Sociology
THE SOCIOLOGY OF THE FAMILY
12.10.10
What is a family?
 Any combination of two or more persons who
are bound together by mutual consent, birth
and/or adoption or placement and who,
together, assume responsibility , for, inter alia
the care and maintenance of group members
through procreation or adoption, the
socialisation of children and the social control
of members’ (UN cited in Donohue and
Gaynor, 2003:242)
‘There is no such thing as the family only
families’ (Gittins, 1993 in Macconis and Plummer)
The changing structure of the
family
 ‘The major difference which engaged
sociological research and debated concerns
the transition from a predominantly
extended family form in pre-industrial times
to the nuclear or conjugal family more typical
in modern industrial society.’
( IPA 1992: 34)
1. The Extended Family
 Parents + children and
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other relatives living
together or in close
proximity.
2+ Generations
Basic social unit of trad.
or pre-industrial era.
Family a separate
economic unit
Religion
Irish ‘stem’ family
2.Nuclear Family
 Typical family of the industrial era
 Two adults + their biological/adopted
children/ one parent + child/ren.
 Lives separately from the wider family
 Makes own decisions
 ‘help may come from other individuals or
from government welfare agencies but this
help is meant to be temporary.’ (Curry in
MacDonald, 82)
3. The reconstructed family
or step family
 The ‘blended’ or reconstituted family.
 Two partners make a
new family with their
children from previous
and/ their new
relationship/s.
Marriage
 Kinship ties ‘are connections between
individuals through marriage, or through lines
of descent that connect blood relatives.’
(Giddens 2001: 173)
 Marriage → ‘ ..legally sanctioned relationships
involving economic co-operation as well as
normative sexual activity and child-bearing,
that people expect to be enduring.’ (Maccionis
and Plummer 2002: 436).
Why do people marry?
 For pragmatic
wealth/power-related
reasons.
 Romantic Love → in
societies where
extended family ties
are weak.
 Why do you think this
might be the case?
Romantic Love – A construct?
 1. ‘ in industrial societies romantic love
provides an incentive to marry and form
families
 2. Romantic love is more highly valued in
industrial societies because it provides a
support in times of stress, and
 3. When spouses are in love they become
committed primarily to each other , rather
than their families of orientation.’ (Curry
2005: 317 in MacDonald, 82).
Family Patterns
 Marriage compositions:
 Monogamy – One woman married to one
man.
 Polygyny – one man married to several
women.
 Polyandry – one woman married to several
men.
 (See MacDonald p. 83 for more details on
these patterns).
Family Patterns
 Power:
 Patriarchal
 Matriarchal
 Egalitarian
Family Patterns
 Descent:
 Patrilineal
 Matrilineal
 Bilineal
 And…exogamous
marriage → permits
s.o. to marry another
from outside their
social group
 Endogamous marriage
→ individuals are
expected to chose from
within their social
group.
The Family – A Functionalist
Perspective
1. Primary socialisation and Personality
Stabilisation (Parsons/Giddens)
2. Regulation of Sexual Activity (incest taboo ,
see MacDonald p. 84)
3. Social Placement – What we are born
into..wealth, race, etc.
4. Material and Emotional Security - Families
depend on each other economically and
emotionally ( N.B. Parsons’ roles: male
breadwinner/female nurturer)
Limits of the Functionalist Perspective
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Children also socialised outside the family
People have sexual relations outside the family
Families can be dysfunctional
Functionalism takes no account of this
Family plays a part in reproducing and
maintaining the capitalist system
 Other social institutions help meet our needs
 The contentious role of family life in regards to
mental illness (see here the anti-psychiatry
movement of the 60s and 70s).
Class-based analysis of the family:
Conflict Theory
 A perspective that emanates from the work of
Marx and Engels.
 Through the socialisation of children the family
reproduces labour power and false ideology thus
maintaining capitalism.
 Maintenance of the patriarchy. Engels stated
that ‘The emancipation of women becomes
possible only when women are enabled to take
part in production on a large social scale, and
when domestic duties require their attention
only to a minor degree.’
Class-based analysis (2)
 Marx following Fourier declared that the
status of women provided a barometer for
the level of humanity attained by a society.
 Engels; private property, class antagonism
and the emergence of the modern form of
the state are co-terminous with the
patriarchal monogamous family.
 Privileging of production inherent in the
classical theoretical canon.
 Engels ‘ the elimination of the economic justification
for marriage opened the way to true monogamy
based on an historically new element – individual
sexual love.’
 Engels infl. by 19th century utopian socialists. He
dreamed of a situation where: ‘the individual family
ceases to be an economic unit of society. Private
housekeeping is transformed into a social industry.
The care and education of children becomes a public
matter.’
The socialist family
 Nuclear family reborn as the socialist family
in which worker-mothers were committed to
bearing and rearing future socialist citizens in
addition to their labour-force participation.
Family as basic cell guaranteed stability. But
in general the family functioned not as a
social unit embodying individual rights in a
partnership of equals, but as one with specific
duties towards society and the state.
The problems with socialism
 Women’s emancipation relegated from being a process
integral and essential to the emancipatory project of
society as whole, to a separate and secondary status. The
nature of gender relations as relations of power
disappeared from the agenda.
 The dominant discourse, dictated, in the words of Hilda
Scott, that ‘men set the goals, define the socialist norms,
and order the priorities by standards according to which
men and women are equal but it is women who are
different.’ ‘equality as something which can be given to
women without affecting the position of men.
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(Source for this last section, Cinderella Goes to Market: Citizenship, Gender
and the Women's Movement in East Central Europe by Barbara Einhorn, Verso,
1993)
Race and Ethnicity
 Endogamy → if people
continue to marry
within their own
race/ethnicity, racial
and ethnic categories
will continue to persist.
 What is your response
to this?
Feminist Approaches to the Family
‘Feminists highlight the
continuing exploitation of
women in capitalist
societies, not least in terms
of the way in which their
contribution to the bulk of
private domestic work
remains unrecognised,
unrewarded and
undervalued labour.’ (Marsh
2000: 552)
Is the division of labour an
outcome of capitalism or
the patriarchy, which predates capitalism?
Historical Note..
 1918: Right to vote for
Irish women over 30
 1922: Right to vote for
Irish women over 21
Below, early Irish
feminists, Hannah
Sheehy Skeffington
and Margaret Pearse.
Ten things a woman could not do
in 1970…(Irish Times 25/10/10)
 1924 to 1973: Married
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women banned from
working in civil service
Sit on a jury
Buy contraceptives
Drink a pint in any bar
Collect her children’s
allowance money
Get a barring order against
a violent partner
 Be entitled to equal
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ownership of the family
home
Refuse to have sex with her
husband (marital rape was
not a crime till 1990).
Choose her official place of
domicile
Receive equal pay for equal
work
http://www.irishtimes.com/
indepth/sisters/changesfrom-1970s.html
Feminists argue
 That women have little decision making autonomy
within the family. (Symmetrical decsion-making?)
 Have to do more housework than men and still
spend more time looking after the children, the sick
and the elderly (Finch, 1989, cited in Macionis and
Plummer 2002: 441). (Division of labour?/Caring
activities incl. emotional labour?)
 That violence and abuse i.e. the dysfunctional nature
of the (nuclear) family has been overlooked by the
law and academia. (Unequal power relationships)
Feminist perspectives
highlight:
1. The importance of women within the core domestic
unit.
2. The changing attitudes to and roles of women in the
areas of marriage, divorce and co-habitation.
3. The increasing significance of women’s roles as
carers within the community. (Marsh 2000: 554).
It has been argued that feminists fail to take sufficient
account of progress towards equality.
 In June 2004 the then Minister for Justice, Equality
and Law Reform, Mr Michael McDowell, told the
Irish Catholic:
 "A dynamic liberal economy like ours demands
flexibility and inequality in some respects to
function." It was such inequality "which provides
incentives".
 "Driven to a complete extreme, the current rights
culture and equality notion would create a feudal
society. A society so ordered, static, and where the
Government tries to order everything by law, it
would become as atrophied as a feudal society.”
 Response of Niall Crowley, the then CEO of the
Equality Authority:
 Equality is about celebrating diversity rather than imposing
homogeneity. It is about securing real choices for all groups in our
society rather than merely allowing opportunities that are all too
often illusory. It is about dismantling the barriers of discrimination
that flow from individual prejudice and action and from institutional
practices and systems.
 See also:
http://www.irishtimes.com/indepth/oireachtas/putti
ng-women-in-the-frame.htm
 Ireland in 5th place in the 2012 Global Gender Gap report:
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2012/1024/breaking
53.html
Changing Family Patterns in
Irish Society
 The family, in Ireland as elsewhere, has been
identified as an important symbol of
collective identity, unity and security.’ (O’Connor,
in Tovey and Share, 2003: 89)
 Studies from the 1930s and 1970s show how the
Irish family has changed.
 1930s → Farm/Household, family a unit of
production/reproduction, family roles = work
roles, marriages often arranged.
Finola Kennedy’s From Cottage
to Crèche (2001)
 Until 1980 marriage rates in Ireland relatively
low due to
 The legacy of the famine (inheritance
patterns)
and
 Economic conditions → high fertility rates,
Church control, contraceptive ban, female
migration and emigration, large numbers of
singles.
Surveys in the 1970s and
after..
 More diversity in family types in the 1970s –
shift also towards more modern urban
middle-class family. (Hannan, 1976)
 Continued persistence of traditional family
roles esp. amongst those men and women
not working outside the home.
 Care of children etc, could now be transferred
to other social institutions.
Marriage Patterns
 See McDonald p. 89 - 90 for
a summary of Bacik’s (2004)
findings on marriage trends
in recent times.
 Fluctuating marriage rates
in Irish society seem to be
influenced by factors such
as modernisation,
economic conditions and
changing attitudes towards
marriage itself.
And…
 Increase in births outside of marriage (31% in
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2002 acc. Bacik, 2004:65)
Status of Children Act 1987 abolished the
concept of illegitimacy.
Lone parents still experience discrimination.
Increase in the number of one-parent families
(86% headed by females in 2006).
Smaller family sizes
More women in employment
Divorce..
 Introduced by the Family Law (Divorce) Act in 1997
following a November 1996 referendum.
 818,842 people voted in favour and 809, 728 voted
against.
 Massive increase in the numbers seeking divorce
since 1996, nevertheless Ireland still has the lowest
divorce rate in the EU (Eurostat, 2006).
 Why? Religion, high home ownership rates, rural
populations, late marriage age, (relative)
cultural homogeneity.
Family disintegration and
breakdown
 Violence
 Child Abuse
- (Covert) domestic
- 1999 publication of the
violence
- Murder
- Barring Orders
Children First document
- Abuse can be physical,
emotional, sexual or
based on neglect,
The Family and Social Care
 The Children Act 2001
 The Domestic Violence Act
1996
 The Status of Children Act
1987
 The Adoption Act 1988
 The Childcare Act 1991.
 The Dept. of Justice,
Equality and Law Reform
 The Dept. of the
Environment and Local
Government
 The Dept. of Social and
Family Affairs
 The Dept. of Health and
Children.
 Barnardos
 ISPCC
Giddens on the modern family
 Rise in divorce and lone parenting, emergence of re-
constituted families, ‘beanpole’ families, gay
families, popularity of cohabition. See:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2003/jan/30/britis
hidentityandsociety.uknews
 Giddens’ The Transformation of Intimacy (2003) →
‘plastic sexuality’, romantic love has been
replaced by confluent love within the context of
the pure relationship.
 Beck – competing labour market biographies,
increased antagonism between the sexes.
Questions for further thought
(Source: Giddens, 248)
 Are all family forms equally acceptable in modern
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societies?
How can rising divorce rates indicate that the
marriage relationship has become more rather than
less important?
With the decline of the male breadwinner, what new
roles are there for men within families?
Is love enough to secure the institution of the family?
Are family values in decline? Does this matter?