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PART 2 SOCIOLOGICAL THOUGHTS - Monneca Marquez

The document discusses various perspectives on families throughout history including pre-modern, colonial American, and post-industrialization families. It also covers myths of the traditional family and changing gender roles and family structures in recent decades.

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monnecamarquez19
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32 views21 pages

PART 2 SOCIOLOGICAL THOUGHTS - Monneca Marquez

The document discusses various perspectives on families throughout history including pre-modern, colonial American, and post-industrialization families. It also covers myths of the traditional family and changing gender roles and family structures in recent decades.

Uploaded by

monnecamarquez19
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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THEORETICAL AND

HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES
ON FAMILIES

Prepared by: Monneca M. Marquez


CONTEMPORARY
PERSPECTIVES IN THE
SOCIOLOGY OF
FAMILIES
• second shift-referring to women's dual
roles at work and at home
• the formation and dissolution of families
and households
• the evolving expectations within
personal relationships
• rise in divorce and single parenting
• the emergence of "reconstituted
families" (remarriages), same-sex
families, and the popularity of
cohabitation and child-free families
are all topics of inquiry.
• shifting gender roles
within families
• number of stay-at-home
dads has doubled since
1989, from 1.1 million to
2 million in 2012; fathers
now represent 16 percent
of stay-at-home parents,
up from 10 percent in
1989
HISTORICAL
PERSPECTIVES
ON FAMILIES
• Premodern household size
was indeed larger than it is
today.
• In the premodern United
States and Europe, children
as young as seven or eight
often worked, helping their
parents on the farm.
• Rates of mortality (numbers of
deaths per 1,000 of the
population in any one year) for
people of all ages were much
higher.
• A quarter or more of all infants
in early modern Europe did not
survive beyond the first year of
life, and women frequently died
in childbirth.
The Family Before Industrialization

• People in hunting and gathering society


• Lived in small groups composed of two or
three nuclear families
• Both sexes’ activities were considered fairly
equally important for a family’s survival
• in horticultural and pastoral societies, food
was more abundant
THE FAMILY IN THE AMERICAN
COLONIAL PERIOD
• Nomadic Native American groups
had relatively small nuclear
families, while non-nomadic
groups had larger extended
families.
• Nuclear families among African
Americans slaves were very
difficult to achieve.
AMERICAN FAMILIES DURING AND
AFTER INDUSTRIALIZATION

• people began to move into cities to be near


factories
• men’s incomes increased their patriarchal
hold over their families
• marital division of labor began to change
during the early 20th century
THE DEVELOPMENT OF
FAMILY LIFE
• three phases in the development of the
family from the 1500s to the 1800s;
1. Nuclear family that
lived in fairly small
households but
maintained deeply
embedded relationships
within the community.
• Individual freedom of choice in
marriage and other matters of family life
were subordinated to the interests of
parents, other kin, or the community.
• Sex within marriage was not regarded as
a source of pleasure but as a necessity to
produce children.
2. transitional form of family that lasted from the
early seventeenth century to the beginning of the
eighteenth
• The nuclear family became a more separate
entity, distinct from other kin and the local
community.
• There was a growing emphasis on marital and
parental love, although the authoritarian power
of fathers also increased.
3. third phase, which emerged in the mid-eighteenth
Century
• affective individualism, marriage ties based on
personal choice, and sexual attraction or romantic
love.
• The family became geared to consumption
rather than production, as a result of workplaces
being separate from the home
• In premodern Europe, marriage usually began as a
property arrangement.
• In the middle years of marriage, the couple focused
mainly on raising children, whereas in the later
stages, marriage was about love.
• By later life, those couples whose marriages survive
are typically marked by high levels of love,
affection, and companionship.
MYTHS OF THE
TRADITIONAL FAMILY
• glorify the “traditional” nuclear
family and vilify the new
“postmodern” families
• Many admire the colonial
family of the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries as
disciplined and stable, but it
suffered from the same
disintegrative forces as its
counterparts inEurope.
• Black slaves in the American South lived and
worked in appalling conditions.
• By 1918, every state required children to
complete elementary school, which virtually
eliminated the pool of child workers
• The Victorian Family of 1950’s
• Many people regard the 1950s as the time of the
“ideal” American family, captured in old
television shows such as Father Knows Best
and Leave It to Beaver.
• many had held paid jobs during World War II as
part of the war effort but lost those jobs when
men returned from the war.
• Betty Friedan’s best-selling book “The
Feminine Mystique” appeared in 1963

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