Ch. 1--2 Flashcards
Dominant family form
Dominant family form: married couples:
Satellite Families
People living separately from their children and spouses temporarily in order to secure better opportunities for their family
First used in the 1980s to describe Chinese children whose parents emigrated to North America but returned to their country of origin, leaving their families in Canada
Delayed Child Launch
The postponement of home-leaving for young people due to changing economic circumstance and difficulty finding stable, decent-paying work
Big Bang of Family Theorizing
The “big bang” (Cheal 1991) in family theorizing
What we mean by family and how its changing definition has deep implications on access to programs, policies, and privilege
Process Based Approach to Families
It is important to include “process-based approaches” to “doing family”
This approach stresses the relations, processes, and activities that individuals share and do together; E.g., parenting, intimacy, sharing resources, dividing household work and care work, making important decisions
This approach offers the potential to transcend heteronormative, patriarchal, and Eurocentric assumptions about family life
Highlights the diversity and structural constraints embedded in cultural expectations
Functionalism and Families
Assumes that society is like a living organism made up of interrelated parts working for the good of the whole
Families are institutions that serve specific functions in society
Family members fill prescribed roles for the good society as a whole
Murdock’s work exemplifies this approach
Stability and order is the goal; change (especially radical change) is not desirable
Functions of the family (Parsons 1955)
Instrumental functions: fulfilled by men
Expressive functions: fulfilled by women
Likely focus of functionalism researchers: cultural universals and family dominant forms dislike rapid social change
Marxism and Family
Promoted by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in the Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (1972 [1884])
Assumes that distinct phases in human history shape, alter, and constrain human relations
Mode of production affects organization of social life and experience of family relations including exploitation and inequality
Social change seen as normal and desirable
The goal of Marxist/Conflict researchers: Identify power relations and inequality within the family
Link power relations in the family to broader economic and political relations in society
Symbolic Approach
George Herbert Mead—a proponent
Assumes that individuals construct meaning through daily interactions with others (e.g. in the family)
Sees society as an extension of the family
Individuals and interactions shape the experience of society
The focus of symbolic interactionism researchers: Observe how interactions within families help shape larger organizations like the state
Understand the meanings family members create and attach to symbols through in-depth qualitative interviews
Exchange Theory and Family
principles of economics, sociology, psychology
George Homans & Peter Blau—key proponents
Seeks to explain the development, maintenance, and decay of “exchange” relationships”
Micro-level approach
Assumes that relationships (even marital relationships) are governed by “exchange”
Rewards and costs are weighed and balanced within conjugal relationships in order for it to be sustained
Each party in a relationship brings something of value (resources) for it to be sustained
A relationship suffers when one partner is not satisfied with the balance of costs and benefits
Criticism: assumes humans are primarily motivated by self-interest and it overlooks the broader social contexts that shape, constrain, and alter family life
To understand the contributions of family members that help sustain family life
To look at how distribution of resources can lead to inequality and a power differential in a marriage
Family Systems Theory
Assumes that a family is a relatively closed system of social interactions, or a site of interacting personalities
An individual’s problems and behaviour are best understood in the context of families
Families viewed as a machine, with parts (i.e. family members) interacting in meaningful ways
Family is seen as a natural social system with its own rules, roles, communication patterns, and power structure
The focus of researchers using family systems theory:
To study interactions at multiple levels, modelled like a series of circles, one inside the other
To understand how a person is affected by and affects relations within each environment or circle (family)
Developmental Theories
roponents: Evelyn Millis Duvall and Reuben Hill
uses freud and Piaget and Kohlberg
Assumes that families go through a series of eight sequential or developmental stages in the family life cycle
Marriage, child-bearing, preschool, school, teen, launching centre, middle-aged, and aging
Uniqueness of the theory (Duvall):
Its family life cycle dimension provides the basis for study of families over time
Emphasizes developmental tasks of
individual family members and of families at every stage of their development
Built-in recognition of family stress at
critical periods in development
Its recognition ever since 1947 of the
need for services, supports, and programs for families throughout their life cycles
GOAL: To capture life-course complexity and gender-specific experiences and trajectories
Biases in Theories, Eichler
in Theories, Eichler
Monolithic bias: emphasizing uniformity of experience and universality of functions
Conservative bias: emphasizing only a romanticized view of the nuclear family and regarded recent changes as short lived
Sexist Bias: assumption of a “natural” division of functions between the sexes.
Ageist bias: largely excluding children and the elderly in their analysis of the family
Micro-structural bias a tendency to treat families as encapsulated
units
Racist bias: often devalued or outright ignored families of culturally or ethnically non-dominant groups
Heterosexist bias: treating the heterosexual family as “natural,” denying family status to lesbian and gay families
Big Bang Feminist Theories
The period following the 1960s was seen as “the big bang” for feminist theories; period of huge change
Challenges the apparently gender-neutral assumptions about family life and roles
Assumes that gender relations are historical and socio-cultural products, subject to re-construction
Feminists challenge myths about women’s roles and abilities, and advocate for change
Variations within feminism; E.g., liberal, Marxist, radical, socialist, psychoanalytic, post-structural, post-colonial, anti-racist, etc.
Queer Theory added the issue of sexual orientation to feminist theories
“The family”:
: socially constructed and reconstructed to meet the larger social needs and objectives that are defined by the dominant class
(“cult of domesticity” and “separate spheres”)
The historic centrality of families derives from their vital social functionsy the mid-nineteenth century, work and domestic life were increasingly separate (“cult of domesticity” and “separate spheres”)
Changes in family structure brought about by modernization
This was augmented and accelerated by transportation and communication advances
Chain migration in the early twentieth century saw the emergence of new Canadian families, mostly from Europe
Social Gospel:
an organized response to the dislocations brought about by modernizing forces
Women used maternal feminist arguments to pressure governments to address the problems of poor families
group of women who contended that their innate maternal capacities qualified them to conduct the needed clean up, material and moral, that society demanded in order to clean up alcoholism, prostition, etc. (also used maternal feminism)
Century of the child
New ideas about children and childhood– Canada’s Century and Century of the Child the circulation of ideas about childhood as a special life-stage associated with play, schooling, and “character formation” rather than work and wages
happened during modernization
Pronatalism
The establishment of theCanadian Council on Child and Family Welfare (later the National Welfare Council) in 1920
Pronatalism offered the solution to the perceived crisis in the family: “the better people” determined by eugenicists were encouraged to marry and have more children
Family Allowance Act
Canada’s first universal welfare measure, the Family Allowance Act, passed in 1944
“hippie ethic”
that challenged sexual taboos and embraced open marriage and communal living
The Divorce Act
The outcome of availability of female contraception
Higher-paid work opportunities for women, longer lives, and changes to the Divorce Act (1968) made divorce a viable option for unhappy couples
The influx of married women and mothers into the labour force
Murdock’s definition of family
four basic social functions, sexual, economic, reproductive, and educational; societies have separate spheres for the genders based on strength and intellect abilities
functionalist; families are institutions
Instrumental vs expressive functions
men fulfill instrumental functions to keep the family alive
women fulfill expressive functions to fulfill emotionally supportive relationships
Origin of family, private property, and the state
where marxist theory describes family
there is relative equality between the sexes; privatization created sex inequalities
Brofenbrenner’s ecological theory of human development
systems approach to family life; assessing how the home environment affects child development; child development is a multi-level interactive process requiring multi-level analysis of a number of interconnected systems
microsystems: family
meso sysems: school
ecosystem: institutions beyond a child’s immediate environment
macrosystem: customs, laws, values of the culture child is raised in
Social reproduction
term taken up by marxist/socialist feminists to refer to the paid and unpaid process of reproduction and maintenance of human life most often performed by women in order for society to socially reproduce (emotionally etc.)
New social history and family
was one of he earliest offshoots of the new social history during the 60s, when universities began studying the lives of ordinary people to bring to light the experiences of marginalized groups
Factory laws
enacted to protect women and children at home or in school In 1870s from working reinforced the male breadwinner idea
Reproductive labor
women’s unpaid labor in the home
Clifford Siftnon
“good qualities” of the ideal immigrant–showed how racialized immigration policies are in Canada in 1896
Chinese Immigration Act
closed the doors to Chinese immigrants
Scientific racism
fueled Victorian imperialism, enforced indigenous racial inferiority
Indian act and status issues
indigenous men marrying white women–conferred their status
women marrying outside lost all status
Social minimum
establish this for all Canadians as a right of chiefship and not just based on need; CREATED THE FAMILY ALLOWANCES ACT, FIRST UNIVERSAL WELFARE MEASURE
