SOC103H1 Chapter Notes -Christopher Jencks, David Riesman, Talcott Parsons
Document Summary
Families teach children rules, and children grow up and form families to pass those rules on. Today there are a lot of different types of families. Family is fluid and malleable, but also basic and necessary. Today norms about what constitutes a family are changing, and this causes confusion. e. g. polygamy; divorce. Though families have changed and diversified, they retain one characteristic: families are agents of socialization. Our parents teach us how to behave and our first years are most formative. e. g. we need to learn to share! And to realize that our desires can"t be satisfied all the time. And to learn to care for others. etc. It"s a microcosm for society, with each family member contributing to a unified whole. Kind of like what an h2o molecule is to water. So, changes in family mirror changes in society. In modern industrial societies, family life is complicated. Socialization is the manufacture of new citizens, and it"s complex.
