The Children And the Family

How can we define the word family? To a sociologist the family is one of the many small face-to-face groups that he calls primary groups. It has certain peculiar characteristics that differentiate it from other common primary groups such as groups that work together or meet together regularly for some leisure pursuit. Firstly, it gives special recognition to the relationship between one male and one or more females or between one female and one or more males. The former case covers the common Western European or American family; the latter covers the case found in Tibet where one woman and a group of brothers form the family unit. This definition is influenced by the findings of anthropologists among primitive peoples, but it serves to remind us that the typical family pattern found in Britain is neither the only one nor even the universal one in this country. The purposes that the family serves can be fulfilled in several ways. Temporary liaisons and men with several spouses, more frequently in succession than at the same time, are found in all social classes in the so-called civilized countries. These forms of family will give their offspring an upbringing of a quality very different from that given to children born into families of the more usual Western European pattern.

Anthropologists have found that some pattern of family organization is a common social institution even amongst peoples who do not understand the connection between the sex act and the birth of children. Even amongst those peoples who are ignorant of the significance of the sex act, there is a strong feeling between mother and child. The position of the father is less definite, as the part of the father in the family may be played by a 'social' father rather than by the biological father. However, here can be seen the second peculiar characteristic of the family, namely the stress given to kinship in the way that the family is organized.

The Functions of the Family is one of the ways in which sociologists analyze any institution is by asking what the consequences for it are of society being organized as it is or, in other words, what functions it is fulfilling. The concept of function is descriptive, not explanatory, and has to be used with some care.

There are two types of danger. One may move from saying that one consequence of the present family system is the socialization of the young to a position where the claim is made that families exist to socialize the young. Secondly, because functional analysis starts from the status quo the assumption can be made that no change will occur and, furthermore, that there is general agreement with the present situation. The institution of marriage has changed greatly over the last century; it is coming to be viewed today more as a partnership of equals than, as was the case, as a relationship between a dominant male and an almost servile female.

The family has ceased to provide all the meals and most of the clothes, since many meals and clothes are now bought outside the family. The family has come to be used as a very specialized agency for providing the affection that helps to ensure the emotional stability needed If men and women are to manage their lives successfully under modem conditions.

The primitive family was a subsistence unit that organized the raising and getting of food. The family held and farmed the land. In countries where hunting and fishing were important means of food supply the family organized the labor for these purposes. Today, production of most goods and services is carried out in factories or outside the household and members of the family are employed as individuals, not as one unit. Rewards in the form of money wages are paid to individuals who are often adolescents. Work and home or family has become separated. Different codes of values may rule in both, with the result that there is a loss of emotional unity within the family.

There is a further economic function that the family used to fulfill. Before the industrial revolution it was normal for the child, whether boy or girl, to learn his future occupation with the family; son usually was following the father. This continuity is now no longer common, though in some of the professions there is evidence that this 'self-recruitment' of occupations still occurs; the case may be cited of the sons of doctors following their fathers.

Today the child does not learn the technical skills of a job from his father, but picks up the social skills and the background to the job. Again, in areas where one industry is predominant, such as in a mining village, the possibility that a son can do other than follow his father is remote. But the majority of children live today in urban areas that contain a diversity of industries and occupations. In these conditions the family cannot fulfill its former function. Most parents can give neither the specialized training necessary nor the advice that a child needs if he is to match his abilities and aptitudes to the local opportunities for employment in the best possible way.

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