HHS4U/C Unit 1 Overview
All in the Family
INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL SCIENCES
In this course we will study individuals and families from the perspective of
the social sciences, a group of disciplines that study human society and
behavior. Our primary approach will be sociology, which seeks to understand the
behavior in individuals in social groups. But along the way we will also consider
ideas from psychology (which approaches the mental processes that influence
behavior) and anthropology (the comparative study of different cultures) as well
as economics and history.
We began the unit by looking at certain influential thinkers who pioneered
the field of sociology. Adam Smith’s landmark Wealth of Nations pioneered our
modern understanding of the economic forces that help determine how we live.
Auguste Comte is sometimes called “the father of sociology,” earning the name
because of his claim that societies must be governed by fundamental laws that
could be discovered through scientific study, just as the study of physics had
revealed fundamental physical laws. Karl Marx believed that the fundamental
principle driving the evolution of societies was an ongoing struggle in society over
the control of wealth and material goods, and that society was moving towards
the collapse of capitalism and the beginning of a communist utopia. Herbert
Spencer described the evolution of societies in a more literal way, arguing that
social structures and practices either die or continue according to the principle of
natural selection. This idea, that useful social practices survive, has become
known as “Social Darwinism.” Emile Durkheim claimed that the fundamental
bond of our society has shifted from “mechanical solidarity” (in which people felt
a common bond because they all shared the same duties and experiences) to
“organic solidarity” (in which we may not share jobs and experiences, but have
the common bond of relying on one another for survival). Finally, we considered
Max Weber, who dismissed the search for universal social laws, and instead
believed that we could only understand the behaviours of people within a
particular society by considering what those behaviours mean from the
perspective of the people themselves.
WHAT IS A FAMILY?
It could be argued that there is no institution more universal than the
family. Each of us has preconceived ideas about what families are or should be,
based on our own experiences and values. In order to study family from a social
science perspective we must be willing temporarily to put aside our
preconceptions and adopt an objective sociological perspective. In doing so we
will try to understand and describe the family in Canadian society, leaving aside
our own judgments.
We identified two general approaches to defining the concept of “family.”
The first is that of the prescriptive definition, which seeks to define family
according to who should (and shouldn’t) be considered “family.” This approach
may be taken, for example, by governments or insurance companies, who need
to establish a clear idea of who is or isn’t eligible for benefits or programs. A
descriptive definition of family identifies groups of people that carry out the
functions of family, regardless of the composition of the group or specific blood or
marriage relationships between individual members.
The Vanier Institute of the Family has developed a definition featuring six
key functions that characterize a family. According to this definition a family is a
group of two or more people that: provides physical care, adds new members
(through birth or adoption), socializes children, provides social control of
members, facilitates production and consumption of goods & services, and
provides love.
While all families may carry out such functions, they can take very
different forms. Some of the variations in family form we encountered were as
follows: single parent families, nuclear families, polygamous families, extended
families, and clans. The specific form taken by families at a given place and time
is influenced by such factors as religion, economic activity, geography,
technology, and relations with other groups.
THE FAMILY IN HISTORY
The history of the family illustrates the extent to which such factors can
influence the shape taken by families.
The brain structures that allow human children to reach their amazing
potential take years to mature. Until that time, the young require extensive care.
Anthropologists speculate that the first “families” may have emerged as an
evolutionary adaptation that allowed for the care, protection, and socialization of
the young. They imagine that these “proto-families” may have been like the social
groupings of our primate cousins, like chimpanzees. However, human family
groups developed a more complex organization based on kinship and the
suppression of sexuality between closely related individuals.
In hunter-gatherer times, the family gave humans a competitive advantage
over other species. The cooperative behaviours associated with families allowed
for complex collective action, the division of labour, and the sharing of resources.
While men focused on tool making and hunting, women enjoyed relatively high
status because they provided the majority of the family’s diet (by gathering plant-
based foods and small prey) as well as nurturing young children. Families were
likely composed of informal group marriages and the resulting children. The
husband-wife couple likely emerged in this period as a result of the availability of
stable, stationary food sources, which allowed the man to remain with his mate
and children and become “father.”
The invention of agriculture some 11 000 years ago ushered in
fundamental changes to human society, not least to families. Whereas hunter-
gatherer parents could not afford to have more dependent children than could be
carried, agricultural families had the ability to feed, care for, and protect larger
families. In fact, having a large number of children was the easiest way to
produce a larger workforce for the farm. Women’s status seems to have declined
in this period. The need for larger families led women to spend more of their time
nurturing the young; their previous role in the collective economy gave way to a
more exclusively domestic role. The accumulation of property that came with a
settled life led to the development of patriarchy, which served as a system for the
orderly passing of wealth and property to the next generation, by giving it to the
eldest son. In some places polygamy became common among those farmers
affluent enough to support multiple wives.
Near the end of the Middle Ages in Europe that a new family form began
to take shape. In the growing number of commercial villages and towns, large
numbers of men were able to make their livings as merchants and artisans. The
marriages were monogamous, because the family business was rarely sufficient
to support a large number. The “family” included servants and apprentices living
in the household. As this pre-industrial family form migrated to the new world, it
adapted to frontier conditions. Children were required to work as soon as they
were physically able. Frontier women gained status because there was a
shortage of marriageable women and the need for women’s labour in working the
fields alongside their husbands. But as the shortage ended and labour became
less urgently required, male dominance was reasserted. Women and children in
the pre-industrial family had few rights, and were subject to the will of the
husband and father.
The Industrial Revolution changed the family system in a rapid, dramatic
way. In the industrial economy the family was no longer the primary unit of
production, as it had been in the eras of family farms or household cottage
industries. Initially, urban industrial families needed all members – men, women,
and children – to work in order to earn sufficient wages to survive. But the ideal
quickly developed that the man should earn sufficient wages to support the
family, with the woman working exclusively in the home. The home having lost its
economic importance, it became an idealized site of retreat and nurturing,
facilitated by the wife/mother. Children’s labour was replaced by mechanization,
and public school systems were established to keep them safely occupied. This
“nuclear family” was smaller than its predecessors because children were now an
economic expense rather than an economic advantage, and because infant and
child mortality had declined to the point where parents no longer needed to have
larger numbers of children to ensure enough survived to adulthood.
Families have continued to change rapidly over the last 50 years.
Although the nuclear family remains the most common family form, a large
number of women only remain as homemakers while their children are young.
Many return to wage labour once the children get older. Legal changes have
given increased rights to women and children, and have made divorce more
common. As a result, single parent and blended families have become more
common and accepted. Same sex marriages, while now legally recognized in
Canada, are not universally accepted, and while same sex couples do raise
children, this is still a somewhat uncommon family form.
THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES ON THE FAMILY
There is no such thing as a completely objective researcher. In every
discipline, scientists come to work with their own attitudes and habits of thinking.
This is particularly true of the social sciences. While social scientists try not to let
their own personal beliefs influence their research unduly, the types of questions
they ask, and the approaches they take to answering those questions will
inevitably influence the type of work they produce.
A theoretical paradigm is a set of fundamental assumptions about the
world that guides thinking and research. Two theorists adhering to one
theoretical paradigm will not necessarily come to the same conclusions, but they
will ask the same sorts of questions. We looked at six prominent theoretical
approaches to the social sciences.
Structural functionalism is an approach that views society in the same way
a biologist might describe your body. It is a complex system (made up of smaller
subsystems), in which each part has a specific role to play in maintaining the
ongoing well-being of the whole. (Each part of the structure thus has a specific
function). They describe how the status (position in the group) of each individual
determines his or her role (required behaviours). Because it interprets individual
behaviour in relationship to overall norms, functionalism is a “macro” theory,
meaning that it focuses on large groups, or society as a whole.
Systems theory, on the other hand, takes a “micro” approach to studying
social relationships like family, because it focuses on how particular groups of
individuals form unique complex systems. It describes how individuals together
develop strategies (patterns of interaction) to accomplish desired goals. These
strategies are constantly being renegotiated as individuals affect one another
through feedback. Understood through systems theory, a social group as simple
as “the family” can soon be seen to be a very complex arrangement, formed out
of a variety of ever-changing subsystems. Genograms can be useful to represent
family systems in a graphic way.
Symbolic interactionism is a theoretical approach that focuses on how
people’s individual perceptions of “self” and “other” influence their behaviour.
According to this paradigm each person has a unique sense of who s/he is, and
at the same time has a mental model of who others are. Each of us interprets our
experiences (including others’ behaviour) according to these mental images. In
doing so, we assign our experiences symbolic meaning. For example, as a
teacher, I should realize that putting a hand on a student’s shoulder might take
on a variety of meanings depending on how the student perceives both himself
and me. If he sees himself as an accomplished student, the behaviour may be
interpreted as congratulatory (a “pat on the back”). If he sees himself as “always
in trouble” it may be interpreted as a rebuke. On the other hand, depending on
how the student perceives the teacher, the behaviour may seem friendly,
aggressive, or even sexual. A family’s success, according to symbolic
interactionism, depends on developing a common shared “language,” which help
us understand (literally) what members mean to one another.
According to social exchange theory, the best way to understand social
relationships is to use “cost benefit analysis.” It suggests that we enter
relationships in situations when we perceive that the benefits of the relationship
outweigh the costs of maintaining them. A marriage, according to this view, may
cost the spouses freedom, time, and attention, but will give the spouses net gain
in terms of affection, security, sexual satisfaction, etc. According to this model,
divorce would occur when one or both spouses perceives that they are putting
more in to the marriage that they are getting out of it.
The final theoretical paradigm we examined in this course is conflict
theory. Conflict theory views society as a collection of individuals and groups with
more or less power. Conflicts arise in society between those who have wealth,
status, and influence, and those who do not. As we have seen, Karl Marx
described history from this perspective. He believed that a capitalist society is
fundamentally based upon a division between the owners (who have money and
power) and the workers (who do not.) He believed that the workers would
inevitable rise and smash the system, ushering in an equal communist state, in
which all people shared wealth and power.
Thinkers who approach society using conflict theory are often interested not
only in describing imbalances, but in fixing them. Feminist theory has become an
important theoretical perspective in recent decades. Feminist thinkers examine
society trying to identify (and ultimately do away with) sources of injustice.
