Family as a Social Institution

Family
Kisha Marie C. Espiritu

Presentation Outline
• Introduction
• Terms and Definition
• Major Concepts
• Key Personalities and their Contributions
• Contribution to the Development of the
Individual
• Contribution to the Field of Guidance and
Counseling
• The Need to Study It
• References

Introduction
Social Institutions
– structures and mechanisms of social order
– Cooperation governing the behavior of a set of individuals within a
given human collectivity
– General Functions:
1. Satisfies the basic needs of society
2. Defines dominant social values
3. Establishes permanent patterns of social behavior
4. Supports other institutions
5. Provides roles for individuals
– The basic institutions: family, religion, government, education,
economics
– New social institutions have been established with the growth of
industrialized societies: Mass Media, Sports,
Science and Medicine, Military

Family in the Children’s Perspective
(from the Australian Video)
• A member (e.g. pet, father, mother, sibling,
relative)
• someone who: supports, cares, loves
• doing activities together
• living together
• being married
• Culture and citizenship

• “Family” (15th century)
- Latin word “familia”; derived from “famulus”
meaning servant
- must have been used to refer to all the slaves
and servants living under one roof, including
the entire household that is the master, on the
one hand, and the wife, children and servants
living under his control
- the social unit which endows the child with
social norms, values, rules and regulations
through the process of enculturation.
Terms and Definition

• Family
– primary social institution of a society
– “A social group characterised by common residence,
economic cooperation and reproduction. It includes
adults of both sexes, at least two of whom maintain
a socially approved sexual relationship, and one or
more children, own or adopted, of the sexually
cohabiting adults.” (Murdock, 1949).
– - The World Population Plan of Action affirms that
"the family is the basic unit of society and should be
protected by appropriate legislation and policy"
(para. 14(g)).

• Kinship
- a social bond, based on blood, marriage or
adoption
• Family Unit
- A social group of two or more people, related
by blood, marriage, or adoption, who usually live
together . U.S. Census definition of family

PRIMARY FUNCTIONS OF A FAMILY
1. Stable Satisfaction of Sex need
2. Reproduction and Imbibing Social
Values
3. Protection and care of the young
4. Socialization
5. Provision of Home
Major Concepts

1. Stable Satisfaction of Sex need
– Satisfaction of sex instinct brings the desire for life
long partnership of husband and wife. Satisfaction
of this sex needs in a desirable way helps in the
normal development of personality
– family as an institution regularises the satisfaction
of biological needs
Major Concepts

2. Reproduction and Imbibing Social Values
- nutures the child and imbibe in him the ways
of the society through the process of
enculturation preparing him to accept
statuses of adulthood
- the family’s primary purpose is procreation:
The family functions to produce and socialize
children
Major Concepts

3. Protection and care of the young
- The child at birth is completely helpless and
cannot survive at all without the help of the
family. It is the family which provides care,
protection, security (Physical, mental) and
fulfils all other needs to make him fit in the
society.
Major Concepts

4. Socialization
- The process by which children learn to
become human and adopt certain behavior.
- Children learn from what they see and
experience in their developing years.
Major Concepts

5. Provision of Home
- Family makes a provision of a home or a
common habitation for its members.
- All the members of the family depend on
home for comfort, protection and peace.
Major Concepts

SECONDARY FUNCTIONS OF A FAMILY
1. Economic function
2. Educational function
3. Religious function
4. Recreational function
5. Protective function
Major Concepts

1. Economic Function
- The family fulfils the economic needs of its
members.
- Family fulfils all the economic needs of its
members such as food, clothing, shelter etc.
The goods required by its members are
produced at home.
Major Concepts

2. Educational Function
- Family is regarded as the first school of
children.
- The family provides the basis for the child's
formal learning and gives the child his basic
training in the social attitudes and habits.
Major Concepts

3. Religious Function
- The family is a centre for the religious training
of the children.
- The family used to teach the children the
religious values, moral precepts etc.
- It is through the family that religious
inheritance is passed on to the next generation.
Major Concepts

4. Recreational Function
- Family is the centre of recreation.
- It serves as a centre of all recreational
activities like singing, dancing, playing indoor
games etc.
- The small children are the source of
recreation for the elders.
Major Concepts

5. Protective Function
- Family always looks after the health of its
members both young and old.
- It takes up the responsibility of its members
and maintains sound and good health.
Major Concepts

Types of FAMILY STRUCTURES
 Nuclear Family
 Extended Family
 Blended Family
 Childless Family
 Single-Parent Family
 Same-sex Family
 Families of affinity
Major Concepts

 Nuclear Family
- consists of a married couple (man
and woman) with their children, own
or adopted.
- In certain cases, one or more
additional persons may also reside
with them.
- This type of family is prevalent in
almost all societies.
Major Concepts

 Extended Family
- consists of two or more
nuclear families affiliated
through extension of the
parent-child relationship
- a family that includes in
one household near relatives
(such as grandparents, aunts, or
uncles) in addition to a nuclear
family
Major Concepts

 Blended Family
- formed when divorced or
widowed parents who
have children marry
Major Concepts

 Childless Family
- families with two parents
who cannot have or don't want
kids
- In the past, growing up,
getting married, and having
children was the norm, but in
today's world, more people are
choosing to postpone having
children or deciding not to
have any
Major Concepts

 Single-Parent Family
- families with children under by a
parent who is widowed or
divorced and not remarried, or
by a parent who has never
married
- a person who lives with a child
or children without a wife,
husband or partner.
- A single parent may have either
sole custody of the child or joint
physical custody, where the
child lives part-time with each
parent.
Major Concepts

 Same-sex/LGBT Parenting
Family
- refers to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and
transgender (LGBT) people raising
one or more children as parents or
foster care parents.
- This includes: children raised by
same-sex couples (same-sex
parenting), children raised by single
LGBT parents, and children raised by
an opposite-sex couple where at
least one partner is LGBT.
***https://lifestyleasia.onemega.com/t
he-tale-of-two-wives-inside-the-
marriage-of-angie-and-joey-mead-king/
Major Concepts

 Families of Affinity
- People with or without blood ties
or legal ties, feel they belong
together and want to self define
themselves as a family
Major Concepts

Types of Family
• Conjugal - includes only a husband, a wife, and
unmarried children who are not of age.
• Consanguineal – consists of a parent, his or
her children, and other relatives.
Major Concepts

Residential Patterns
• Patrilocality -- married couple live with or near
their husband’s family
• Matrilocal --married couple live with or near
their wife’s family
• Neolocal -- married couple lives apart from both
spouses families.
Major Concepts

System of Authority
Our marriage and family customs developed
within a system of patriarchy.
• Patriarchal: social system in which men
dominate women
• Matriarchal: social system in
• which women dominate men
• Egalitarian: equality in authority
Major Concepts

Key Personalities and their
Contribution

 Friedrich Engels (late 19th to early 20th
century)
- German philosopher, communist, social scientist
- developed what now is known as the Marxist
theory together with Karl Marx
- co-authored The Communist Manifesto with Marx
- explicitly linked the rise of the monogamous nuclear
family to sedentary agriculture, the development of
private property, and the elaboration of exchange
relations between men
- In his evolutionary scheme of things, a gendered division
of labour which associated women with the domestic
sphere and childcare, and men with the outside domain,
was both natural and egalitarian
Key Personalities and their Contribution

 George Peter Murdock (May 11, 1897 – March 29,
1985)
- also known as G. P. Murdock, was an American
anthropologist
- He is remembered for his empirical approach to
ethnological studies and his study of family and kinship
structures across differing cultures
- The family performs Four Essential functions to meet
the needs of society and its members:
1. Stable Satisfaction of the Sex Drive
2. Reproduction of the next generation
3. Socialization of the young
4. Meeting its members’ economic needs
- Murdock recognizes that other institutions could
perform these functions but argues that the nuclear
family is universal (in the 250 societies that he studied)
because its ‘sheer practicality’ in performing the four

 Bronislaw Malinowski (7 April 1884 – 16 May 1942)
- In 1914, he travelled to Papua (in what would later
become Papua New Guinea), where he conducted fieldwork
at Mailu Island and then, more famously, in the Trobriand
Islands.
- On his most famous trip to the area, he became stranded
due to the outbreak of World War I. Malinowski was not
allowed to return to Europe from the British-controlled
region because, though Polish by ethnicity, he was a subject
of Austria-Hungary.
- Australian authorities gave him the opportunity of
conducting research in Melanesia, an opportunity he happily
embraced. It was during this period that he conducted his
fieldwork on the Kula ring and advanced the practice
of participant observation, which remains the hallmark of
ethnographic research today.

 Bronislaw Malinowski (7 April 1884 – 16 May 1942)
- Malinowski argued that culture functioned to meet
the needs of individuals rather than society as a whole.
- He reasoned that when the needs of individuals, who
comprise society, are met, then the needs of society are
met.
- To Malinowski, the feelings of people and their
motives were crucial knowledge to understand the way
their society functioned:
“Besides the firm outline of tribal constitution
and crystallized cultural items which form the skeleton,
besides the data of daily life and ordinary behavior, which
are, so to speak, its flesh and blood, there is still to be
recorded the spirit—the natives' views and opinions and
utterances.” — Argonauts, p. 22.

 Meyer Fortes (April 25, 1906 – January 27, 1983)
- a South African-born anthropologist, best known for his work
among the Tallensi and Ashanti in Ghana.
- Originally trained in psychology, Fortes employed the notion
of the "person" into his structural-functional analyses
of kinship, the family, and ancestor worship setting a standard
for studies on African social organization.
- For Fortes, the minimal unit of kinship was the mother—child
dyad, which he saw as ‘demonstrable’ and hence natural.
- Fatherhood and other kinship relations, it followed, were
socially rather than obviously biologically based, and could be
organized in a variety of different ways in different cultures.

 Lewis Henry Morgan (November 21, 1818 – December
17, 1881)
- was a pioneering American anthropologist and social
theorist who worked as a railroad lawyer
- He is best known for his work on kinship and social
structure, his theories of social evolution, and
his ethnography of the Iroquois (Native American
Confederacy)
- Morgan’s kinship study led him to develop his theory
of cultural evolution, which was set forth in Ancient
Society, or Researches in the Lines of Human Progress
from Savagery through Barbarism to
Civilization (1877).
- Society had progressed from a hunting-and-gathering
stage (which he denoted by the term “savagery”) to a
stage of settled agriculture (“barbarism”) and then on
to an urban society possessing a more advanced
agriculture (“civilization”).

 Family has a great impact on human behavior
as it is the first environment that individuals
have.
 The social unit provides opportunity for stable
moral foundations and healthy interaction.
 It affects the individual in contributing
positively to build a strong and effective
society.
 It performs several functions of the society
that makes it the most important social
institution.
Contribution to the Development of the Individual

Family helps in the field of guidance and
counseling by its participation in the growth and
development of individuals.
 It has a significant role of assisting and guiding
the individual in reaching his/her full potential.
The family has a great impact in decision-making
of an individual.
Contributions to the Field of Guidance and Counseling

 Understanding the basic social unit of an
individual to evaluate a deeply rooted need
 Understand how society changes over time
through the basic social unit
 To know how an individual acts the way they do
in their environment
 To protect future generations and maximize its
potentials by conducting research and applying
effective measures that would benefit the other
institutions through this institution
The Need To Study It

• Kiyani, H. (2014). Sociology - the family institution [PowerPoint slides]. Retrieved from
https://www.slideshare.net/hifzakiyani5/sociology-35847129
• Indira Gandhi National Open University. (n.d.). Unit 4 family. Retrieved from
egyankosh.ac.in/bitstream/123456789/41279/1/Unit-4.pdf
• Thompson, K. (2016). Defining the family. Retrieved from
https://revisesociology.com/2016/08/08/defining-the-family/
• Sarhandi, N. (2018). Importance of social institutions of society. Retrieved from
https://nayyab.wordpress.com/2010/04/08/importance-of-social-institutions-of-society/
• Australian Institute of Family Studies [AIFStv]. (2015, May 4). What is family? (with subtitles
and audio description) [Video file]. Retrieved from
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DzlxG2B2neU
• Encyclopaedia of Children’s Health. (n.d). Single parent families. Retrieved from
http://www.healthofchildren.com/S/Single-Parent-Families.html#ixzz5faFDXmYK
• American Psychological Association.(2019).Families: single-parenting and today’s family.
Retrieved from https://www.apa.org/helpcenter/single-parent
• SparkNotes LLC.(2019).Social institutions summary.Retrieved from
https://www.sparknotes.com/sociology/social-institutions/section3/page/2/
• UN.Org.(n.d).The family, its roles, composition and structure.Retrieved from
http://www.un.org/popin/icpd/prepcomm/official/rap/RAP4.html
References

Question # 1:
• According to G.P. Murdock, it is a social group
characterised by common residence, economic
cooperation and reproduction.
a) Kinship
b) Family
c) Conjugal
d) None of the Above

Question # 2:
• It is a basic function of a family to produce and
socialize children.
a) Economic
b) Education
c) Protection and Care of the Young
d) Reproduction and Imbibing Social Values

Question # 3:
• It is a residential pattern where a married
couple lives apart from both spouses
families.
a) Matrilocal
b) Patrilocal
c) Neolocal

Question # 4:
• This anthropologist travelled to Papua New Guinea,
where he conducted fieldwork at Mailu Island and
then, more famously, in the Trobriand Islands. He
mentioned that the feelings of people and their
motives were crucial knowledge to understand the
way their society functioned.
a) Bronislaw Malinowski
b) Meyer Fortes
c) Lewis Henry Morgan
d) Friedrich Engels

Question # 5:
• If we consider our class as a family, what
family structure best describes our class:
Foundations of Guidance?
a) Nuclear Family
b) Extended Family
c) Blended Family
d) Family of Affinity

Family as a Social Institution

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