Examine the Ways in Which Industrialisation Changed the Function of the Family

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Examine the ways in which industrialisation changed the function of the family In pre-industrial society, the extended family was the most common as families would live and work together to produce goods and crops to live from. As an industrial society developed, the nuclear family became much more dominant. There was a huge increase in the number of individuals leaving their home to work for a wage. The key social change that came about what that industrialisation separated home and work. Many functionalists believe that industrialisation led to an increase in the nuclear family type. The nuclear family is a type of family that consists of just two generations; this is parents and their children. An American sociologist Talcott Parsons studied the impact of urbanisation on family structure in American and British history. Parsons thought that the dominant family structure changed from extended to nuclear because it was more useful for industrial society. A few of the key ideas he discovered were that lots of functions that the family would take care for in a pre-industrial society were now taken care of by the state in industrial society such as health care or education. Parsons also said that the industrial nuclear family is isolated - meaning is has few ties with local kinship and economic systems. This means that the family can up sticks and move easily. In short his basic conclusion after his study was that family structure adapts to the needs of society. Parsons also said that industrialisation changed roles and status in the family, he said that status for an individual in a pre industrial society was decided at birth by the family they were born into and that in a industrial society the status of an individual was decided by his or her success outside of their family. He also said that specialised roles for men and women developed within the family, he

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