Social interactionist perspectives on the family examine how family members and intimate couples interact on a daily basis and arrive at shared understandings of their situations. We return to family violence later in this chapter.

Instead, and as the news story that began this chapter tragically illustrated, they argue, shout, and use emotional cruelty and physical violence. Although the functional perspective assumes the family provides its members emotional comfort and support, many families do just the opposite and are far from the harmonious, happy groups depicted in the 1950s television shows. Second, the family can also be a source of conflict for its own members. As it developed through the centuries, and especially during industrialization, the family also became more and more of a patriarchal unit (see earlier discussion), helping to ensure men’s status at the top of the social hierarchy. Because families pass along their wealth to their children, and because families differ greatly in the amount of wealth they have, the family helps reinforce existing inequality. The social identity it gives to its children does affect their life chances, but it also reinforces a society’s system of stratification. We return to their concerns shortly.Ĭonflict theorists agree that the family serves the important functions just listed, but they also point to problems within the family that the functional perspective minimizes or overlooks altogether.įirst, the family as a social institution contributes to social inequality in several ways. Textbooks no longer contain this warning, but many conservative observers continue to worry about the impact on children of working mothers and one-parent families. Any shift in this arrangement, they warned, would harm children and by extension the family as a social institution and even society itself. For example, most sociology and marriage-and-family textbooks during the 1950s maintained that the male breadwinner–female homemaker nuclear family was the best arrangement for children, as it provided for a family’s economic and child-rearing needs. Some children have advantages throughout life because of the social identity they acquire from their parents, while others face many obstacles because the social class or race/ethnicity into which they are born is at the bottom of the social hierarchy.īeyond discussing the family’s functions, the functional perspective on the family maintains that sudden or far-reaching changes in conventional family structure and processes threaten the family’s stability and thus that of society. As we have seen in earlier chapters, social identity is important for our life chances. Children are born into their parents’ social class, race and ethnicity, religion, and so forth. The incest taboo that most societies have, which prohibits sex between certain relatives, helps minimize conflict within the family if sex occurred among its members and to establish social ties among different families and thus among society as a whole.įourth, the family provides its members with a social identity. One reason for this is to ensure that infants have adequate emotional and practical care when they are born. The family is the major unit for teaching these norms and the major unit through which sexual reproduction occurs. All societies have norms governing with whom and how often a person should have sex. Third, the family helps regulate sexual activity and sexual reproduction. It provides them food, clothing, shelter, and other essentials, and it also provides them love, comfort, help in times of emotional distress, and other types of intangible support that we all need. Second, the family is ideally a major source of practical and emotional support for its members. Romantic love is the common basis for American marriages and dating relationships, but it is much less common in several other contemporary nations.Ĭolleen Kelly – Kids Playing Monopoly Chicago – CC BY 2.0. Wives and husbands have different styles of communication, and social class affects the expectations that spouses have of their marriages and of each other.

The interaction of family members and intimate couples involves shared understandings of their situations. The family can also be a source of conflict, including physical violence and emotional cruelty, for its own members. The family contributes to social inequality by reinforcing economic inequality and by reinforcing patriarchy. In addition, sudden or far-reaching changes in the family’s structure or processes threaten its stability and weaken society. It socializes children, it provides emotional and practical support for its members, it helps regulate sexual activity and sexual reproduction, and it provides its members with a social identity. The family performs several essential functions for society. Table 15.1 Theory Snapshot Theoretical perspective

Structural functional theory sociology