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
