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 wifes relatives and
among others the wife joins her
husbands, 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 Precapitalist 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 17 th
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 workingclass, 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.

Womens 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.