Family Studies

An Introduction

Jon Bernardes

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2008
• ISBN:
  9781134711024
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

Designed for use on introductory sociology courses, Family Studies is the first UK text book in the subject. Each chapter is designed to work as an individual units of study in a course on the family.

Chapter 1
Family lives

Introduction

Most people in Western industrialised societies, and probably most people world-wide, consider family living as the most important aspect of their lives. In the first report of the Research Centre on Micro-Social Change, Scott and Perren observe that, ‘Family events were by far regarded as the most important aspect of people’s lives’ (1994, p. 263). A report for the European Commission demonstrated that 96 per cent of the population identify family living as the single most valued aspect of life across the European Union (Commission of the European Communities, 1993b, p. 60).

The most serious problem for anyone wishing to study family lives is their own closeness to the topic. This is not a matter of bias but rather the strength of beliefs about family lives. For most of our lives, ‘our family’ is the most important thing of all. Most of us are born into families and spend, whether we choose or not, most of our childhood and teenage years within ‘our family’. Even single people living alone can readily identify both immediate and more distant members of ‘their family’. Thereafter, most of us set up some kinds of partnerships that may ‘become a family’ with the birth of children. We then begin another period within a family as a partner and parent, perhaps divorcing, re-marrying and becoming a new parent. Even when our children have left home, we may find ourselves again closely involved as grandparents in gift giving, family celebrations or child care. It is also within families that ‘we first experience differences, divisions and hierarchies, which in “the family” are structured around gender and age’ (Ribbens, 1994, p. 213).

If ‘family life’ is so important, why not educate people for family lives, as we educate them for paid work?

In view of the centrality of family lives and the passion with which we believe family living to be important, it would be reasonable to expect the study of family living to be the most important academic discipline in our schools, colleges and universities. This is simply not the case. Whilst Family Studies is common in the USA and exists in some European countries, there are no departments of Family Studies in the UK. This textbook is aimed at developing and establishing the discipline of Family Studies in the UK.

The meaning of ‘the family’

Most academic commentators seem to believe either that ‘the family’ does exist or that it is a good enough description of what does exist to continue to use the term. In recent years some scholars in the UK and USA have begun to question whether anything corresponding to the popular image of ‘the family’ exists at all.

Ask half a dozen people what they think ‘the family’ is and how common it is in modern societies.

Despite a common-sense belief that ‘no two families are the same’, there is a clear and popular belief that something called ‘the family’ or ‘the nuclear family’ does exist. When asked, people are often puzzled as to why anyone should ask the question because the answer is ‘so obvious’. The majority will, if pressed, present an image surprisingly like sociological definitions of ‘the nuclear family’. Despite enormous real world variation and diversity, a common and popular image of ‘the nuclear family’ portrays a young, similarly aged, White, married heterosexual couple with a small number of healthy children living in an adequate home. There is a clear division of responsibilities in which the male is primarily the full-time breadwinner and the female primarily the caregiver and perhaps a part-time or occasional income earner.

There is something very strange about this image: it is quite simply unrealistic. Most simply put, this image of ‘the family’ omits the rich detail of everyday living and certainly ignores any possible ‘negative’ side of family living. It is equally clear that this simple model of ‘the family’ has not reflected the realities of people’s lives at any stage in recorded history. Dalley suggests that, ‘within…the ideology of familism, non-family forms are deemed to be deviant and/or subversive’ (1996, p. 27). This model does not allow for divorce, single parenthood, family abuse, sickness or impairment, cultural and ethnic diversity, poverty, homelessness and very many other important variations. The model of ‘the nuclear family’ does not reflect my experiences as a son, a husband, a father. This model does not speak of the experiences of those I know and love: relatives, friends, wife, children.

The power of ‘the family’

The idea of ‘the nuclear family’ is remarkably powerful; as Muncie and Sapsford observe, the ‘idea of the nuclear family clearly retains a potency such that all other forms tend to be defined with reference to it’ (1995, p. 10). This idea is attractive to opinion leaders because it asserts the correctness of clear gender divisions, parental responsibility for children and the privacy of ‘the family’. Ordinary people resist giving up the idea of ‘the family’ because it is so simple and justifies so much behaviour. We do not need to worry about the justice of women doing all the child care and housework or the justice of male dominance in paid work and many positions of authority (see Bernardes, 1990).

Everyday people have little choice but to accept the kinds of statements made in public and religious life. One of the key means by which ordinary people continually receive the idea and image of ‘the family’ is through religion and associated morality. A wide range of religious tracts contain notions of ‘the family’, just as they contain notions of God and faith. This itself has important links to ‘scientific’ arguments about biology and universality. These views also coincide with conservative beliefs, especially ethnocentric views emphasising the superiority of White Western societies. Even in the more secular Western societies, religious beliefs remain as foundations of widely accepted social beliefs.

Try and go for a whole day not using the term ‘the family’.

Generations of competent social scientists have accepted the existence of ‘the family’. This is both a puzzle and an indicator of the enormous power and strength of beliefs about ‘the family’. Considering debates about ‘the family’ involves considering central and fundamental issues about the nature of society. Not least are issues of sex and gender, paid work versus unpaid family work, who takes responsibility for childrearing, the purpose of ‘the family’, and changes in family life associated with socio-historical events. These, and many more issues, are central to the way social science is undertaken in Western societies. Despite a popular idea that social science is critical, even radical, social science is generally remarkably conservative in relation to family life. This conservatism reflects popular ideas about ‘the family’ contained in biology, history and morality.

Sociology

The main academic discipline supporting the existence of ‘the family’ has been sociology. Grand theorising in sociology requires ‘the family’ so that even the most basic explanations about the nature of society can be undertaken. For example, traditional sociology sees ‘the family’ as the key institution responsible for rearing children to become mature adults able to undertake paid work in the formal economy. Similarly, the division of labour within the ideal model of ‘the family’ is widely used to justify male preoccupations with paid work and female preoccupations with attracting men, marrying, bearing and rearing children. The classic sources in the UK remain the work of Willmott and Young who documented the nature of the ‘extended family’ in the working-class East End of London (Young and Willmott, 1957) and the much smaller immediate family (now popularly known as the ‘nuclear family’) to be found when families moved to new housing estates (ibid.) or into the suburbs (Willmott and Young, 1960). The idea of the shift to the nuclear family was also supported by those from the anthropological side of sociology and these themes were developed in textbooks in the 1960s (see Harris, 1969).

The existence of ‘the family’ has been taken for granted by those of the Left and Right, Marxist and conservative sociologists alike. For many sociologists, any query over the use of ‘the family’ appears rather trivial and tends to be dismissed. The failure to question the idea of ‘the family’ has allowed all sorts of mistaken ideas to persist, such as the naturalness of monogamy (whereas many societies permit polygamy), the inevitability of female inferiority (which many feminists dispute), the right of many men to control and abuse women (which many women dispute), and the right of parents to control and punish children (whereas some forms of punishment are illegal in some European countries).

Many theorists have made clear that ‘the nuclear family’ is an ‘ideal type’ or ‘a theoretical construction, derived from intuition and observation’ (Goode, 1970, p. 7). To use an ideal type is a normal and conventional means of pursuing sociology. Gelles has recently made the point that, ‘Ideal types are abstractions, and no phenomenon exists in the real world that can perfectly match the ideal type’ (1995, p. 12). The very same author ends his wide ranging American textbook by confusing an ideal type abstraction with an everyday stereotype, ‘Perhaps the greatest strength of the family is that it inspires so much concern and debate’ (ibid., p. 511).

The problem for sociologists is two-fold. First, the term ‘ideal’ is very often taken to mean the ‘normal’ which people should aspire to achieve. In this sense, the simple existence of an ideal type is taken by lay people to mean that this is the ‘best’ form of family living which people should adopt. Second, though, sociologists have rarely if ever enquired whether this ideal type reflects any part of everyday family living because it has been so ‘obvious’ to them as everyday actors. Sociologists take the popularity of the stereotype in everyday life to confirm the accuracy of their ideal type and everyday actors take the sociological ideal type to confirm the accuracy of their stereotype.

Gather a montage of images of ‘the family’ from newspapers and magazines.

This language trap can have dramatic results in some instances. It is most clearly seen in cases where authors shift from treating ‘the family’ as an ideal type or abstraction to arguing that ‘the family’ does exist. This is best seen in the remarkable American claim of Talcott Parsons in 1971. In a society with widespread poverty, a large range of ethnic minorities and a large working class, Parsons claimed:

It is of course a commonplace that the American family is predominantly and, in a sense, increasingly an urban middle-class family…there has emerged a remarkably uniform, basic type of family. It is uniform in its kinship and household composition in the sense of confinement of its composition to members of the nuclear family.

(Parsons, 1971, p. 53)

Biology and universality

The power and ‘obviousness’ of the popular stereotype of ‘the family’ is rooted in popular understandings of biology. Clearly, the sexes are very different in their roles in biological reproduction. Women conceive and suckle infants, these are indeed biological facts. It is very easy indeed to point to other species that engage in similar divisions of labour. From this it is a simple matter to create an image of a ‘biological family’ of lifelong monogamy between male and female, where the female is responsible for the rearing of the children. If this image of the ‘biological family’ matches both popular stereotypes and sociological ideal types, then they all become more convincing and reinforce one another.

This argument can be taken much further to add a moral dimension. Clearly, a phenomenon determined by nature will also be universal to the species. The arguments then become mutually reinforcing. If ‘the family’ is assumed to be natural or biological, researchers will tend to believe it is universal. If ‘the family’ is assumed to be universal, researchers will tend to assume that it is natural or biological in origin. These kinds of arguments have enabled all sorts of groups (from those framing civil laws to the makers of religious texts) to claim that one sort of ‘the family’ is natural and that other living arrangements are somehow ‘unnatural’.

Nearly all accounts of ‘the family’ include a discussion of universality. The source for modern debates about the universality of ‘the nuclear family’ is one of the major figures in the development of modern sociology, George Murdock. After examining evidence from 250 societies throughout the world, Murdock asserted that:

The nuclear family is a universal social grouping. Either as the sole prevailing form of the family or as the basic unit from which more complex familial forms are compounded, it exists as a distinct and strongly functional group in every known society.

(Murdock, 1965, pp. 2–3)

In the many discussions about the universal nuclear family, few scholars reject Murdock’s thesis. As Reiss (1965) points out, however, it seems that Murdock actually observed the universality of sexual reproduction. This is clear when Murdock argues that ‘the nuclear family’ may be ‘the basic unit of which more complex familial forms are compounded’. Would there be any cases for which the ‘nuclear family’ was not basic? Murdock himself seems to believe that single parenthood and polygamy are somehow basically examples of ‘the family’.

Ask six people which parts of human behaviour are ‘biological’ and which are ‘learned’.

The way in which sociologists exploring family living have drawn upon popular understandings of biology was clearly seen in one of the major works on ‘the family’ in the UK. Ronald Fletcher’s influential book, The Family and Marriage in Britain, first published in 1962, asserts that, ‘The family is, and always has been, the most intimate and one of the most important of human groups. With qualifications of negligible importance, it can be said to be universal’ (1973, p. 35). Fletcher goes on to assert that, ‘The human family is centred around…biological propensities and needs: mating, the begetting of children, and the rearing of children’. This illustrates the error of linking biological reproduction with a particular social form of ‘the family’. Clearly, there are many different ways of reproducing and rearing children, of which the Western notion of ‘the family’ is only one form.

In this way, the power of ‘the family’ draws upon deeply held personal feelings we each have about ourselves as biological beings. It is inevitable that it takes some great courage to overcome what are assumed to be ‘natural’ feelings and proclaim, for example, a dislike of children or a preference for a homosexual lifestyle. This again links morality and a sense of the superiority of Western industrial societies to issues of biology; all three become mutually reinforcing and extremely difficult to challenge.

History

Popular understandings of history contribute a fourth element reinforcing the power of ‘the family’. Looking at the economic and political power of the West, few historians have doubted that the appearance of ‘the nuclear family’ had some key part to play in this development. Most accounts emphasise the population shift in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries from rural extended families to densely packed small nuclear families in the new booming industrial towns of Britain and elsewhere.

Historians, like sociologists, tend to work with an extremely broad brush and look to identify trends and patterns. Shorter wrote an extremely wide ranging book in which he claimed to describe and explain The Making of the Modern Family (1975). In a single book, Mitterauer and Sieder identify, describe and explain the rise of one particular form of family, that is The European Family, associated with the modern period (1982). In adopting such broad brush approaches, historians inevitably avoid or neglect the complex details of ordinary everyday lives and few have doubted that ‘the family’ exists, is universal and is generally a good thing.

Historians have demonstrated the mechanisms by which industrial societies have developed to become ‘more advanced’. In all of this, it is has been important to argue that the particular family form labelled as the ‘nuclear family’ somehow ‘fits’ modern industrialisation. These ideas are also attractive in that policy-makers in many developing nations seem intent on moving towards a ‘nuclear family’ form. They are doing so in the belief that this will be part of the necessary social changes to achieve the magic of economic development to bring about the kind of Western ‘consumer societies’ seen and envied by many developing nations.

Most analyses suggest that industrialisation involves a shift from rural extended families to isolated urban nuclear families. This shift mirrors the dramatic change in production techniques from patterns in agriculture and ‘outworking’ to labour concentrated in factories. Pre-industrial relationships are all-encompassing, involving almost feudal ties of housing, food, loyalty, property rights and so on. Manufacture requires more specialised labour and obtains this by simply offering attractive wages that lure workers and their immediate families into the new urban towns.

List the advantages and disadvantages of having a large ‘extended’ family.

There are two kinds of problems with these analyses. First, they are deeply ethnocentric, ignoring other cultures and minority cultures within European societies. Second, we must ask whether the pictures of the past we have may reflect the hopes and wishes of the literate classes rather than the realities of families. Detailed historical work has suggested that pre-industrial households were surprisingly small and that ‘nuclear family forms’ were probably more common. Anderson has suggested that a household size of less than five people was common in England from 1700 through to 1900 (1980, p. 23). Goldthorpe charts the historical development of family relations in Britain and America but opens with a critical note, ‘family life may be more diverse than we think, and we can easily generalise too readily from personal experience’ (1987, p. 2). Another rare, yet much more explicit, contrary view is given by Smith who argues that historians have taken part in the ‘construction of a myth of a transition from extended to nuclear families associated with industrialisation’ (1993, p. 338). Smith attributes the development of this myth to the use of particular concepts and ideas from within history as a discipline and especially the adoption of the notion of ‘ideal types’ from European social theory.

The power of the image of ‘the family’ rests upon the way in which it has rarely been challenged and frequently been supported by disciplines as different as sociology, biology and history. The assumption of the existence of ‘the family’ within these disciplines has corresponded to a popular stereotype of ‘the family’ held by those practising these disciplines. In this way, a more or less ‘closed circuit’ has developed in which the idea of ‘the family’ has gained more strength and support despite any contrary evidence. Virtually all textbooks feel obliged to review biology, universality, history and the shift from extended family forms to modern nuclear forms of ‘the family’. Once these arguments are accepted as reasonable, it is remarkably difficult to think of anything other than ‘the family’.

Does ‘the family’ exist?

The simple problem that arises out of the popularity of the image of ‘the family’ is that very few scholars have ever bothered to ask if it exists or ever has existed (see Bernardes, 1985a, 1986b). It is important, here, to go beyond simply asserting that ‘it’ does not exist because of widespread variation and diver...