Functionalist perspective :- The family performs several essential functions for society. It socializes children, it provides emotional and practical support for its members, it helps regulate sexual activity and sexual reproduction, and it provides its members with a social identity. In addition, sudden or far-reaching changes in the family’s structure or processes threaten its stability and weaken society.
Conflict perspective:- The family contributes to social inequality by reinforcing economic inequality and by reinforcing patriarchy. The family can also be a source of conflict, including physical violence and emotional cruelty, for its own members.
Symbolic interactionism:- The interaction of family members and intimate couples involves shared understandings of their situations. Wives and husbands have different styles of communication, and social class affects the expectations that spouses have of their marriages and of each other. Romantic love is the common basis for American marriages and dating relationships, but it is much less common in several other contemporary nations.
Changing the functions of families :
The 'structure' of the family has varied from society to society , but it has always been the most important unit of social organization, performing important functions for individual members and society on the whole. due to industrialization and urbanization there were changes in both structural and cultural condition of the society.
1.Micro sociological changes.
✓ Decrease in feudalistic values
✓ Spread of liberal values
✓ Emergence of fourth wave feminism
2.changes in sexual regulation functions.
✓Desacrilization of virgnity - that means sexual activity even without marriage is not considered a taboo
✓Consumption of sexual needs ( prostitution via escart service )
✓Decriminalization of adultery
✓Decrease in sacrosanct of marriage
3.changes in reproductive functions.
✓Rise in one parent child
✓Rise on three parent child
✓Couples choosing to remain childless
4.changes in economic functions
✓Family become a unit of consumption from a unit of production.
✓Young and willmott say that today family is the greatest source for income circulation , because family today has transformed from consumption unit to a consumerist unit.
✓ In the modern home - centerd family money spent on and in the name of family rather than individual like washing machine, television, etc.
5.changes in social functions
✓Today family is no longer a primary unit of sociolozation ( rise of creche, playschools and kindergurden )
✓ Family is no longer the primary institution to enforce social control ( social control is now lying in hands of law and order maintaining institution )
✓The instituonalization of old age homes increasingly reducing the role of family in the funtions of caring for the aged.
Factors responsible for changing the patterns of family
Emergence of New form of families
1.isolated nuclear family :- Talcott Parsons in his, The structure of family 1959- A study of American families, wrote that isolated nuclear family is family of modern industrial societies. It is structurally isolated, as it doesn’t form a part of the wider system of kinship relations
2.symmentrical family :- the symmetrical family is where a family divides all responsibilities equally between partners. This was created and theorized by wilmott and young as one of the phases of modern family has shifted to.
3.nuclear family :- a cohabiting man and women who maintain a socially approved sexual relationship and have atleast one child.
4.same sex family :- a same sex family is a homosexual couple living together with children. Ex: gay and lesbian families.
5.beanpole family :- A Beanpole family is a multi-generational family that is long and thin with few aunts, uncles and grandparents. This is a result of extended life expectancy and fewer children being born. Therefore, as a result of the ageing population and contraceptive control a new formation of family begins to emerge that reflects the modern world ideology.
6.lone parent family :- a mother or father living without a partner either married or cohabiting, with thier dependent children.
7.cohabitation :- Cohabitation is when a couple live together in one household but are not legally married. Cohabiting couples do not have the same legal protection as married couples.
8.reconstituted family :- a reconstituted family is when two families join together after one or both partners have divorced their previous partners. This family option can sometimes be referred to as the blended family or step family.
9.boomerang family :- a young adult who returns to live at his or her family home especially for financial reasons.
