The Idea Of “Family” Holds Various Meanings For Everyone

Families, as units, are extremely complex and vary drastically from one another. A person might be under the impression that his or her own family is nothing special, especially if they are accustomed to their family’s routines. After analyzing my own family through the sociological lenses of an assortment of scholars, it is now clear that it is not as simple as it seems. Sociologically analyzing my family through the divorces that have occurred in my life makes it clear that divorce can have an impact on a variety of family dynamics, such as my parents and their jobs and domestic duties, the amount of involvement they have with their friends and family, as well as my financial dependence on my parents.

A family is something that comforts and includes others. It is an environment where people can feel like they belong. Although in societies eyes the family is much more. We depict who is fit enough to support a family and question if the family is functioning properly. In both articles, Homeplace: A site of Resistance by Bell Hooks and “Family” as a Site of Contestation: Queering the Normal or Normalizing the Queer? By Michelle K. Owen, both authors have distinct understandings of the concept of family and question the societal norm of how a family should behave. Family is a site of belonging and contestation. Both authors describe that there are many forms of family that contrast the typical nuclear model family. Also it is demonstrated that families supply a place of belonging and nourishment. Although society has placed values on families, distinguishing what families are most fit and functioning. Using an intersectional lens it is demonstrated in these two articles that many families reject the nuclear family model, and families are given a value and are placed within a social hierarchy.

According to functionalist sociologists, the family is the main institution of society where primary socialisation of children starts (parents teaching their children norms and values in the society). They also focused on the family in society and for its members. Functionalist sees family as a nuclear family that is the father, mother and their children. They view the nuclear family as the best family structure for modern society and also believe that family best fits industrial society. Parsons and Murdock have a similar view on family. According to G.P Murdock nuclear family is a universal institution and can be divided into four functions. These are reproduction, sexual, education and economic. On the other hand, Parsons believed that there

Many sociologists argue that the nuclear family is a universal and dominate institution however there has been an increase in diverse family types for various reasons. Examples of these diverse families are lone parents, reconstitutions and cohabitation families. Although most people experience life in a nuclear family, it represents only a stage in their life cycle. Social and demographic changes have meant that an increasing part of many people’s lives are spent in households that are not based on conventional nuclear families.

A social institution is “an organized pattern of beliefs and behaviors centered on basic social needs” (Schaefer, 2009). I believe that family is one of the most important social institutions. Family is a social institution that is always changing. My family has changed greatly over the past years. As a child I went from foster home to foster home. My birth mother was only 14 years old when she had me, and gave me up for adoption immediately. It wasn’t until I was eight years old that I was finally adopted.

Families are changing in various ways. In the articles “What is a Family?”, “Absent Fathers: Why Don’t We Ever Talk About Unmarried Men?”, “Cohabitation Instead of Marriage”, “Ballad of a Single Mother” and “Children of Gay Fathers”, they all share and show different ways families are like worldwide today. They speak about how they feel about there relationships with there family and children and who they are as a person. The new American family unit brings with it many struggles that have now become common components within the fabric of modern-day America.

In this last chapter, the author briefly summarizes the four definitions of family and how the family has changed over time. Although every family has different definitions of family, I believe most individuals agree that the interactional approach is more accurate. The interactional approach depicts that families have a sense of collective identity that emerges through shared activity and interaction. For instance, caring and helping each other in difficult times or simply just having dinner together every night. Furthermore, a significant change in families was the late transition to adulthood. Today, young adults are more dependent on their parents than they were in the 20th century because the expansion of higher education and the competitive

Family is a word with diverse meaning. The Oxford Dictionary defines it as ” A group of people consisting of two parents and their children living together as a unit.” This definition is known to be the most common stereotype in North America. “ This definition doesn 't comply with other cultures”, for example, the African concept of family states that “ Family is considered a basic cell of society. All social and cultural practices find their connection with a notion of family, either supporting or distorting it”. This definition relate more so to how Fedorak explains family on pg 106. Family is a big part of what defines how close knit a community is, jutted based on how different the definitions are we can how much closer African families are then North American families . In Canada, our society is changing. We are transitioning to a new style of living which is isolating family tradition and practice. I (A child who grew up in Canada) have grown up with two parents and two siblings. I have noticed stereotypes in my community that encourage young adults like myself to become an adult, marry and have children following in the footsteps of my father and his fathers before him. This is the driving factor as to why families in the past were so simple. I’m going to give you a perspective on how families in North America are moving away from what is known as “Nuclear Families” and into what is known as modern.

The discipline of Sociology has long been interested in the study of human behavior. This interest grows from the sociological conception of relationships which distinguish the individual and differentiate him from other members of society. Through the ages, man has been influenced by social interaction and cultural surroundings. Sociologists have also recognized that a social institution consists of a concept and a structure, and that this structure is a framework made up of permanent relationships. The family is a social institution consisting of a certain structure. In earlier times, society defined “families” as “close-knit, internally organized cooperative

To compare similarities and differences between different theorist’s ideas on the ‘family’, an understanding or definition of what the family is considered to be, is necessary. George Murdock defined the family as ‘a social group characterized by common residence, economic co-operation 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, G 1949). By using Murdock’s definition of the family, a comparison of what Engles, Somerville and Murray believe about the family can be reached.

I am an international student, I arrived to the United States in January 2011 with only part of my family. For almost five years, we did not own anything we either walked or had to ask relatives for a ride. We lived in the house of several uncles, and even lived for months in our neighbors' house. My mother was the head of the family, she worked only evening and night shifts at restaurants earning only money to pay my uncles the rent. My only entertained day was on Sunday when my mom’s aunt took us to church and later went to buy a one-dollar sandwich. My father could not do anything to improve our situation, he worked as a blueprints reader and earned a low salary in Mexico. A year ago, my father became permanent resident and started working

Now well into the 21st century, and as a modern, innovative, multicultural North American society – there are a myriad of family types, and subsequently, multiple definitions and ideologies that encompass family systems, functions, and representations. Galvin, Braithwaite, and Bylund (2016) attest that “family life is a universal human experience” (p. 2) and that “there are many ways to be a family [because] family life is as diverse as the persons who create families (3). Taking this into account, Galvin et al. (2016) reveal different existing family types that range from two-parent biological family to intergenerational family types with subsequently five

Structural functionalist theories are grounded in the thought that society and family are congenial entities and, as such, the harmony between the two is the natural state of people, as found in Leeder (2004). Structural functionalism, and the viewing of the family as a social system, is at the core of the family process and other theories. To understand structural-functionalism, we must first understand the coalescing theories in which it is rooted, functionalism and structuralism. Both approaches gained momentum in the 1920’s, during the time in which diffusionism also emerged.

Family is one of the hardest words to define. There are many definitions and thoughts of what a family consists of. When one accepts the definition of the census family given by Statistics Canada then a family becomes “a married couple and the children, if any… a couple living common law and the children, if any… a lone parent with at least one child living in the same dwelling… grandchild living with grandparents but no parents present… Census families can be opposite or same sex and children may be adopted, by birth, or marriage and all members must be living in the same dwelling” (Baker 2014). With family being such a difficult term to agree on, the creation of a complex study of family life emerges. The factors that influence family life are put into three theory categories; Social Structure, Interpersonal Factors, as well as Ideas, Global Culture, and Public Discourse.

For most of us, the family is considered as a well-known and comfortable institution. The perfect model of the ‘ideal’ family is still mostly considered to be consisted from two different sexes’ parents, and one or more children. Until quite recently, the sociology of the family was mostly functionalist and just in the last few decades has been challenged from various directions.