Traditional Views on the Function of the Family

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Traditional Views on the Function of the Family

• The perfect Kelloggs family and the disastrous
  Simpsons have one thing in common they
  represent the only functional solution to
  child-rearing.

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Social Trends Marriage Divorce after the 1969
Act

• Divorce rate p/1000 1961-2, 1971-6, 1990-13
• Divorces per year have doubled
• 40 of marriages fail, 75 involving kids
• Marriage rate p/1000 has halved
• Re-Marriage rate p/1000 has fallen
• Cohabitation has doubled (30 of 20-somethings)
• Births to unmarried mums up from 8 gt 30
• 1998 44,000 pregnancies 16-18, 8000 under 16 (3
  of all unmarried mums are teenagers)

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Social Trends Marriage, Divorce Remarriage
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General Household Survey 1 Single Parenthood
2002/3

• 1961 2 of households SP gt 2002 8 SP
• 1972 7 of children had SP gt 2002 21 SP
• 2003 25 of households dependent kids SP
• 88 of kids with a SP live with their mum.
• Single Parent Mothers in 2003
  45 unmarried mum a big increase
  since 1972
• 32 divorced mum
• 18 separated lone mum
• 5 widowed lone mother

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General Household Survey 2 Single Parenthood
2002/3

• 15 of SPs stop being lone parents each year and
  set up home with a new partner.
• 55 of SP are on Income Support, compared to 4
  of couples with dependent children.
• 61 of lone-parent families are said to be below
  the poverty line.
• Despite the CSA, 70 of non-resident parents
  linked to a SP, made no contribution towards the
  cost of raising their children either because
  they had deserted the family or because they were
  themselves unemployed or on low incomes.

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British Social Attitudes SurveySingle
Parenthood 2000

• Of 75-85 yr olds, 90 thought people who wanted
  children should get married, but only 30 of
  those under 25 agreed with this.
• 82 of people disapproved of teen pregnancies.
• 83 thought bringing up a child on her own was
  too hard for a single teenager.
• 42 thought bringing up a child on her own was
  too hard for a single woman.
• Very few illegitimate births are planned gt single
  parenthood is not seen as desirable, by many.
• Most single parents had hoped for a partner.

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Traditional views on the function of the Family

• The Kelloggs or Simpsons Family is seen by
  Functionalists as a Universal Solution to the
  problem of raising and socialising Human children
• Nuclear Families have adapted to meet the needs
  of post-Industrial Societies
• The New Right considers the diversity of modern
  families a threat to our way of life.

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Murdock Social Structure 1949

• Family is a Universal Solution to the need to
  protect and socialise children
• The Family is a basic economic unit
• The Nuclear Family is the product of
  industrialisation, because societies need a
  mobile labour force
• This is a Functionalist Structuralist view that
  assumes people are shaped by Society

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Talcott Parsons The Social System 1951

• The Family socialises children and stabilises
  (supports) the personalities of the adults,
  giving order and meaning to their lives the
  warm bath.
• As societies become more complex, so members
  specialise in different roles.
• Gender roles are specialised women nurture the
  children (Expressive), men provide (Instrumental)
• This is Functionalist, but also uses the
  Sociobiological argument that the Nuclear Family
  (Patriarchal in form) is somehow natural

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Talcott Parsons Socialisation Interaction 1955

• Industrialisation and urbanisation caused a
  change from Nuclear to Extended families
• A mobile labour force was needed
• Family no longer defined status/class people
  could improve themselves social mobility
• Kinship declined in importance also because
  professionals replaced kin, in providing
  assistance in sickness, unemployment, for
  childcare or for education.

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Berger Marriage social construction of reality
1964

• The meaning of Family is constructed from the
  meanings that social actors give to their
  interactions with other social members
• Actors use the Family to make sense of their
  world this is essential for avoiding anomie
  (feeling of not belonging) or alienation (feeling
  of not having a stake in Society)
• Families provide a sense of having
  responsibilities and guidelines (norms) for
  behaviour

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Berger War over the Family 1983

• Supported the New Right move to defend Family
  Values and traditional morality
• Attacked socialist, collective, approaches to
  child-rearing as a failure (Soviet) or as
  exaggerated (Kibbutz)
• Childrens homes were the worst way to bring up
  children abuse,crime,drugs etc.
• Family is best, dont knock it

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Mount The Subversive Family 1982

• New Right / Functionalist view that the Family is
  a social institution that works, because it
  conforms to human nature. This is the Familial
  ideology.
• Caring for children is the duty and destiny of
  women women shouldnt be made to feel inferior
  because they choose to be stay-at-home mothers
• Diversity, divorce and womens liberation are
  covers for a new selfishness immorality
• Dysfunctional families weaken Society

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Abbot Wallace 1992The New Right the Family

• 1980s reaction against diversity, high taxation
  and youth crime Pro-Family, Pro-Life, Catholic,
  Conventional,C.of E,, Evangelical, Conservative,
  Muslim, Fundamentalist, UK Mrs Thatcher 1979-90
  USA President Reagan 1981-1989.
• Labours socialist policies were deliberately
  undermining the family high taxes forced more
  mothers to work, social security payments to
  single mothers encouraged dysfunctional families
  to raise dysfunctional children, homosexuality
  had been encouraged legalised, personal
  responsibility for caring for ones children had
  been replaced by a leave it to the State
  attitude.

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Lister 1996 Back to the Family

• John Major 1990-1997 carried on the Thatcher
  approach to the Family, until wrecked by scandal.
• A Family minister, raised Child benefit, Child
  Support Agency, Adoption privileged married
  couples over partners or gays, Back to Basics
  campaign to restore family values, criticism of
  lone-mothers as irresponsible scroungers,
• The Childrens Act 1989 the Family Law Act 1996
  rejected the clean break ideal for divorces.
  Instead it was presumed that divorce was a
  problem for children that both parents should
  still share all of the responsibility for raising
  them.

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Silva Smart 1999 The New Practices Policies
of Family Life 1

• Silva Smart argue that Blairs New Labour
  1997gt have continued the emphasis on family
  values encouraging conventional family life.
• Blair argues that family life is the foundation
  of society. The government is not preaching about
  individual morality, but simply addressing a
  major cause of social problems
• IE the effect of divorce on children, teenage
  pregnancies, lack of care for the elderly, poor
  parental role models, truancy, underachievement
  in school and a generalised unhappiness in
  Society.

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Silva Smart 1999 The New Practices Policies
of Family Life 2

• 1998 the Supporting Families Green Paper and The
  National Family Parenting Institute were aimed
  to provide better information services for
  families. Critics point out that Blair means an
  idealised conventional family, like the perfect
  1st family of Tony and Cherie.
• It has suggested that health visitors should be
  more involved registrars should give counselling
  before marriage more counselling before divorce
  longer paid maternity leave help with childcare
  costs for lone mums The New Deal low-income
  families Working Families Tax Credits
  pre-nuptial agreements binding.

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John Redwood Conservative Minister under
Thatcher 1

• Too many dysfunctional families of 1m single
  parent families 55 were on benefits.
• 70 of lone parents received no support from the
  father, who left things to the State gt Child
  Support Agency created to find fathers.
• Young girls got pregnant to jump the housing
  queues and avoid work
• People gave excuses for their bad behaviour, but
  the poor were often depraved, not deprived
• Single parents were unnatural and damaged their
  children gt crime failure at school.

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John Redwood Conservative Minister under
Thatcher 2

• The New Right urged the common sense view that
  single Parents could not give their children
  enough time and that the children must suffer as
  a result.
• Mary McIntosh, in Social Anxieties about Lone
  Motherhood 1996, criticised Redwood for yielding
  to moral panics in the media. She denied that
  single parents were second rate parents or that
  the rise in SP families could be linked to higher
  truancy levels, youth crime, underachievement or
  teenage pregnancies. Evidence for girls
  deliberately getting pregnant in order to avoid
  work jump the housing queues was very rare.

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New Labour The Welfare Dependency of Single
Parents 1

• Lone parents, without substantial assistance from
  an ex-partner, are caught in a poverty trap
  childcare almost equals their wage and so they
  cannot work.
• Labour do not officially accept Murrays thesis
  that welfare payments are creating an underclass
  of dependent, unemployed, social-security
  scrounger.
• BUT Most single parents are on benefits, even
  when in work.
• Only 44 of single parent mothers are in paid
  employment and many of those are part time.

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New Labour The Welfare Dependency of
Single Parents 2

• Blair was influenced by President Clinton the
  Democratic Party in the USA, who aimed to replace
  welfare with workfare.
• It is alleged, in Labours Supporting Families
  Green Paper 1998, that 85 of SP mothers would
  like to get into full-time employment.
• Labours New Deal for Lone Parents does aim to
  use help with childcare to get single parent
  mothers back into the world of work.
• The key step here was to offer incentives for
  younger SP mothers to complete their education,
  so that they could become employable.

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New Labour The Welfare Dependency of Single
Parents 3 A Critique

• Allan Crow, in Families, Households and Society
  2001 argued that there was no evidence that
  SP had developed sub-cultural values, in the way
  that Murrays Underclass Thesis suggested.
• Allan Crow pointed out that most SP aspire to
  find a life partner, to share their experience of
  parenting. They estimate how? that the average
  experience of being a SP only lasts 5 years.
• The CSA was counter productive, because mothers
  lost Income Support, if they received maintenance
  - so there was no incentive for Fathers to
  contribute. 61 of SP were in poverty.

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New Labour The Welfare Dependency of Single
Parents 4 A Critique

• Perry Institute of Housing found no evidence
  that single parents were being given priority
  over homeless couples, for local authority
  housing.
• Cashmore, in Rewriting the Script 1985, found no
  evidence that children suffered psychologically
  from having only one parent. It was the quality
  of the parenting that mattered. Lone parents
  didnt need the missing partner so much as the
  partners income. The critical variable was
  poverty, not being a SP. BUT Morgan, in
  Farewell to the Family 1995, cautioned that we do
  not yet know enough about the effects on kids, of
  being brought up by a lone parent.