Effects of industrialisation Flashcards
Parsons (1965) - pre-industrial family
- extended kin networks
-Work and live with wide extended family, roles ascribed to family members based on their status within the family
-Items produced by family (e.g. food, shelter, clothes) could be bartered between different families
Strong sense of duty and obligation
Parsons -functions of pre-industrial family
Socialisation into family trade - equipped with necessary skills
Maintain health and provide welfare - high infant mortality rates and low life expectancy (aprox 30). Those who made it to old age would be looked after by younger
To peruse justice - if a member was harmed, the family would gain justice itself
Effects of industrialisation - Parsons
Geographically mobile - families located to where jobs were. Education became important, roles were achieved rather than ascribed. Wider kin less important, nuclear families formed as more mobile
Isolated nuclear family - mobility reduced support from wider kin. More inward looking and home centred
Specialised agencies developed - state took over education, health and welfare, leaving family to 2 irreducible functions . Family no longer unit of production by consumers of goods
Clear social roles for men and women emerged - clearly defined roles. Men - ‘instrumental roles’ Female - ‘expressive leader’
Felt roles complemented each other
Criticisms of Parsons - too simplistic
-Industrialisation can follow different patterns in different countries: Japan, workplace extension of family with duty and honour. Extended family important in contemporary japan, so isolated nuclear family is not present
Criticism of Parsons - Peter Laslett (1972)
-Only 10% of pre-industrial families contained wider kin: Peter Laslett’s 1972 - studied parish records, did not support Parsons, found that family may have already been nuclear due to late marriage, early death and sending children away to be servants and apprentices
May have been that industrialisation took off so quickly as families were already nuclear
Criticism of Parsons - Peter Lasslett (1972) criticsm
Laslett criticism - doesn’t give much validity but his evidence is more reliable as used actual historical records
Criticism of Parsons - Michael Anderson
-Michael Anderson researched industrialised Preston using 1851 census.
-Large amount of families lived with extended kin as W/C life was hard (low wages and unemployment)
-Extended kin provide mutual support system, helped provide finances, cutting costs and getting jobs in factories
Anderson concluded that during industrialisation, the extended family increased not decreased amongst the W/C
Wilmott and Young (Functionalists)
Disagreed with Parsons in that the extended families declined with industrialisation and argued that they existed that up the 1960s. Believed change was more gradual
Willmott and Young - stage 1
Pre-industrial family (before 1750)
-Family is unit of production - agriculture or textiles and family work as team
-Still exists today
-Strong conjugal bonds, kinship unit working together
-‘Kin ship family’
Willmott and Young - stage 2
Early industrial family
-Became unit of consumption (Individual members became wage earners)
-W/C poverty wide spread, nuclear families extended for security and women used mother and married daughter for support, often excluding men
-Began to decline in early 20th century - close family ties remained, 80% of women saw mother in the previous week
Willmott and Young - stage 3
Symmetrical family (1970s)
-Stage 2 has disappeared
-Separation of immediate or nuclear family for the extended family
-Husband returned to family circle
-Houses improved - free time spent at home strengthening conjugal roles
-Conjugal roles - equal despite being different, not interchangeable but symmetrical
-Rise of symmetrical family caused by:
1. Reduced need for family aid groups - wages increased, increased services
2. Increased mobility has severed family ties
3. Reduction in children
4. Husbands return to family circle
Willmott and Young - stage 4 (Not a lot of evidence so was dropped)
Stratified diffused family (Prediction)
-Principle of stratified diffused family (actives from upper class families would diffuse down to bottom
-Predicted new asymmetrical family with high earners being more work-centred so less involved in home life, weakening home life
Willmott and Young conclusion
That British families have developed from patriarchal production units to symmetrical families that is now dominant across middle and working class
Postmodern study of industrialisation - Harris, Charles and Davies
-Social change over the last 40 years - Swansea, 1000 people-household survey
-21st century - decline in community, increase in individualistic acts for individual needs and for something in return
-This has effected the dominance of the nuclear family because:
- No longer feel obliged to enter marriage - other choices available (singlehood, cohabitation)
- People feel like they don’t have to have children - causing decrease in nuclear families
- Children in early adulthood downgrade or cut ties with parents in order to fulfil personal aims
-Suggests that the nuclear family is not always ‘isolated’ or ‘privatised’
-Decline between adult siblings contact - but changes when children are born –> adult children reach back out to parents for support, and extended family as a result
-Reciprocated as grandparents reach old age
-Harris et al support idea that families are not ‘isolated’ but a collection of households
Criticism of Willmott and Young
-They assume that life has gotten better, and ignore negative aspects of life such as domestic violence
-Feminists question whether symmetrical family really exists
