SS1 - Sociology of the family 1
Why is family important?
Personal issue but also a public one (CW Mills) – ‘private troubles and public issues’
It is not possible to understand 'the family' outside its social context. In other words,
you can not put 'the family' in a box and talk about sex roles, socialisation or power
relations, without also looking at how these are affected by work, education, social
welfare, taxation policy and so on.
Family is seen to be important in Irish society for various reasons:

symbolic (eg Irish Constitution)

policy (eg individualisation; FFWP)

liked to ideas of change in Irish society (divorce, contraception, sex education
&c)

diversity (family forms and patterns) – indeed a changing definition of what
constitutes a family (eg extended family to nuclear family to new forms of family
(blended, single, gay, unrelated people &c)

media, advertisers, marketers, politicians &c frequently use ‘family’ as an emotive
marketing tool. Also a major topic of discussion (eg Marion Finucane, Gerry
Ryan)
Sociologists’ interest:

site of socialisation (eg fatherhood; childcare)

structuring basis of society (eg kinship)

institution of reproduction (eg property relations; education) (O’Hara)

policy issues (eg taxation, shiftwork, flexible patterns of work, childcare, social
care, fostering &c)
Family structure changing
Key changes:

decline in marriage

decline in birth & fertility rates

later age of marriage & first childbirth

increased ex-nuptial births

smaller completed family size (1981-1996 - families with one and two children
grew by 26% and 34%, respectively.

increase in numbers remaining single

increase in cohabitees? (1,298 family units consisting of cohabiting couples,
accounting for 3.9% of all family units in 1996; 60% were couples without
children)

increase in lone parent families (there were close to 130,000 lone-parent families
in 1996, with more than four in five of them headed by women)( in more than
45% of lone-parent families a widowed person was the parent. in a further 28%
the lone parent was separated while single parents accounted for 15% of all
lone-parent families in 1996)

increasing number of childless (childfree?) couples (a 34% increase in the
number of couples without children in the fifteen-year period to 1996 - whether
married or not)
Sociological approaches
A shift in the way that sociologists have viewed the family: from an 'innocent'
approach that saw the family in a positive light, to one that takes a less favourable
view and focuses on 'inequity' within the family.
This reflects a shift from functionalist theories of the family to a conflict
perspective: particularly towards an analysis influenced by feminism.
The functionalist approach focuses on the functions the family serves for society:
principally in terms of reproduction and socialisation. For functionalists males and
females have distinctive sex roles within the family: the male role involves paid work
and decision-making; the female role includes caring, emotional support and day-today management of the family.
Marxists (or conflict theorists) have tended to accept this analysis, but have also
focused on the ways in which the family reduces the cost of labour by providing free
childcare, catering and domestic services and also helps to reproduce capitalist
ideologies of consumerism and respect for authority.
They also argue that family well-being is strongly influenced by class and the labour
market. Generally speaking, for Marxists, families are viewed as stable and
conservative institutions.
These approaches dominated the sociology of the family until the women's
movement re-emerged in the 1960s and blew open the formerly taken-for-granted
nature of the family. Feminism did not simply accept the idea of the family as a unit
- it probed beneath the surface and discovered some fairly unsavoury aspects.
Women were encouraged to speak out, for the first time, about the realities of family
life.
It became apparent that the family was not so much a haven as a site of conflict.
Incest, domestic violence (not recognised in Ireland until late 1980s) and exploitation
within families were shown not to be pathological exceptions, but as part of a
broader pattern of power relationships within society.
The revelation of such inequality led women to develop supports for the victims of
family life: they established women's refuges, rape crisis centres, incest phone-ins
and help for those sexually and physically abused (see Gilligan’s book for further
information).
Women, Social Welfare And The State
Despite the fact that women have made a significant move into the
workforce, they still constitute the majority of welfare beneficiaries. Women
are also major providers of welfare, for example caring for disabled children
or aged relatives. Thus women are significantly affected by state welfare
policies.
Many feminists have argued that welfare policies in countries like Ireland ,
Australia, the USA and Britain have tended to support particular forms of the
family and have perpetuated the dependence of women. The result of this is
that many women and their children are trapped in poverty. Welfare policies
are linked to patterns of low pay and weak connection with the labour
market that many women are forced into because of their domestic
responsibilities.
The relationship between women and the state is important in other ways.
Family law, for example, is crucial to many women's security in relation to
property, particularly in cases of marriage breakdown.
Many governments (including in Ireland through the NWCI) now have special
women's units or offices that perform an important role in monitoring and
attempting to improve the status of women – often in conjunction with
broader international bodies such as the UN.
A very important function of the state is as an employer of women. The
community services sector (including social care) has been one of the fastest
growing in the Irish economy and many of the jobs (in the government and
non-government areas) have gone to women.