Extended Families Essay

737 Words3 Pages
The dictionary defines an extended family as ‘a kinship group consisting of a family nucleus and various relatives usually living in one household and functioning as a larger unit.’and a nuclear family as ‘a social unit composed of a mother, father and children.’ This essay will assess the evidence of how the onset of the Industrial Revolution in Britain in the middle of the 18th century bought with it many sociological changes that it is argued changed the structure of families within our society and how these changes meant that the extended family was unsuited to meeting the needs of society and was gradually replaced by the nuclear family. In an industrial society, the nuclear family is considered ideal because of a number of reasons. Those laid out by American sociologist Talcott Parsons include achievement and education being placed higher than familial obligation. The nuclear family is more geographically mobile with children being more likely to move away from their immediate family for work opportunities. Parsons also cites 'structural differentiation', whereby specialised agencies that were government funded and better able to help, took over the primary functions of the extended family. Parsons concluded that 'only the nuclear family unit could effectively provide the achievementorientated and geographically mobile workforce required by modern industrial economies.' 1 Peter Laslett on the the other hand, argues that the nuclear family predates the industrial revolution and it was their existence and dominance within society that allowed for industrialisation to happen2. A representative of the Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure, Laslett and his contemporaries emphasize the use of quantitative data in the study of the family. Through his study of one hundred English communities from the sixteenth to the
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