Introduction to Sociology Dersi 6. Ünite Özet

Family is widely accepted as a fundamental social institution, the main constituent of the society. This is because children learn their socially shared values, norms and behaviour patterns within the family, and then they transmit these to new generations when they have their own offspring. This cultural transmission is a crucial task for maintaining the society.

From a sociological point of view, families are both social institutions and social systems or groups. As a social institution, the family is an organized, formal, and regular system that carries out certain tasks in society. The family is also defined as a system of norms, which reflects the needs of the society and is learned and internalized by the family members. With the internalization of these norms, families become stable and continuing social systems. However, because they are shaped by systems of power and inequality, these norms also create conflicts in the family. Therefore, many of the problems of individuals in contemporary societies derive from the structure and the organization of the family as a social institution.

Family from Sociological Perspectives

Le Play recognized three main kinds of family, present in all parts of the world and in all ages of history. These are the patriarchal family, the unstable family and the stem family. The patriarchal family is a very stable family in which children naturally take over the habits and customs of the former generations. The unstable family is a family where the father diverges from the traditions of his ancestors, and young men move off as soon as they can fund themselves. In unstable family, parents teach nothing to their children as part of the tradition, and they often become isolated in their old ages. It is called unstable because it has little flexibility in the face of economic crisis. In stem families, only one of the married children (heirs) stays in the family house; the others are given some form of dowry for marriage and establish themselves new families elsewhere. However, the family house remains as a ceremonial centre for the children who leave.

When we look at the different sociological theories, we see that they evaluate family from somewhat different angles. Functionalists claim that the family is universal, natural and functional. This claim depends upon three main assumptions: The family (a) exists in all societies; (b) is the expression of fundamental and universal biological needs; and (c) serves the main social functions. Symbolic interactionist approach concerns with the marriages and families as processes more than as structures.

For symbolic interactionism, the family is a site of social reproduction in which meanings are negotiated and maintained by family members. They also focus on the changing meanings attached to family. They argue that emotional bonds among the members of the family are built, reinforced and regenerated by shared activities.

These shared activities such as family meals and holidays are symbolic mechanism rituals. Symbolic interactionism also argues that marriage and family relationships are based on negotiated meanings, and examine how family members interact on a Daily basis and arrive at shared understandings of their situations.

From a Marxist sociological perspective, however, the phenomena of family takes a different interpretation. The earliest work of family from a Marxist perspective is of Friedrich Engels, a nineteenth-century scholar and famous Marxist. In his work entitled “The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State” (1884), he links the evolution of the family to the changes in the mode of production and the emergence of private property and capitalism. Engels believed that during the early stages of human evolution, in the era of primitive communism, the property was collectively owned; the family as such did not exist. With no rules limiting sexual access or relationship, this era was characterized by promiscuity and the family was the society as a whole. With the emergence of private ownership of property and the state, the monogamous marriage and monogamous nuclear family developed. The roots of the monogamous nuclear family lie in the idea of having heirs to inherit the property. Thus, the family was created to control women’s sexuality and assure the legitimacy of heirs of the males.

Considering what we call family from feminist perspective, it has an important place of discussion. Feminist approach has an important influence on family studies. There is not only one feminist theory, there are different feminisms which have different claims, but there are some common ideas they share. All feminisms are interested in family in terms of gender; they challenge cooperative and harmonious family image and they agree that women are in a subordinate position in the family and men obtain greater benefits from families than women. Feminists in general see the family as an institution in which patriarchal values are learned by individuals. By this way, the family perpetuates patriarchal society. All feminists argue that the nuclear family has two key functions which oppress women. The first of them is socializing children to accept gender roles without hesitation that female children accept subservient roles and male children believe that they are superior to females. The second is socializing women to accept housewife and mother roles as the only possible and acceptable role for women.

Types of Family

There are some main differences between nuclear and extended families:

• Nuclear families are small and geographically isolated. Extended families are more crowded.
• For nuclear families, marital bonds are more important than blood ties, thus they are named “conjugal families”. On the other side, blood ties are more important than marital bonds for the extended families.
• Nuclear families are temporary units because they decompose with the death of the parents or the marriage of children, but extended families live much longer.
• In nuclear families, there is minimal contact with the kin group.
• Nuclear families are economically self-sufficient while economic dependence is high in extended families.
• Because nuclear families are small sized, members can increase their personal development and freedom much more when compared to extended families. Since nuclear families are autonomous, individualization is easier in these families. On the other side, there is intergenerational authority in extended families which may limit personal development and freedom.
• The members of the nuclear family have to get emotional support and protection from people outside the kin group. In respect of the extended family, the kin network within the family provides a source of emotional support and protection.

Types of Marriage

There are many terms that classify and define marriage types according to the group that the spouse or partner is chosen from, to the place of residence, to the number of spouses or partners, or the genealogy and power relations. Below are the explanations of the most common terms:

• Endogamy is the practice of marrying only within a specific ethnic, social or religious group and rejecting people out of this group. The most common subcategory under endogamy is cousin marriages.
• The marriage rule permitting only one partner is monogamy. The opposite is polygamy, which includes more than one partner. Polygamy can be in the form of polygyny or polyandry. In polygyny form, a man has more than one wife. In polyandry, a women has more than one husband.
• Matrilocality is the social system and a socially instituted practice in which the married couple resides with or near to the wife’s kin. Patrilocality refers to residing with or near to husband’s kin.
• The practice of tracing the descent from female line is called matrilineality and from the male line is called patrilineality. In matrilineal social systems, the property and titles are inherited from women to their daughters. Tracing descent through both the lines is called bilineality.
• The systems in which the kinship is recognized in relation to the mother’s side are matrilateral systems, and in which the kinship is recognized in relation to the father’s side are patrilateral systems.

Patriarchy

Patriarchy means the institutionalization of male dominance over women and children in the family and the extension of male dominance over women in society in general. It implies that men hold power in all the important institutions of society and that women are deprived of access to such power. In Walby’s words, patriarchy is a system of social structures and practices in which men dominate, oppress and exploit women. In short, patriarchy refers to male domination, the power relationships by which men dominate women, and it characterizes a system whereby women are kept subordinate in a number of ways.

In the patriarchal system, a number of areas of women’s lives are under patriarchal control. These can be pointed out as follows:

• Women’s labour power
• Women’s reproduction
• Women’s roles
• Women’s sexuality
• Women’s mobility
• Women’s property and economic resources

Family and Industrialisation

Some sociologists establish relationship between industrialization and family. This relation is often established on the takeover of particular functions of the extended family in the process of industrialization and urbanization.

In traditional societies, the family was mostly in extended form. One of the most important functions of the crowded extended families was to provide labour because the production was being made in the house with the household. With the industrialization process, the production was transferred to factories in the cities. This caused mass migrations from rural areas to urban areas. Because of the new and standard skills needed in factories, education function was taken from the family and given to new schools of modern society.

Parsons argued that industrialization tends to undermine the extended family and the larger kinship networks. For Parsons, the evolution of society involves a process of structural differentiation and the emergence of the isolated family is related to this differentiation process. In this process, specialist institutions such as schools, business firms, hospitals and police forces took over many functions of the family.

Those who attempted to establish a relation between industrialization and family are criticized in three points. First, the process of industrialization does not follow the same course in every society. Second, industrialization is not constant, it is an ongoing, developing process, and it cannot be taken as a fixed historical event. Third, there are more than one form of pre-industrial families.

Recent Changes in the Structure and Meaning of Family and Marriage

The meaning people attached to family and marriage has changed with the start of the 20 ^th century. Recent changes in family life patterns in Western societies can be summarized as follows:

• The influence of extended families and other kin groups is declining.
• The rights of women and children are increasingly recognized.
• Alternative patterns outside the conventional marriage patterns and stable reproductive and cohabiting relationships are increasing.
• Since the late 1970s, outside-marriage birth rate is increasing, especially for cohabiting parents.
• Single-parent families are increasing.
• The family size is declining.
• In marriages, personal fulfilment of people is gaining more importance than Economic partnership, which was previously more important.
• Divorce incidence is increasing.

Gender and Power in the Family

While biological sex indicates only differences between men and women, gender is related to the inequalities. In other words, males and females are biologically different, but man and woman are socially different. In other words, sex refers to the biological and physiological characteristics of and differences between the males and females. According to physical, mainly genital differences, a new-born is labelled as a boy or as a girl. Nevertheless, after birth, people learn the gender expectations in society and learn to be a man or woman by following the norms.

When we talk about gender, we in fact talk about a socially constructed term. Gender is a socially constructed term to differentiate the social difference between men and women. It refers to the differences in norms, roles and behaviours between men and women, which are described as masculine and feminine. The gender roles are constructed based on the norms and standards of the society. In most of the patriarchal societies, masculine roles are typically associated with strength, aggression, risk taking, ration, physical activity and dominance. On the other hand, feminine roles are usually associated with vulnerability, passivity, emotions, nurturing, and subordination. Gender differences and gender roles are set in hierarchal opposition such that men are superior and women are subordinate. The gender differences in the society make the man superior through his role as the breadwinner. The woman, however stands in a lower, secondary position. Even if the woman earns more than the man, her earning is usually seen only as “contribution” to the family budget. On the other hand when a man does more domestic work than the woman, it is seen only as a “help” to women.

Another issue closely related with gender problems is domestic violence. Domestic violence and child abuse are the most important problems in the families and have traumatic results for women and children. These two phenomenon together are often called “the dark side of the family”. Domestic violence is the violence of one partner over another in a marriage, cohabitation or dating relationship. It may occur as physical, sexual, emotional and economic abuse, threats or isolation. We can look at what these types of violence really are one by one.

• Physical abuse refers to on purpose use of physical force, which may result in pain, discomfort, injury, disability or death.
• Emotional abuse, also named as psychological abuse, refers to actions that may weaken the sense of dignity and self-worth, such as verbal assault, humiliation, isolation or imprisonment.
• Economic abuse includes limited access to funds; controlling access to employment and/or education; excluding from financial decision- making; discriminatory traditional laws on inheritance or property rights.
• Sexual abuse is the act of forcing someone to take part in sexual activity against his or her will. It includes many acts in a wide range including touching in a sexual manner without consent, forced sexual intercourse, forced prostitution or purposefully exposing to sexually transmitted infections.