Social Institutions

The Family

The Meaning and general characteristics of the Family The family is a group defined by a

sex relationship sufficiently precise and enduring to provide for the procreation and upbringing of children.

It is constituted by the living together of mates, forming with their offspring a distinctive unity.

Sociological Significance of the Family The family is by far the most

important primary group in society. Historically it has been transformed

from a more or less self-contained unity into a definite and limited organization of minimum size, consisting primarily of the original contracting parties.

The Five General Characteristics 1. A mating relationship 2. A form of Marriage or other

institutional arrangement in a accordance with which the mating relation is established and maintained.

3. A system of nomenclature, involving also a mode of reckoning descent.

4. Some economic provision shared by the members of the family but having especial reference to the economic needs associated with childbearing and child rearing.

A common habitation, home, or household.

Cultural Variations in the Characteristics of the Family

Forms of the mating relationship: The mating relation may be lifelong or of a shorter duration.

It may take the institutional form of monogamy.

It may be polygamous, involving either polygyny, the most highly regarded arrangement in many communities or polyandry, an infrequent and unpopular variety.

Selection of Mates Wives (or Husbands) may be

selected by parents or by the elders, or the choice may be left to the wishes of the individuals concerned.

It may be compulsory to marry within a group to which one belongs (endogamy) or else to marry into another group (exogamy).

Reckoning Descent Descent may be reckoned through

the male line (patrilineal) or through the female line (matrilineal).

Form of the Family circle Among some people the husband

joins his wife’s relatives and among others the wife joins her husband’s, the residence in the former case being termed matrilocal and in the latter patrilocal.

Social Functions of the Family As a social institution, it is a structural

arrangement, an organized means for carrying out certain functions necessary for the continuity of society and for the maintenance of social order.

It is a matter of consensus among sociologists to specify four: Reproduction, Maintenance, Socialization, and Placement

Reproduction Marriage is a social sanction for sexual

union that leads to procreation. It represents a control of sex in the form

of restricting sexual union to married partners.

Again, within a wide range of variation, there are societies that permit premarital sex and others do not restrict sexual relations to married partners only.

Maintenance The human young is helpless for a

longer period of time than any other animal and requires constant care.

Some set of relationships and some designated responsibilities must then be assigned to adults to see that this is done. Again, the family, whatever its structure, is the organized unit for carrying out this function.

Socialization The very continuity of the society depends

not merely upon the reproduction of the species, but also upon a careful social induction of the young into the society and its varied social groups.

It is the family unit that spend the time necessary to see that the young learn the skills and knowledge sufficient to take their place as adults in the society.

Placement A legitimate birth provides a

specified relationship of a child to others and places him in a kinship system. Through that he is then placed in the larger groups of the society and is assigned a status.

The family as a persistent social unit used to provide a training for status.

In many societies some process of succession, the transmission of status from father to son, or at least from one adult to his legitimate designated successor, is one major way of placing the young person in the status system of the society. So is inheritance, the transmission of property from one generation to another, a process that is often tied up in a complex institutional rules.

Changes in the Family Structure Industrialization and the interpretation

on the development of the Family in the industrialized western societies.

Prior to industrialization, in the Pre-capitalist society the family was deeply embedded in a broad set of kinship relations ( ‘the extended family) and was the hub of economic production.

The Transition The transition to industrial society:

the family is no longer a unit of production, dissolved the extended family. Kinship relations became pared down to the ‘nuclear family’, the parental couple and their immediate offspring.

In western Europe prior to the development of capitalism in the 17th and 18th Centuries, the family household was generally a productive unit. That is to say, production was carried on in the home or on the land adjacent to it, and all family members, including children, made contributions to productive activity.

The expansion of capitalist enterprise, even before the advent of large-scale industry, undermined this situation by incorporating family members separately into labor markets.

The subsequent widespread separation of the home from the workplace was the culmination of this process.

Mistaken Presumption It is proved mistaken to presume that

these changes dissolved a pre-existing extended family system.

Historical research has indicated that, throughout most of western Europe, the family had typically been closer to the nuclear family than to the extended type for at least several centuries prior to the early formation of capitalism.

The relations between the development of capitalism and the character of family life were considerably more complex than presumed in the earlier interpretations.

Early capitalist entrepreneurs, for instance, quite often employed families rather than individuals, conforming to the traditional expectation that children as well as adults should participate in productive labor.

The Breaking down of Economic Solidarity of the Family The impulse to break down the

economic solidarity of the family came from largely from the employers themselves, in combination with liberal legislation prohibiting the use of child labor.

The forms of domestic life that tend to predominate today seem to have been influenced more by the bourgeois family, whose life style became in some parts ‘diffused downwards’, than by the direct impact of capitalism upon the wage-worker.

Industrial Society, Women and Domesticity The split between home and workplace

in the latter stages of the 19th century helped foster an association between women and domesticity.

Again this seems to have been an ideology which was first nurtured in the higher echelons of the class system, filtering down to other classes.

The place of the woman is in the home The idea that ‘the place of the

woman is in the home’ had different implications for women at varying levels in society.

The more affluent enjoyed the services of maids, nurses, and domestic servants.

For those in the middle orders the consequence was that the tasks of women became the domestic duties of caring for home and children, where these were no longer recognized as ‘work’, at least in a sense parallel to paid employment in production.

But the burdens were harshest for a proportion of women in working-class, having to cope with most of the household chores in addition to engaging in industrial labor.

The consequence of Industrialization for Women The most important and enduring

consequence of industrialization for women has been the emergence of the modern role of housewife as “ the dominant mature feminine role”.

The banning of Child labor and restrictions on the employment of women, locked the majority of married woman into the mother-housewife role.

Summary The separation of men from the

daily routines of domestic life. The creation of the economic

dependence of women and children on men.

The isolation of housework and child care from other work.

Women and Sexual Division of Labor- A Culturalist Critique The Conventional notion about ‘sexual

division of labor’: the sexual division of labor and inequality between the sexes is determined to some degree by biologically or genetically based differences between men and women.

This position is opposed by those who argue that gender roles are culturally determined and the inequality is socially constructed power relationships.

Ann Oakley- the Cultural Division of Labor Culture as the determinant of gender

roles. Her position is summarized in the following

quotation, ‘Not only is the division of labor by sex not universal, but there is no reason why it should be. Human cultures are diverse and endlessly variable. They owe their creation to human inventiveness rather than invincible biological forces’.

Oakley examines a number of societies in which biology appears to have little or no influence on women roles.

Sherry B. Ortner-the devaluation of Women She attempts to provide a general

explanation for the ‘universal devaluation of women’.

Ortner claims that it is not biology as such that ascribes women to their status in society but the way in which every culture defines and evaluates female biology.

Thus, if this universal evaluation changed, then the basis for female subordination would be removed.

She argues that in every society, a higher value is placed on culture than on nature. Culture is the means by which man controls and regulates nature.

The cultural elements like usage of certain tools and technology have power over nature and are therefore seen as superior to nature.

The universal evaluation of culture as superior to nature is the basic reason for the devaluation of women. Women are seen as closer to nature than men and therefore as inferior to men.

She argues that women are universally defined as closer to nature because their bodies and physiological functions are more concerned with ‘the natural processes surrounding the reproduction of the species’.

Women’s close relationships with young children further associate them with nature. Since the mother role is linked to the family, the family itself is regarded as closer to nature compared to activities and institutions outside family.