The family structure is considered a traditional family support system involving two married individuals providing care and stability for their biological offspring. However, this two- parent, nuclear family has become less prevalent, and alternative family forms have become more common. The family is created at birth and establishes ties across generations. Those generations, the extended family of aunts, uncles, grandparents, and cousins, can hold significant emotional and economic roles for the nuclear family. Over time, the traditional structure has had to adapt to very influential changes, including divorce and the introduction of single- parent families, teenage pregnancy and unwed mothers, homosexuality and same-sex marriage, and increased interest in adoption.
Although the modern family is the most well known, it may not be the most common family in the United States anymore. According to sociologists, present-day families have changed beyond resemblance. It is generally assumed today that the modern family has undergone significant structure transformations. The social changes have contributed to a reduction in the percentage of “typical” families, or nuclear families. Replacing these, are childless families, one-parent families, other family configurations and non-marital families (3).
There is more than one type, for example: lone parents; pensioners; stepfamilies; families with/without children. There are lots of different types of households like lone parent with dependent children, a couple with dependent children, couple with no children and people living alone. The lone-parent dependent children households have grown in recent years from 2% in 1961 to 7% in 2006. The New Right is worried about the increase of family diversity because it means there is an increase in breakdown of the traditional family. The families formed by cohabiting couples, families headed by lone parents or by gay or lesbian couples are at a second best.
Functionalists such as Parson, Young and Willmott (1973) and Fletcher (1966) believe that the classic extended family (more than two generations of family e.g. including grandparents and cousins living together in one household) is mostly disappearing in the UK and its replacement the privatized nuclear family (family of two generation of married heterosexual parents with their own children who lives isolated from their extended kin and community), is emerging as a family form most suited to life in contemporary British society. Parson’s Function Fit Theory explains that privatized nuclear family meets the need of society as it is socially and geographically mobile, in which it can easily move up and down the social scale in our meritocratic society (a society in which status position is based on individual’s merits and etc., rather than what family you were born into) and can easily move to places for the sake of work. However, Postmodernists argue that we no longer have clear structures such as the nuclear family, but instead a greater fragmentation and diversity of family types and lifestyle (Item 2B). This essay aims to explain and evaluate the view that there is greater diversity of family types and lifestyle today in contemporary British society.
This type is becoming more common due to the change in society where divorce is more common and accepted. Single parent families are another type that has become more common in recent years as it has become socially acceptable to have children out of wedlock. Female parentage in this instance make up over eighty percent of cases within the United Kingdom. Although bigamy is banned in this country by law, there are certain ethnicities and cultures who come here leading in polygamous lifestyles, where usually the man, can have two, three or more partners or wives. The most common two however, are the extended and the nuclear families.
Body Paragraph # 2 Topic Sentence: There are differences in the three sociological theories of the family institution. Supporting Evidence: The conflict theory for the family does not believe in the myth that families are always harmonious but instead, believe that the family can deal with differences, change and conflict (Plunket, 2011). The functionalism theory for the family believes that the basic function for the nuclear family is that it fulfills four basic functions for society: the sexual, reproductive, economic and education functions ( Unknown, 2010). The interactionism looks at the ways that a family creates and re-creates themselves every day. This view looks at how the family unit is built through their interactions (Jacobsen,etc.
Murdock, a functionalist sociologist, says that the nuclear family is universal. Meaning that he sees this unit as an social institution that must be found in some form in every society in every culture. But interpretivists state that families are a product of culture, they think that there are more diverse versions of the family, even in the same society. For example cults of the western society or Israeli kibbutz. So it seems the nuclear family is not so universal – but it is true that it exists in majority in most developed countries.
The stabilisation of adult personalities – the family offers adults the emotional support to cope with the everyday stresses of life. Parsons also stated that there were four changes to the family that industrialisation borught, which include; geographical mobility – nuclear family move to different parts of the country as they aren’t as attached to other family relatives than the extended family. Isolated nuclear family- as the nuclear family were geographically mobile they felt isolated. Structural differentiation – this is where the nuclear family became a unit of consumption, instead of a unit of production. Husband & wife roles – the male was the ‘instrumental leader’.
Family trees are becoming longer and thinner. It could also mean when a family consist of so many generations with only a few that keep in contact with each other. This occurs in our society today because it is becoming more and more expensive to -‘lone parent’ A term used to describe a mother or a father or even a grandparent that has raised a child without their other partner. There are many reasons for this occurring in society for example there many different attitudes towards marriage for example in the 50’s it was social disgrace to have a child out of wedlock whereas now its is socially acceptable and even common. -’Extended family’ A definition of extended families is simply a family unit that extends past the nuclear family to include other relatives such as aunts, uncles, and grandparents.
However, Murdock’s view of the nuclear family eliminate any other family structures, which too are able to supply these functions, and also neglects the conflict and exploitation of family. Parsons evaluated how the family provides solutions to the needs of modern industrial society and pre-industry society. Geographical Mobility is a need of modern industrial society as jobs now require people to move nationally or internationally for jobs. In today’s society, they’re are less extended families, making it easier for families to