![]() Textbooks no longer contain this warning, but many conservative observers continue to worry about the impact on children of working mothers and one-parent families. Any shift in this arrangement, they warned, would harm children and by extension the family as a social institution and even society itself. ![]() For example, most sociology and marriage-and-family textbooks during the 1950s maintained that the male breadwinner–female homemaker nuclear family was the best arrangement for children, as it provided for a family’s economic and child-rearing needs. Some children have advantages throughout life because of the social identity they acquire from their parents, while others face many obstacles because the social class or race/ethnicity into which they are born is at the bottom of the social hierarchy.īeyond discussing the family’s functions, the functional perspective on the family maintains that sudden or far-reaching changes in conventional family structure and processes threaten the family’s stability and thus that of society. As we have seen in earlier chapters, social identity is important for our life chances. Children are born into their parents’ social class, race and ethnicity, religion, and so forth. The incest taboo that most societies have, which prohibits sex between certain relatives, helps minimize conflict within the family if sex occurred among its members and to establish social ties among different families and thus among society as a whole.įourth, the family provides its members with a social identity. One reason for this is to ensure that infants have adequate emotional and practical care when they are born. The family is the major unit for teaching these norms and the major unit through which sexual reproduction occurs. All societies have norms governing with whom and how often a person should have sex. Third, the family helps regulate sexual activity and sexual reproduction. It provides them food, clothing, shelter, and other essentials, and it also provides them love, comfort, help in times of emotional distress, and other types of intangible support that we all need. ![]() Second, the family is ideally a major source of practical and emotional support for its members. Romantic love is the common basis for American marriages and dating relationships, but it is much less common in several other contemporary nations.Ĭolleen Kelly – Kids Playing Monopoly Chicago – CC BY 2.0. Wives and husbands have different styles of communication, and social class affects the expectations that spouses have of their marriages and of each other. The interaction of family members and intimate couples involves shared understandings of their situations. The family can also be a source of conflict, including physical violence and emotional cruelty, for its own members. ![]() The family contributes to social inequality by reinforcing economic inequality and by reinforcing patriarchy. In addition, sudden or far-reaching changes in the family’s structure or processes threaten its stability and weaken society. It socializes children, it provides emotional and practical support for its members, it helps regulate sexual activity and sexual reproduction, and it provides its members with a social identity. The family performs several essential functions for society. Finally, the emphasis on creating new organizational patterns is most thoroughly explored in Aponte's (1) discussions of "underorganized families" (many of whom are single-parent families).Table 15.1 Theory Snapshot Theoretical perspective I have drawn heavily on Haley's (2) idea that the therapist must be an authority, a problem-solver, and a teacher. Minuchin's (3) emphasis on generational boundaries and the problem of enmeshment underlies the theoretical and therapeutic approach presented here. Structural theory, with its emphasis on subsystems, generational boundaries, and organizational patterns, provides a framework for viewing the built-in vulnerabilities of the single-parent family unit. This paper attempts, first, to list some core problems encountered by all single parents and, second, to present a sequence of therapeutic approaches geared toward dealing with these problems. Although the single-parent family is becoming a predominant family structure, there is a surprising scarcity of articles discussing its typical problems or detailing specific therapeutic approaches.
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