Family: Socialization and Interaction Process

Robert F. Bales, Talcot Parsons

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317834465
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

This is Volume VII of fifteen in a series on the Sociology of Gender and the Family. Originally published in 1956, this collection of papers demonstrates the authors' interest is in the functioning of the modern American family and its place in the structure of our society and that perhaps the most important function of the family lies in its contribution to the socialization of children. In view of this fact an analysis of the family with special reference to its functions as a socializing agency should contribute importantly to our understanding, both of the family itself and of its relations to the rest of the social structure in which it exists.

^CHAPTER I

The American Family: Its Relations to Personality and to the Social Structure

BY TALCOTT PARSONS

The American family has, in the past generation or more, been undergoing a profound process of change. There has been much difference of opinion among social scientists, as well as among others concerned, as to the interpretation of these changes. Some have cited facts such as the very high rates of divorce, the changes in the older sex morality, and until fairly recently, the decline in birth rates, as evidence of a trend to disorganization in an absolute sense. Such considerations as these have in turn often been linked with what has sometimes been called the “loss of function” of the family.¹ This refers to the fact that so many needs, for example as for clothing, which formerly were met by family members working in the home, are now met by outside agencies. Thus clothing is now usually bought ready-made; there is much less food-processing in the household, there is a great deal of commercial recreation outside the home, etc.

That changes of a major character have been going on seems to be beyond doubt. That some of them have involved disorganization of a serious character is clear. But we know that major structural changes in social systems always involve strain and disorganization, so the question of evaluating symptoms of disorganization, of which we can regard the high divorce rates as one, involves the question of how much is a general trend to disorganization as such, how much is what may be called the “disorganization of transition.”

Certain facts about the most recent phases of development seem to us to throw doubt on the thesis of general disorganization. First, after the post-war peak, the upward trend of divorce rates has been checked, though it is too early to judge what the longer run trend is likely to be.² To judge the impact of the instability of marriages, also the distribution of divorces by duration of marriage and by relations to children is just as important as the absolute numbers. As the figures show, by and large divorces are, and continue to be concentrated in the early periods of marriage and in childless couples. Even though married before and divorced, once people settle down to having children there is a relatively high probability that they will stay together.³

Second, divorce certainly has not led to a general disillusionment with marriage, so that people prefer to stay single or not to try again. In spite of a situation where it has become economically easier for single women to support themselves independently than ever before, the proportion of the population married and living with their spouses is the highest that it has ever been in the history of the census and has risen perceptibly within the recent period.⁴

Third, though down until the mid-thirties there had been a progressive decline in birth rates until on a long-run basis the population was for a time no longer fully reproducing itself, by now it has become clear that the revival of the birth rate which began in the early forties has not been only a matter of catching up the deficit of war-time, but has reached a new plateau on what appears to be a relatively stable basis.⁵ This is certainly suggestive of a process of readjustment rather than of a continuous trend of disorganization.

In this connection it should be remembered that the immense increase in the expectancy of life since about the turn of the century⁶ has meant that continuance of the birth rates of that time would have led to a rate of population increase which few could contemplate with equanimity. The transition from a high birth rate-high death rate population economy of most of history to one where low death rates have to be balanced by substantially lower birth rates than before is one of the profoundest adjustments human societies have ever had to make, going as it does to the deepest roots of motivation. In processes of such magnitude it is not unusual for there to be swings of great amplitude to levels which are incompatible with longer-run stability. There is at least a good case for the view that the low birth rates of the nineteen-thirties—not of course confined to the United States-constituted the extreme point of such a swing, and that extrapolating the trend up to that point simply failed to take account of adjustive processes already at work. At any rate, the recent facts have shifted the burden of proof to him who argues that the disorganization of the family is bringing imminent race suicide in its wake.

There is a further bit of evidence which may be of significance. The family after all is a residential unit in our society. If the family were breaking up, one would think that this would be associated with a decline of the importance of the “family home” as the preferred place to live of the population. Recent trends of development seem to indicate that far from family homes being “on their way out” there has, in recent years, been an impressive confirmation that even more than before this is the preferred residential pattern. The end of World War II left us with a large deficit of housing facilities. Since then, once the shortages of materials were overcome, there has been an enormouse amount of residential building. In this building, as is indicated by the figures, the single family house occupies an extraordinarily prominent place.⁷ It seems that the added mobility given our population by modern means of transportation, especially in making possible a considerable geographical distance between place of residence and place of work, has led to a strengthening of the predilection to have a “home of our own.” In the face particularly of a level of geographical and occupational mobility which makes permanence of tenure of a residential location highly problematical, this is a most impressive phenomenon.

The situation with which we are concerned may be summed up by noting again that, in spite of divorces and related phenomena, Americans recently have been marrying on an unprecedented scale. They have been having children, not on an unprecedented scale, but on one which by contrast with somewhat earlier trends is unlikely to be without significance and, third, they have been establishing homes for themselves as family units on a very large scale. Since the bulk of home-provision has been on the financial responsibility of the couples concerned, it seems unlikely that the having of children is a simple index of irresponsibility, that we have, as Professor Carver used to put it, produced a generation of “spawners” as contrasted with “family-builders.”⁸

At various later points in this volume we are going to argue both that there are certain very important elements of constancy in the structure and in the functional significance of the family on a human cultural level, and that these elements of constancy are by no means wholly or even mainly a reflection of its biological composition. But this view is, in our opinion, by no means incompatible with an emphasis, in other respects, on certain important elements of variation in the family. The set of these latter elements on which we wish now to focus attention is that concerned with the level of structural differentiation in the society.

It is a striking fact of sociological discussion that there has been no settled agreement on either of two fundamental problems. One is the problem of the structural and functional relations between the nuclear family on the one hand, and the other elements of the kinship complex in the same society. Structural analysis of kinship is, we feel, just reaching a point where the importance of clear discriminations in this field is coming to be appreciated. Second, there has been no clear conception of what are the important “functions of the family.” Procreation and child care are always included, as is some reference to sexual relations, but in addition there are frequent references to “economic” functions, religious functions and various others.

There has been little attempt to work out the implications of the suggestion that there are certain “root functions” which must be found wherever there is a family or kinship system at all, while other functions may be present or not according to the kind of family or kinship system under consideration, and its place in the structure of the rest of the society.

The aspect of this problem in which we are particularly interested concerns its relations to the problem of structural differentiation in societies. It is well known that in many “primitive” societies there is a sense in which kinship “dominates” the social structure; there are few concrete structures in which participation is independent of kinship status. In comparative perspective it is clear that in the more “advanced” societies a far greater part is played by non-kinship structures. States, churches, the larger business firms, universities and professional associations cannot be treated as mere “extensions” of the kinship system.

The process by which non-kinship units become of prime importance in a social structure, inevitably entails “loss of function” on the part of some or even all of the kinship units. In the processes of social evolution there have been many stages by which this process has gone on, and many different directions in which it has worked out.

Our suggestion is, in this perspective, that what has recently been happening to the American family constitutes part of one of these stages of a process of differentiation. This process has involved a further step in the reduction of the importance in our society of kinship units other than the nuclear family. It has also resulted in the transfer of a variety of functions from the nuclear family to other structures of the society, notably the occupationally organized sectors of it. This means that the family has become a more specialized agency than before, probably more specialized than it has been in any previously known society. This represents a decline of certain features which traditionally have been associated with families; but whether it represents a “decline of the family” in a more general sense is another matter; we think not. We think the trend of the evidence points to the beginning of the relative stabilization of a new type of family structure in a new relation to a general social structure, one in which the family is more specialized than before, but not in any general sense less important, because the society is dependent more exclusively on it for the performance of certain of its vital functions.

We further think that this new situation presents a particularly favorable opportunity to the social scientist. Because we are dealing with a more highly differentiated and specialized agency, it is easier to identify clearly the features of it which are essential on the most general level of cross-cultural significance. The situati...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• The Sociology of Gender and the Family
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Preface
• Contents
• Figures and Tables
• Chapter I The American Family: Its Relations to Personality and to the Social Structure
• Chapter II Family Structure and the Socialization of the Child
• Chapter III The Organization of Personality as a System of Action
• Chapter IV The Mechanisms of Personality Functioning with Special Reference to Socialization
• Chapter V Role Differentiation in Small Decision-Making Groups
• Chapter VI Role Differentiation in the Nuclear Family: A Comparative Study
• Chapter VII Conclusion: Levels of Cultural Generality and the Process of Differentiation
• Appendix A: A Note on Some Biological Analogies
• Appendix B: A Note on the Analysis of Equilibrium Systems
• Bibliography
• Index