September 12, 2001
Images of the family–
Family as a Haven (emerged during industrialization) – This image revolves around the themes of love and protection, delineating dual roles for father and mother. This image has two distinct themes: love and protection. The sentimentalized notion of the family as a refuge from the cruel world reached its fullest expression in the Victorian period. The family was idealized as a repository of warmth and tenderness (embodied by the mother) standing in opposition to the competitive and aggressive world of commerce (embodied by the father). The family’s task was to protect against the outside world.
Family as Fulfillment (in the 1930s-40s)
Protective image of the family has been replaced by a compensatory image. Family provides needs unattainable through other social arrangements. Family members can find self-fulfillment and enjoyment through their joint activities. Fun vs. duty
Family as an Encumbrance (1960s-1970s) – The compensatory image of family has given rise to a negative image. Family relationships, including monogamy and the responsibilities of child rearing are often viewed as inhibiting personal freedom and full human development.
Issue 4 – How should individual rights and family obligations be balanced?
Issues of how group obligations are balanced with individual interests. More specifically, what should be more important, our personal rights or our obligations based on the family roles we occupy?
Rights and Responsibilities –
The tension between individual interests and the collective interests of family can be understood as a difference between personal rights and group responsibilities.
Individual rights lie at the very core of US culture. On the other hand, we are not so deeply committed as a culture to our responsibilities – our duties and obligations to others. Whereas laws exist to protect our rights, they exist to enforce our responsibilities.
Culture and Family Obligation – The balance between rights and responsibilities varies from society to society. Scholars often distinguish between collectivist and individualist cultures. Collectivist cultures are those in which individual goals are subordinated to the goals of the larger group, and obligation to others is emphasized over personal freedom. In contrast, individualist cultures are those in which individual rights, self-realization, personal autonomy, and personality identity take precedence.
Gender and Family Obligation
In the United States, the value of individualism has always varied along gender lines as well as ethnic lines. Independence and self-reliance have traditionally been though more appropriate for males than females. For instance, research on play patterns shows that girls are regarded more for remaining close to their parents while boys are encouraged to explore the limits of their play areas.
As they get older, men are expected to purse self-fulfillment, individual achievement, and autonomy. Separation from other, particularly their mothers, is critically tied to their self-image as men. In other words, cutting attachments is considered normal and necessary for male development.
On the other hand, girls and women have traditionally been encouraged to emphasize relationships, responsibilities, and caring for others. Traditionally female identity tended to develop not by cutting attachments by developing and maintaining connections to others, particularly spouses and children.
Costs, benefits, and family decisions –
Social-exchange theory – “What’s in it for me?” approach to intimacy. Such thinking can pervade all stages of family life. Arguments over the distribution of housework chores or imbalances in the expression of affection, for instance often boil down to one person feeling he or she is doing too much while the partner is doing too little.
To have or not to have children.
While some degree of cost-benefit thinking in intimacy is inevitable, relationships formed only in terms of personal gratification may fail to fulfill their traditional function of providing people with stable relationships that tie them to the larger community.
Family Obligation and Social Policy –
Some critics argue that when individualism replaces duty as the guiding principle of life, people are inclined to reject the burdens of responsibility not only to the community but perhaps even to their own families. Indeed, according to some sociologists, people who live independently before marriage, or who were raised by parents who do so, are less oriented toward family living and are poorly prepared for adult family obligations.
Nowhere is this controversy clearer than in the current debate over existing divorces laws. Critics have argued that the liberalization of divorce laws in the 1970s made it too easy for married couples to abandon their family obligations.
Newman reminds us that research shows that most Americans have strong ties with their kin; for example, the vast majority of the elderly who need care receive it from their families.
Myths about the Family
The Myth of a Stable and Harmonious Family of the Past
The popular wisdom that we are witnessing a breakdown of the family is based on a stubborn myth that the family of the past was better than the family of the present. Families of past times are thought to have been more stable, better adjusted, and happier. Added to this myth is the belief that there were three generations living under one roof or in very close proximity. The reality of past family life was quite different.
The Myth of Separate Worlds – Since industrialization, the belief has existed that work and family roles operate independently of each other. This myth creates the notion that the family is a refuge from a cold and competitive world. It presumes that there are sharp boundaries between the family and the rest of society. And it assumes that families are freestanding, independent, self-sufficient units relatively free from social pressures. See Newman’s discussion on privacy that adds insight regarding this myth.
Issue 3 - Privacy - Issue of privacy is related to myth of separate worlds
One of the most compelling sociological paradoxes is that we have, in family, the most private and protected of all social institutions yet one whose cultural, political, and personal importance provokes unparalleled public attention. Family is both autonomous and regulated, private and public.
Most intimate and family behavior occurs away from the watchful eyes of others, and only we have access to our thoughts, desires, and feelings regarding the people with whom we are intimately involved. But whether we like it or not, others do care about what goes on in our families. The people around us, the government, even society as a whole, will always have a keen interest in what happens in our intimate lives.
One of the most powerful values regarding family in American society today is that it is, or should be, a private institution.
Family privacy is maintained by powerful social norms. We are advised to “keep our noses out” of other people’s family affairs.
Privacy is usually lined to autonomy, another important concept, which refers to the family’s independence from outside control and its right to make its own decisions about its future or about treatment of its members. In order to protect crucially important intimate relationships, decision-making within families is often granted the protection of laws and customs. Example right-to-die cases
Many people in our society today feel that what goes on in a family should always be protected from community interference, public scrutiny, and state regulation. Such privacy is essential to the development of liberty and freedom and protects individual families against the exercise of arbitrary power by the state.
Unfortunately the high value that our society places on family privacy has made it difficult for us to recognize the abuses of privacy and the problems it can cause.
Home denotes a place where we can relax, express ourselves candidly, show affection, enjoy sexuality, and reinforce family ties.
Privacy protected by both constitution and social norms.
Goffman - backstage and frontstage behavior - think of how utterly unmanageable our family lives would be if there weren’t somewhere we could go to escape the prying eyes and expectations of outsiders.
The History of Privacy -
In preindustrial society - privacy was a foreign concept
By the mid-nineteenth century, things began to change. Work was removed from the home. For the middle-class privacy began a value. For immigrants, slaves, and the lower economic classes, privacy did not exist.
The gradual separation of home from public life reflected a technological shift toward family self-sufficiency. Refrigerator, Internet, fax machines, etc.
So although we typically think of family as the most private and most intimate of social institutions, complete family privacy is an illusion.
State interferes - law, IRS, commercial interests
The workplace can also disturb the privacy of families.
School officials
Individuals - influence to push you to marriage, to having children, and explaining your divorce.
So families occupy a curious, paradoxical position in today’s society. Although many of us may espouse family privacy, our families never really belong exclusively to us.
Variations in family privacy
In today’s poor households, dwelling is smaller and more crowded than are those of more affluent households, making privacy structurally difficult to obtain.
Privacy is further diminished by mandatory inspections by welfare caseworkers and housing authorities.
In addition, poor people must often make use of public facilities (health clinics, public transportation, Laundromats) - so that more of the day-to-day tasks are carried out in public.
In 1967, for instance, welfare workers were given the power to remove children from their poor unmarried mothers on the grounds that poverty and lack of marriage, in and of themselves, constituted a potentially harmful environment.
When and under conditions should a family’s privacy and autonomy be tolerated and protected by society? When should it be breached?
How can we balance an individual’s’ right to physical and emotional well-being against a family’s right to be free from outside intrusion and to make its own decisions? Which of these values should be given top priority?
Should children have rights to privacy that protect them from parental intrusion?
Felix Berardo – “Family Privacy: Issues and Concepts”
This article concentrates on the role of privacy within the context of marriage and family. It attempts to elaborate on both the functional and dysfunctional aspects of family autonomy.
Concepts –
The Invisibility of Marriage
Much of the intimacy of family life remains hidden. Most of what is seen in this guarded domain are the “front stage” performances.
This front-stage performances serve to maintain societal organization by allowing the influence of others to guide individual behavior but they also provide an important psychological function, namely, making the individual fee she or he is significant to others and they are to her or him, thereby creating a concomitant tendency to contribute to the common good.
The importance of the backstage as a prism of family life reflects the historical shift – both in a physical and psychological sense – from the visible public sphere to what has become known as the private family domain. Berardo points out the geography of the change –from the relatively public front porch to the more private screened back porch.
Functionality of the backstage – members no longer have to worry about presenting a common front of solidarity but can give vent to their real feelings and selves.
Robert K. Merton pointed out that privacy is not merely an individual propensity but a necessary prerequisite for the effective functioning of a social structure. Full surveillance of activities in a group would become psychologically overwhelming and as a consequence, dysfunction for the maintenance and stability of the group as a whole.
Privacy allows for a certain degree of flexibility in fulfilling the demands of the society. Allows people to learn the role. At the same, time, it is recognized that situation in which social transactions remain completely immune from observability, and therefore accountability, have the potential for allowing deviant behavior to accumulate and to depart widely from prevailing norms.
Willard Waller - allows for fluctuations of behavior around the norms that are established by society.
Society provides a looking glass self that supports the front of solidarity.
The impulse to maintain a public facade of solidarity persists even in those marriages that are deteriorating. Even when outsiders become aware that the marriage is on the decline, they rarely feel it appropriate to intrude. They recognize implicitly that once the marital difficulty is made public, the process of deterioration and alienation may be accelerated.
Functions of Privacy for the Family.
Self-protective – allow to conceal their difficulties while working out a solution.
Second function – is the provision of a certain degree of latitude in adhering to the societal norms that govern family behavior. (Example, letting young children sleep in the parents’ bed – when social norms say no).
Third -= privacy functions as a buffer between social pressures on the couple and their responses to them. This allows the marital pair to experiment, to make mistakes, to reveal motives, to express feeling, and to engage in actions that, if disclosed, might prove humiliating or provoke the application of sanctions by others.
Fourth, separation from others also performs an ameliorative function for family members - a place where self-esteem can be restored.
Disadvantages of family privacy and secrecy.
If you know very little about the marital interaction of others, you use other points of reference – projected through the mass media, their parents’ marriages.
Ignorance of the behavioral repertoires of other couples can severely restrict the range of reference groups available to spouses who are seeking to achieve adequate role performance. Marital invisibility prevents them from making comparisons or judgments as to the appropriateness of their own role enactments.
The Erosion of Privacy: Impact on the Family:
A general erosion of privacy appears to be taking place in the US. Most Americans are concerned about threats to their personal privacy. View has been advanced that privacy is increasingly devalued in our information-driven economy, which seeks information about personal lives.
Incidents of external excursions into the marital and familial spheres raise a serious question concerning the boundary that separates parental prerogatives from societal interests. This question is frequently evident in cases involving the propriety or impropriety of governmental interference with the autonomy of the parents to control the upbringing of their children. The issue is whether the right of privacy embraces the parent-child relationship. Under the well established parens patriae doctrine, both the state and the parents have a vested interest in the welfare of children. Example – compulsory education, child labor laws, emergency medical care, delinquency and dependency, parental neglect or child abuse, mandatory testing of newborns for the HIV virus, vaccinations. Etc. However, although parents are generally afforded maximal latitude in child rearing, there is no immunity from state interference.
The question is how much is too much privacy?
B. Laslett's Analysis: The emergence of the private family is relatively new in US. The historical evidence suggests that in an earlier period of our history, the enactment of family roles within the nuclear household was visible to a larger audience than at present. This greater visibility, which allowed more social control and wider support for traditional family role behavior was a result of such factors as the combination of economic activities in or near the home with family life within the household. Structurally houses were more constricted – few rooms Nonkin had access to the household as residents.
Over time, each of these factors has been altered by structural changes that occurred in the United States as a result of industrialization, urbanization and other forces. Among these changes were the separation of economic activities from the home, changes in architectural styles and practices that allowed expanded and segmented structural arrangements of living space, and a significant reduction in the number of nonkin residents members in the home.
The Myth of the Monolithic Family Form - (Assumption of the Universal Nuclear Family)The idealization of family life in society has given rise to a popular conception of the “typical” American family, a structure that is rigidly fixed and uniform. The image is a middle-class, monogamous, father at work, mother and children at home family living in a one-family house. This model now accounts for only approximately 10% of all U.S. families.
The Myth of Undifferentiated Family Experience – The assumption is that all family members have common needs, common interest, and common experiences. Recent research has uncovered differences even among members officially participating in the same families. Diversity can be found not only among families of different racial and ethnic background or families representing different socio-economic strata, but also among different categories of people within families. Example, Jessie Bernard’s work on “His” and “Her” Marriage.
The Myth of Family Consensus (Assumption of Family Harmony)
The idealized picture of family life is flawed in its assumption that families operate on the principles of harmony and love. This myth neglects the many contradictions that are intrinsic to family life. These contradictions stem from two conditions: 1. The power relations within the family and 2 the intense emotional quality of family life.
The Assumption of Parental Determinism – This myth assumes the complete power of the parents in the socialization of their children. Although there is no doubt that parents are very significant socialization agents in the child’s formative years, there is some debate concerning the degree of their influence over the child. The question is, is parental influence overwhelmingly dominant or is that influence only part of a larger network of influences, such as the educational process, peers, and other structures such as class
The Myth of Family Breakdown as the Cause of Social of Social Problems – Some social commentators find that change in family patterns in recent decades, especially the increase in fatherless families, is the primary cause of contemporary social problems. This claim is flawed in two respects: first, it treats the family as a causal agent, rather than a reflection of social conditions; second, it ignores structural reasons for family breakdown.
Issue 8 – “Is the Institutional Family Breaking Down – and Society with it?”
The Family Decline Perspective – The erosion of the family’s overall importance as a social institution.
The Declining influence of Family – lose of many of its traditional functions, such as their religious and educational training – no longer the economic center of society, where family members work together to earn a living and support one another financially. Families have lost much to their ability to regulate the sexual behavior of members, as witnessed by high rates of premarital and extramarital sex.
The strength (or weakness) of family as an institution is seen not just in how well (or poorly) it performs important social functions but in the hold it has over its individual members. Strong families are those that maintain close coordination over the relationships between members and direct their activities toward collective goals. But today individuals have become increasingly more autonomous, less bound by their family and less committed to its norms and values.
Social Change and family structure –
High divorce rate – consequences to children
Voluntary childlessness – shrinking size of family
Changing marital role
Flight from Marriage – rise of cohabitation
Other perspective – The Family Transformation Perspective
This perspective maintains that the family – both as a living arrangement and as a social institution – is not disappearing at all but instead is becoming more diverse and complex as it adapts to changing social circumstances. Although changes in work, family, and sexual opportunities for men and women can crate significant instability and uncertainty in people’s lives, these changes also have the potential of introducing grater democracy, equality, and choice into our family relationships. In short, just because many families today aren’t “tradition” in form doesn’t mean that the institution of family itself is disappearing or in some sort of danger.
Those who support the notion of family transformation also take issue with the argument that the collapse of the traditional family is the prime cause of social decay. They believe is the prime cause of social decay. They believe that the losses in real earnings and high-paying jobs due to the decline industrial manufacturing, the persistence of low-wage work for women, and global restructuring which exports jobs to other countries, have wreaked far more havoc of families and on society than the effects of feminism, sexual revolution, divorce, cohabitation and individualism. When significant economic changes take place it’s inevitable that families will feel their effects..
Rebutting the notion of family decline –
Newman says that a high divorce, falling marriage rate, shrinking family size, and so on are not as harmful as the family decline perspective leads us to believe.
Marriage and Divorce – Most Americans who marry are still committed to the idea of having healthy and happy children. The stability of these feeling suggests that our family expectations are highly institutionalized and embedded in the culture.
Despite the high rate of divorce and growing rates of cohabitation and voluntary single hood – marriage still remains the living arrangement of choice for the overwhelming majority of American adults. 95% of women and 94% of men aged 45 to 54 had been married at some point in their lives. A consistent 96% of the American population over the past several decades has expressed a personal desire for marriage. 70% of divorced individuals are likely to remarry.
Another concern raised by divorce is the effect it has on children. The problems that children with divorced parents experience are typically attributed to factors such as the absence of a father, increased strain on the custodial parent to keep the household running, or the emotional stress and anger associated with the separation. But many factors that create the most serious problems for children can also be found in two-parent, “intact” families; low income, poor living conditions, and lack of parental supervision
Another concern is the entry of married women, particularly mothers, into the paid labor force. Research suggests that maternal employment itself has few adverse effects.
Family Size – Research suggests that smaller families would be beneficial to society.
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