CHAPTER 10: FAMILIES, AGE GROUPS, AND SOCIAL PATTERNS CLOSE TO HOME

INFIDELITY a violation of a couple’s emotional or sexual exclusivity (also referred to as cheating, adultery,
or having an affair).

FAMILY any social unit, or set of social relations, that does what families are popularly imagined to do, by
whatever means it does so.

CONFLICT THEORY
Conflict theory takes a historical approach to families and focuses on political and economic changes that
have affected family life, especially changes that cause shifts in power relationships within families. Conflict
theory views industrialization as one of the most important of these changes, since it saw the family change
from a self-sustaining unit of production (a farming household) to a unit of consumption (a dual-income
household that purchases shelter, food, clothing, ser- vices, and luxuries) in a society marked by consumer
capitalism.
Women, for their part, came to have normative responsibility for the home; this included child-
rearing, food preparation, and providing emotional support. This new family form was far from democratic.
In large part, the conflict theory position on families has been continued and enriched by feminist theorists,
whom we will discuss shortly.
PATRIARCHY a social system in which men predominate in roles of political leadership, moral authority,
social privilege, and control of property.

FUNCTIONALISM
Functionalists view the family as a central institution in society—indeed, as a miniature version of society,
with individual family members coming together in a unified and productive whole. For this reason, they
expect changes in the family to mirror changes in the larger society. Talcott Parsons and Robert Bales's
functionalist analysis, following the theories of Emile Durkheim, views the family’s division of labor as the
key to its success. Ideally, the husband of the household performs an instrumental role as the breadwinner,
decision maker, and source of authority and leadership, while the wife fulfills an expressive role as
homemaker, nurturer, and emotional center of the family.
Moreover, the internet is starting to replace the family as the place where socialization takes place,
and functionalists may need to rework their conception of what, exactly, the family’s function is in present-
day society.

SYMBOLIC INTERACTIONISM
Social constructionists, who carry on the symbolic interactionist argument on a societal scale, focus on the
development and use of family ideologies such as the “family values” promoted by right-wing religious
leaders and conservative politicians. Thus, traditional ideologies are used to hurt vulnerable families, under
the guise of helping to preserve traditional family life.

FEMINIST THEORY
Feminist analyses of families tend to focus on the link between the present-day nuclear family, the economy,
and women’s subordination. First, families biologically reproduce the next generation of workers and raise
them until they are ready to enter the workforce. Second, families—as key agents of socialization—
ideologically reproduce the next generation of workers by teaching them how to function compliantly in a
capitalist system. Third, families legally reproduce the next generation of workers since it is through
monogamous patterns of marriage and reproduction that stable patterns of ownership and inheritance are
preserved.
Finally, it is through the unpaid and unrewarded—not to mention potentially alienating and often
exploitive—practices of motherhood in a patriarchal society that capitalism is able to assume the continued
supply of exploitable workers. Thus, from this feminist standpoint, capitalism has a vested interest in
preserving both patriarchy and gender inequality—patriarchy because it compels unpaid domestic services
from women, and gender inequality because it allows employers to under- pay women when they venture
into the paid workforce.
The idea of the FAMILY has expanded to include single parents, stepfamilies, families with adoptive
children, grandchildren, nieces, nephews, foster children, and gay and lesbian families, among many other
diverse permutations.

The CENSUS FAMILY devised by Statistics Canada, however, attempts to offer a practical solution to this
problem. Briefly, it defines a family as a married couple (with or without children), a common-law couple
(with or without children), or a lone-parent family.

Children living only with grandparents with no parents present are considered a census family, though the
definition does not apparently include families with larger KIN GROUPS (a group of people related by
blood or marriage), including aunts, uncles, or cousins; nor does it attend to the feelings or obligations
members of these families have toward each other.

NUCLEAR FAMILY a group that usually consists of a father, a mother, and their children living in the same
dwelling. Such a family comprises no more than three relationships: between spouses, between parents and
children, and between siblings.

INDUSTRIALIZATION reorganization of an economy for the purpose of manufacturing, using machinery

and inanimate forms of energy, and the social changes that accompany it.

URBANIZATION a population shift from rural to urban ‘areas, resulting in the growth of cities and the
development of city lifestyles.

EXTENDED FAMILY multiple generations of relatives living together, or several adult siblings with their
spouses and children who share a dwelling and resources. More than three of relationship may be present.

TELECOMMUTING a work arrangement in which employees do not commute to a central place of work
but instead often work at home.