SOCA01H3 Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: Nuclear Family
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Fall 2009
Department
Sociology
Course Code
SOCA01H3
Professor
Malcolm Mac Kinnon
Lecture
8
Sociology Lecture
Families cont’d
•Family is functional because it promotes eco cooperation
•Particularism Affect used by parsons
•You are given special consideration by your parents whereas the larger society is
based on universalism and impersonality
•Parents are more likely to overlook faults and mistakes whereas the wider
community does not
•Family is there to provide emotional support
•Families also are different as they pool financial resources
•The closest relationship in the world can very well be between mother and child
•Children will support their parents in old age
•There is a sexual division of labour in the family, man does strength work that a
woman cannot do
•Now with technology women can do most things that men can do in the home
•Complementarity ^ men do some work and women do some that complement each
other
•The functional approach tends to overlook the problems of married life
•Violence and conflict are common to the family
•The family is a paradox b/c it has positive and negative aspects
•For instance in Japan in 1970 20% of women married by the age of 30, now 40%
married by the age of 30
•Why?^ Patriarchy
•Women stay single to pursue their own career
•Men are not as inclined to marry b/c they claim family law is biased against men
•Some men try to get around this by getting a pre-nuptial agreement
•Conflict and feminist approach to the family
•People inherit the social standing of their parents
•According to this point of view, Engle’s book “Origin of the family”, higher class men
want to transmit their land to their sons
•Functionalists see that this inheritance gives people their identity
•Second defect in the family is patriarchy
•Family promotes patriarchy
•Families transform women to sexual property of men (refers to traditional nuclear
family)
•A century ago the earnings of the wife belonged to the husband
•Canadian women with at least one child under five spend 5.3 hours worth of
housework a day
•Husbands spend 3
•Feminists and conflict theorists are critical of this^
•The family promotes racial and ethnic categories
www.notesolution.com
•The family props up the ethnic hierarchy, who you should and should not marry
•Endogamy- inside your ethnic group
•Exogamy-outside your group
•Family has many faults according to the conflict feminist approach
•Soviet Union- when communist revolution took over the family was destroyed and
had to reinstate it
•The families are important when it comes to socializing the children
•Problem with the patriarchy argument in terms of housework, men spend more time
in the labour market
•Conflict theorists don’t like to mention ^
•The family may still be patriarchal but the responsibilities are complementary
•Family is based on legal and constitutional equality
•Anti-family bias- not produced viable alternative to the family
•We like to know where we come from
•Adopted children spend time to find their biological parents
•Other family forms that exclude biological parents fail to provide these needs of
these children
•Conf-fem theorists say mud is thicker than water, bio-parents are compelling and
you cannot get rid of them
•Stages of family life
•Arranged marriages will take place if the society views marriage as inappropriate
for children to decide upon
•Arranged marriage occurs between two extended families of the same standing
•People tend to be emotionally prepared for married life
•Personal compatibility tends not to be as important as cultural compatibility
•Love as important factor in choice of marriage partner first gained currency in 18th-
century England with rise of liberalism and individualism
•Nuclear family has less influence than an extended family
•The smaller the family gets the amount of social pressure that the family can use
decreases
•Nuclear families fosters individualism (I will choose my own partner)
•Under tradition the family holds a plot of land, children depend on parents for
economic survival
•Industrialization makes it so we do not rely on land
•When people are economically independent they tend to be mentally independent
•When you operate in a labour market you are self-sufficient
•Affection and sexual passion becomes the base for marriage
•We have stories like Cinderella, Harlequin Romance Novels
•Love motivates people to leave the next and start a family of their own
•Love is an unstable foundation for marriage
•Higher rates of divorce
www.notesolution.com
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