SOC317 CHP 2 NUDES PDF

Families as a Place to Belong Familistic (Communal) Values & Individualistic (Self-Fulfillment) Values People as Individuals & Family Members MARRIAGES & FAMILIES: 4 THEMES CHP 2 – Exploring Relationships & Families THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES ON THE FAMILY The Structure...

Families as a Place to Belong Familistic (Communal) Values & Individualistic (Self-Fulfillment) Values People as Individuals & Family Members MARRIAGES & FAMILIES: 4 THEMES CHP 2 – Exploring Relationships & Families THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES ON THE FAMILY The Structure-Functional Perspective o The family performs essential functions for society ▪ Socialization, emotional support (love, care), financial security (food, shelter, education, basic needs), raising children, avoiding incest o Contributions ▪ Families are an important social institution performing essential social functions ▪ Encourages us to ask how well various family forms do in filling basic family needs o Critiques ▪ Unrealistic image of smoothly working families characterized only by shared values ▪ The functionality of specialized gender roles The husband-father supports the family economically & wields authority while the wife-mother enhances emotional relations at home & socialize young children ▪ Defines heterosexual nuclear family as the “normal” or “functional” family structure The Family Ecology Perspective o Explores how a family is influenced by the surrounding environment (interdependent) ▪ Similar to sociological imagination where families’ lives & choices are affected by economic, educational, religious, & cultural institutions o Various outside influences radiating outward from the family ▪ Neighborhood  Homeless children & those raised in poor neighborhoods are at greater risk for negative social, educational, economic, & health outcomes Children from upper-class families have excessive achievement pressure or the isolation from their busy accomplishment-oriented parents ▪ Workplace ▪ Community ▪ School ▪ Friends ▪ Economy ▪ Country Minimum wage legislation affects everyday family life ▪ The world Changing salt prices in grocery stores impact families in salt- mining regions of the world ▪ Environment Climate change, soil, plants, animals, electric bill increase Climate refugees: people who move to escape natural disasters of previously unknown proportions or rising sea waters that threaten small ocean islands ▪ o Contributions ▪ Help to identity factors that are important to societal & community support for all families ▪ Triggers interest in family social policy Various laws & other regulations & procedures that impact the family ▪ Family satisfation or success depends solely on individual effort  o Critiques ▪ Too broad & inclusive that nothing is left out The Family Life Course Development Framework o Focuses on the family life itself as a unit of analysis based on the idea that family changes in predictable ways over time ▪ Addition or subtraction of family members through birth, death, & leaving home ▪ The various stages that the children go through ▪ Changes in the family’s connections with other social institutions Retirement from work, child entering school ▪ Each stage has requisite developmental tasks that must be mastered before family members transition successfully to the next stage ▪ Role sequencing: the order in which major life course transitions take place ▪ Normative order hypothesis: the work-marriage-parenthood sequence is thought to be best for mental health & happiness o Contributions ▪ Encourages investigation on various family behaviors over time Women are more likely to work on maintaining family relationships ▪ How particular life course transitions affect family interaction From cohabitation to marriage ▪ Nature of interactions among family members who are in different life course stages Affection between grandparents & young adults o Critiques ▪ Assumes life course standardization leads to bias White, middle-class bias Economic, ethnic, & cultural differences makes 2 families in the same life cycle stage very different Exchange Theory o Applies an economic perspective to social relationships ▪ Social exchanges are based on costs & rewards ▪ Examines how individuals’ personal resources, including physical attractiveness & personality affect the formation & continuation of relationships  o Power: an individual’s dependence on & emotional involvement in a relationship affects her or his power in the relationship ▪ Principle of least interest: the partner with less commitment to the relationship is the one who has more power ▪ The relative resources shapes power & influence in families & impacts household communication patterns, decision making, & division of labor ▪ Happiness in a relationship is based on equality/fairness of exchanges (balance) o Social network theory: examines how social networks provide individuals with social capital or resources (friendship, people we exchange favors with) that result from their social contacts ▪ Focuses on how everyday social exchanges between & among individuals accumulate to create social networks ▪ How social connections impact an individual’s well-being, support system, & behavior o Contributions ▪ Draws attention of the impact of cost, reward, equality & inequality on feelings in a relationship o Critiques ▪ Assumes a human nature that is unrealistically rational & even cynical at heart abt the roles of love & responsibility The Interaction-Constructionist Perspective o Focuses on interaction, the f2f encounters & relationships of individuals who act in awareness of one another o Explores daily conversation, gestures, & other behaviors that go on in families ▪ Family identity, traditions, & commitment o Explores family role-making as partners adapt culturally understood roles to their own situations & preferences ▪ The father prefers to be more involved in child-rearing, and the mother has a strong career passion ▪ They construct a family dynamic where the father takes on more of the caregiving duties, and the mother is the primary breadwinner ▪ This arrangement may deviate from traditional gender roles but works for their specific situation o Contribution  ▪ Our environment is neither “given” nor “natural”, but socially constructed by human of the past & those around us now ▪ Constructed by human interaction, phenomena can also be changed by such interaction o Critique ▪ How do we move forward if nothing is “real”? It explains very little Conflict & Feminist Theory o Conflict theory: not all family behaviors contribute to family well-being ▪ Family interaction can include domestic violence ▪ Calls attention to unequal power in the family ▪ Interested in the political & economic organization of the larger society because family power comes from the power outside ▪ Attributed family & marital problems to class inequality in capitalist society A culture of competition in capitalist society encourages harmful spousal & family competition o Feminist theory: applied conflict theory to gender issues ▪ Male dominance in culture, societies, & relationships is oppressive to women ▪ Postmodern analyses, deconstructing the concepts such as gender dichotomy or the idea that marriage/family must naturally be heterosexual o Contribution ▪ Feminist theory brought recognition to women’s experiences in family To treat household labor as work, issues of wife abuse, marital rape, child abuse, & other forms of domestic violence o Critique ▪ Feminist theory is too political to be considered a valid academic approach Family Systems Theory o Views the family as a whole, or system, comprising interrelated parts (the family members) & demarcated by boundaries ▪ A family compose a working system that behaves predictably The ways in which family members respond to one another can show evidence of patterns  o When younger brother feels down, older brother tries to do a fun activity to cheer him up o Systems seek balance & symmetry ▪ Change in one of the parts sets in motion a process to restore balance Members have to change to compensate for each other which pressures each member to retain his/her predictable role A changing family member is subtly encouraged to revert to their original behavior within the family system For change to occur, the family system as a whole must change o In family therapy, family sees one member as a problem, but if the psychologist draws the whole family into therapy, the family system should begin to change o Contribution ▪ Has proven very useful when working with families in therapy By understanding how your family system operates, individuals can make desired personal or family changes ▪ Gives family members insight into the effects of their behavior o Critique ▪ Does not consider other features in the larger society that influence internal family relations Economic opportunities, race/ethnic, & gener stratification ▪ Tend to diffuse responsibility for conflict by attributing dysfunction to the entire system rather than to culpable family members within the system Leads to victim blaming as well as making it difficult to extend social support to victimized family members while establishing legal accountability for others, as in situations involving incest or domestic violence o Instead of holding the person causing the harm accountable, people might wrongly blame the victim for somehow "playing a role" in the problem o People might focus too much on how the whole family functions instead of clearly seeing who is hurting and who is causing the harm  The Biosocial Perspective o Argues that biology (human physiology, genetics, & hormones) interacts with social environment to affect much of human behavior & more specifically, many family related behaviors o Much of contemporary human behaviors evolved in ways to enable survival & continuation of human species o Human behavior has biologically evolved to be oriented to the survival & reproduction of all close kin who carry those genes o Biosociologists emphasize that biological predisposition does not mean that a person’s behavior cannot be influenced or changed by social structure ▪ Nature nurture issue o Contributions ▪ Genetic basis for human family & relatinoship behaviors & attitudes ▪ Interaction of social forces (nurture) & biological predispositions (nature) o Critique ▪ Used to justify gender inequality as biologically based & hence “natural” Attachment Theory o During infancy & childhood, a young person develops a general style of attaching to others which will be unconsciously applied to later adult relationships o A child’s primary caretakers (usually parents, mostly the mother) evoke a style of attachment in him or her o 3 basic attachment styles ▪ Secure attachment style Children who can trust that a caretaker will be there to attend to their practical & emotional needs In adulthood, trust that the relationship will provide ongoing emotional & social support o A child having confidence within themselves to explore new places o As an adult, they can share their feelings more openly & find support in relationships ▪ Insecure/anxious attachment style  In adulthood, concerned that the beloved will disappear, a situation often characterized as “fear of abandonment” o A child being distraught when separated from their parents, even briefly o Adults constantly needing to contact & get acknowledgement from others ▪ Avoidant attachment style Dodges emotional closeness either by avoiding relationships altogether or demonstrating ambivalence, seeming preoccupied, or otherwise establishing distance in intimate situations o Child will try to seem unaffected by the things around them o As an adult, being reluctant to enter an intimate or close relationship with others, putting artificial barriers to prevent the closeness, struggling to truly connect o Contribution ▪ How personality impacts relationship choices from their initiation to the maintenance ▪ What kind of parenting best encourages a secure attachment style CHP 7 – Marriage: From Social Institution to Private Relationship MARITAL STATUS: THE CHANGING PICTURE Fewer Heterosexual Married Couples o Postponement of marriage until older ages o People are moving away from marriage o One important reason for this change in marriage rates is economic ▪ Ensure financial security and stability before getting married o Marriage gap: difference in marriage rates between the poor & the rich ▪ Poor getting married for stability & support Legal Same-Sex Marriage o THE TIME-HONORED MARRIAGE PREMISE: PERMENENCE & SEXUAL EXCLUSIVITY The Expectation of Permanence