Family

The Family is one of society's main, and arguably most important, social insitutions as it serves to socialize individuals to be productive members of society.  We all look to our family for guidance, support, and a sense of belonging.  Family has been taken over from Roman world ‘fomulous’ meaning a servant. Broadly speaking, family refers to the group comprising parents, children and other kin connections based on either affinal or consanguineal relationship.

From a sociological perspective, the Family is not only viewed as an institution, but also as a social system and a social group. As with all institutions, the Family has within its boundaries a set of norms, values, statuses, and roles which are organized to meet specific goals for the overall society. 

As an institution, it represents a network of norms, values, statuses, and roles which are designed to guide sexual activity and other social relations.

As a social system, the family is viewed as an entity which consists of various interrelated parts (or statuses) that perform particular functions (roles).  Further, the family as a system is part of a larger system (society) and contributes to the functioning of society.  Within the family system, the statuses and roles interact with one another to form a system of relations amongst the members who hold a specific status and perform a specified role.

As a social group, the focus is on the individual members of the family in question.  What each person brings to the family and how each person contributes to the relationships with other individuals in the family determines the reality within each family.

Various definitions have been forwarded for clarifying the concept of family. Family being dynamic the dominant conceptions keep on changing. According to Maclver and Page, Family is a group defined by a sex relationship sufficiently precise and enduring to provide for the procreation and upbringing of children. Burgess and Locke defines as a group of persons united by the ties of marriage, blood or adoption; consisting a single household, interacting and intercommunication with each other in their respective social roles of husband and wife, mother and father, son and daughter, brother and sister creating a common culture. For Ogburn and Nimcoff, Family is more of less durable association of husband wife with or without children, or of a man or woman alone, with children. All these definitions point towards a very traditional conception of family.  Contemporary society is changing rapidly and we have seen many family forms increase in numbers and some relatively new forms emerge.  The "ideal image" of two biological parents and children living in harmony, as with most ideal types, does not present a very realistic framework for contemporary society.  There are growing numbers of so-called "variant family forms" throughout the world.  If we are to arrive at a more accurate analysis of the family, from a purely sociological standpoint, we must be willing to accept that the family has many forms, ranging from the two-parent family, single-parents, blended families, same-sex families, adoptive families, and the list goes on.  Presently , the definitions of family refers family to a collection of people, related to each other by marriage, ancestry, adoption, or affinity, who have a commitment to each other and a unique identity with each other.  The adults in the collection have varying degrees of responsibility for young members that might be a part of the collection.

Sociological studies have been concerned with various aspects like compositional, residential, relational, interactional and above all the functional aspect which has been the concern for a number of sociologists.

Society can survive only if it, through the organisation of activities, fulfills certain social functions. Hence any existent society will be found to possess an institutional structure through which its functions are performed. In the case of the family we have an institutional complex adapted to meeting the social need for continual replacement of the social membership. This replacement has several aspects. It involves the physical reproduction of new individuals, the nourishment and maintenance of these individuals during infancy and childhood, and the placement of these individuals in the system of social positions.

Functionalists argue that the family is a universal social institution. As a phenomenon so prevalent in the society, family fulfills some function, some of which are essential and some non-essential. It is argued that the non-essential functions are loosing importance in contemporary industrial societies because other institutions have been created to take over these tasks.

Essential

From a sociological point of view, the social functions, viz - reproduction, maintenance, placement, and socialization – are considered the core functions with which the family is always and every-where concerned. There may be great variation from one society to another in the precise manner and degree of fulfillment of these functions, but the four mentioned seem to be the ones which universally require a family organization.

At the manifest level, the family helps to meet the needs of the individuals who compose it. It contributes to the individual’s sexual gratification, psychic security, affection, guidance, etc. Its individual functions are a corollary of its societal functions.

All of these functions could be accomplished independently of one another. The fact that they are not performed separately but are accomplished by one and the same group means that this group, whatever its name, must have a peculiar, essential and precise structure.

G.P. Murdock‘s took a sample survey of 250 societies ranging from small hunting bands to the large-scale industrial societies. His study found that family’s structure would vary from society to society, though it was always present. He also found that the nuclear family was present in every society in his sample. This made him conclude that the nuclear family was a universal human social grouping. Murdock argues that family performs four basic functions in all societies: sexual, reproductive economic, and educational (socializing). Indeed, family alone does not perform these functions exclusively, but still it makes important contributions to them and there is no other institution to match this efficiency. T. Parsons claims that the American family retains the basic and irreducible functions of family primarily socialization of children and the stabilization of the adult personalities of the population of the society. Ogburn and Nimcoff have pointed following functions of family: a) Affect ional b) Economic c) Recreational d) Protective and e) Educational.

Non essential

Like any other organized group the family in any given society will be found to perform, at least in part, certain other social functions such as economic production, care of the aged, political control, and physical protection. But its role in performing these other functions is usually a by-product of its primary role of reproduction;

From the functional analysis, one can conclude that there are some peculiar features which a family must exhibit for the proper dispatch of essential functions. These are summarized as below

Firstly, it must, be a biological group because reproduction requires that there be sexual relationships between two members.

Secondly, It must, be a working group with economic solidarity and division of labor between the members, because the constant care and support of children is required.

Thirdly, it must be a homogenous group with common class sentiments. This is important for the proper survival of the group.

Fourthly, it must, be an intimate group having a common habitation, enduring character and emotional bondage. Only such a group can fulfill such demanding functions in which sustainability is required.

Thus, it could be no other kind of group that can perform these peculiar combinations of major functions.

The contemporary family has diverse forms. Gender roles are not simply biological or natural. Women’s status due to gender stereotyping remains low in society. The socialisation of children involves negotiation. That power relations between members are not always functional. While it is important to ask what might be the function of a particular institution, and why it is doing it, it becomes a circular argument if it is argued, as it often is, that since the family is a very common(some argue universal) it must therefore perform common functions. For example, there is no explanatory power to statements such as;

“Societies need to biologically reproduce and to satisfy the sexual needs of their members; the family provides the setting for biological reproduction and sexual satisfaction, therefore the family exists”.

This statement contains three problems:

Firstly, stated functions are necessary therefore the family in its present form is necessary. Although the theory does not preclude the possibility of alternative arrangements, in practice writers often assume this inevitability. (A slide into inevitability)

Secondly, where an institution defines a function and the function defines cause the institution. Whenever the function is not logically separate from the cause of the institution we get Illegitimate Teleology.

Thirdly, These types of account lean heavily on biological explanations. (Where is the sociology?)

Although on the basis of fact, the family is a universal social institution and is an inevitable part of human of society. But functional inevitability has been questioned by a number of studies.

Vogel and Bell argue that the tension and hostility of unresolved conflicts between parents are projected on to the child. The child is often used as an emotional scapegoat by the parents to relieve their tensions. Edmund Leach in a lecture titled “Runaway world, 1967”, Edmund Leach argues that the chief malady of the family is because of the isolation of the nuclear family from kin and wider community. Leach summarizes this situation and its consequences as follows: ‘in the past kinsfolk and neighbor gave the individual continuous moral support throughout his life. Today the domestic household is isolated. The family looks inward upon itself; there is an intensification of emotional stress between husband and wife and parents and children. The strain is greater than most of us can bear’. Thrown back almost entirely on its own resources, the nuclear family becomes like an overloaded electrical circuit. The demands made upon it are too great, and fuse blows. In their isolation, family members expect and demand too much from each other. The result is conflict. In Leach’s words: ‘The parents and children huddled together in their loneliness take too much out of each other. The parents fight, the children rebel.

R.D. Laing in his book “The politics of Family, 1976” Laing refers to the family group as a matrix. He argues that the highest concern of the nexus is reciprocal concern. Each partner is concerned about what the other thinks, feels, does’. Within the nexus there is a constant, unremitting demand for mutual concern and attention.  Laing argues, a family can act as gangsters, offering each other mutual protection against each other’s violence’. According to Laing, Family is the root of all problems in society. Some families live in perpetual anxiety of an external persecuting world. The members of the family live in a family ghetto, as it were. Moreover, the most dangerous feature of family is the inculcation of obedience in the minds of siblings. Later in life they become soldiers and officials blindly and unquestionably following orders

David Cooper, 1972 pronounces the death of family. He too maintains that the child is destroyed by family since he is primarily taught how to submit to society for the sake of survival. Each child has the potential to be an artist, a visionary, and a revolutionary; but this potential is crushed in the family. The children are taught to play the roles of son and daughter, male and female. Such roles are constructing. In the language of David Cooper. “The family is an ideological conditioning device in an exploitative society”. A similar point is made by Diane Feeley (1972), who argues that the structure of family relationships socializes the young to accept their place in a class stratified society. Feeley claims that the family with its ‘authoritarian ideology is designed to teach passivity, not rebellion’.

Another critique of the institution of family is given by the Marxists. This view of Engels was further examined in the 60s and 70s by several feminist writers. According to them family is seen as a unit which produces one of the basic commodities of capitalism, labour.  It is cheap for capitalists because they do not have to pay for the production of children or their upkeep. The wife is paid nothing for producing and rearing children. In the words of Margaret Benston “An economic unit, the nuclear family is a variable stabilizing force in the capitalist society. Since the production which is done in the home is paid for by the husband - father’s earnings, his ability to withhold labour from the market is much reduced”. Marxists such as Zaretsky has acknowledged that women are exploited in marriage and family life but they have emphasized the relationship between capitalism and the family, rather than the family’s effects on women. Marxist feminists use Marxists concepts but see the exploitation of women as a key feature of family life.

Therefore, it is hard to believe that modern family is a picture of well-adjusted children and sympathetic spouses caring for each other’s every need.