parents and caregivers often begin teaching children at a very young age. They may help them learn to walk and teach them new words as they develop their vocabulary and language skills. They also may teach them manners and take advantage of learning opportunities in everyday life.

Many parents also encourage scholarship opportunities, ethical behavior, and social skills that can benefit children throughout adolescence and into adulthood.

All families may struggle sometimes

Even though families can have benefits, they may face challenges at times. When it comes to overcoming the difficulties of family life, you might find support in your friends. You can also seek the help of a professional with training and experience in family dynamics.

Seeking help

Talking to a therapist may help you explore your feelings about family and learn to express those feelings openly. You may also learn to understand the family influences that shaped your personality.

Benefits of online therapy

Online therapy can be an easy and convenient way to receive insight and guidance from a licensed therapist. It can be helpful to vent to an objective person during therapy sessions, and you can attend these sessions from any location with an internet connection. With an online therapy platform, you can even seek out a therapist who specializes in helping their clients navigate family-related concerns.

Effectiveness of online therapy

Although more research may be needed regarding the efficacy of individual online therapy for addressing family-related challenges, a growing body of evidence generally supports the idea that online therapy can be just as effective as face-to-face therapy.

What is the importance of family in our life?

Family can often serve as a cornerstone of our emotional support system, playing a role in each individual's emotional health. This foundational element often sets the stage for future relationships and helps build self-esteem.

What is the importance of family to a person?

Family can provide unconditional love and emotional support, which are key factors in building an individual's self-esteem. These early relationships set the groundwork for personal relationships and adult life.

What are 10 important aspects of family in your life?

Emotional support: Family offers a safety net for emotional well-being.
Unconditional love: The love from family is often lifelong and uncompromising.
Moral and ethical guidance: Family serves as our first role model, teaching us social skills and crucial role values.
Financial support: Financial stability often starts with family support.
Educational support: Family’s involvement can positively impact academic performance.
Healthy families: A supportive family environment can contribute to healthy relationships.
Family traditions and history: Knowing your family history adds a sense of belonging.
Role models: Family provides the first role models in a child’s life.
Open communication: Communication within the family contributes to emotional health and strong personal relationships.
Sense of belonging: Family gatherings, such as family meals, add to the sense of community.

Why are family relationships among the most important we will ever have?

Family relationships can lay the foundation for how we manage future relationships. The skills learned in the family context are applied to personal relationships in adult life, playing an important role in our overall emotional well-being.

What is the most important value in your relationship as a family?

Important values, like unconditional love and open communication, can form the bedrock on which the emotional health of each individual in the family is built. These values often lead to a unified family, increasing senses of security, stability and support.

What is important in life, family or love?

Family often provides the first experience of unconditional love, and this foundational emotional support sets the tone for what we seek in other personal relationships throughout adult life.

Is having a family the most important thing?

Having a family often offers emotional support and unconditional love, serving as an individual’s foundational support system and playing a crucial role in emotional health. However, many aspects of life are important, and family is not necessarily more important than other relationships in your life.

Why is family more important than happiness?

Family often serves as a significant source of happiness, fulfilling our needs for emotional support and unconditional love.

What is the importance of family unity?

Family unity offers a conducive environment for emotional health and well-being. This unity is often fostered through open communication during family meals, contributing to each individual's ability to maintain relationships.

What brings unity to the family?

Common values and open communication are key factors that bring family unity. Family meals and traditions also play a part, serving as regular platforms for them to express emotional support and unconditional love.

What Is Family Support? Understanding Services Available To You Medically reviewed by Laura Angers Maddox , NCC, LPC
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Home / Essay Samples / Sociology

Essays on Sociology

Sociology is the study of human society and its structures, institutions, and interactions. Essays about sociology serve an essential purpose in examining and understanding the complexities of social behavior, cultural dynamics, and societal issues. Crafting essays on this topic contributes to broader discussions about the human experience, social change, and the impact of various factors on individuals and communities. One of the primary goals of essays about sociology is to analyze and interpret various social phenomena. These essays can explore topics such as social inequality, deviance, gender roles, family structures, and more. By examining these phenomena, readers gain insights into the underlying mechanisms that shape societies. Essays about sociology often delve into the cultural diversity that exists within societies. These essays can discuss the impact of cultural norms, values, and traditions on behavior, interactions, and societal norms. By studying cultural diversity, readers gain a deeper understanding of the complex tapestry of human societies. Societal institutions such as education, religion, government, and family play crucial roles in shaping behavior and interactions. Essays about sociology can examine how these institutions influence individuals’ lives, values, and opportunities, as well as their roles in maintaining social order.

Writing Tips for Sociology Essays:

Choose a Specific Focus: Narrow down your topic to a specific aspect of sociology that interests you, such as a particular social issue, theory, or phenomenon. Thesis Statement: Begin with a clear thesis that outlines the main argument or question you will address in your essay. Empirical Evidence: Support your arguments with relevant empirical evidence, data, case studies, and real-life examples. Contextualize Your Analysis: Situate your analysis within relevant historical, cultural, and societal contexts to provide a comprehensive understanding. Use Sociological Theories: Incorporate sociological theories to provide a theoretical framework for your analysis and interpretation. Critical Reflection: Engage in critical reflection and analysis of the implications of your findings for individuals and society. References: Properly cite sources using the appropriate citation style (e.g., ASA, APA) to give credit to authors and avoid plagiarism.

Essays about sociology serve as windows into the intricate web of human interactions, behavior, and societal structures. By crafting and studying these essays, readers can gain insights into the mechanisms that shape societies, the challenges they face, and the potential for positive change.

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Communication
Interpersonal Relationship
Race and Ethnicity
Sociological Theories
Millennial Generation
Social Justice
Observation
Discourse Community
Cultural Identity
American Identity
Social Class
Homosexuality
Masculinity
Animal Cruelty
Peer Pressure
Same Sex Marriage
Teacher-Student Relationships
American Dream
Racial Profiling
Cultural Diversity
Native American
Citizenship
Cultural Relativism
Intersectionality
National Honor Society
Stereotypes
Gender Roles
Sociological Imagination
Distracted Driving
Hierarchy of Power
Mass Hysteria
Adaptability
Cell Phones and Driving
Comparison of Racial Equality Movements
Deviant Behavior
Divorce Rate
Emile Durkheim
Gender Differences
Gender Performativity
Gender Stereotypes
Growing Gulf Between Rich and The Rest of Us
Human Evolution
Information Age
Mass Incarceration
Personal Qualities
Portrayal of People With Disabilities
Sects in Society
Sex, Gender and Sexuality
Social Care
Social Change
Social Darwinism
Social Death
Social Imagination
Social Networking
Social Norms
Social Observation Report
Social Research Methods
Social Stratification
Sociological Perspective
Thinking Sex
Untouchability in Nepal and India

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15.2 Sociological Perspectives on the Family

Social Functions of the Family

The Family and Conflict

Families and Social Interaction

Key Takeaways

For Your Review

Module 10: Marriage and Family

Diverse Family Units

First Families

Think It Over

Contribute!

11.3: Sociological Perspectives on the Family

Learning Objectives

Social Functions of the Family

The Family and Conflict

Families and Social Interaction

For Your Review

Sociological Perspectives on the Family

Social Functions of the Family

The Family and Conflict

Families and Social Interaction

Key Takeaways

For Your Review

Share This Book

Chapter 14. Marriage and Family

Introduction to Marriage and Family

Challenges Families Face

Marriage Patterns

One Partner or Many?

Residency and Lines of Descent

Stages of Family Life

Making Connections: Sociology in the Real World

Single Parents

Cohabitation

Same-Sex Couples

Staying Single

Making Connections: Sociological Research

Theoretical Perspectives on Marriage and Family

Functionalism

Critical Sociology

Symbolic Interactionism

Divorce and Remarriage

Children of Divorce and Remarriage

Violence and Abuse

Domestic Violence

Child Abuse and Corporal Punishment

Making Connections: Social Policy and Debate

Section Summary

Section Quiz

Short Answer

Further Research

Solutions to Section Quiz

Image Attribution

Share This Book

14.1 What Is Marriage? What Is a Family?

Challenges Families Face

Marriage Patterns

One Partner or Many?

Residency and Lines of Descent

Stages of Family Life

Sociology in the Real World

The Functionalist View of Family in Sociology

Overview of Functionalism

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