The Changing Nature of Family Life

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The Changing Nature of Family Life The focus of this piece of coursework is the changing nature of family life given the extent of fatherless families in modern Britain. Functionalists such as parsons and Murdock will be researched, as well as the views of Damos and Sapsfors to comment on the impact of fatherless families. My interest in fatherless family stems from my own personal family experience of having divorce parents and living in one parent family headed by my mother. I have therefore developed the hypothesis: The recent growth of fatherless families has lead to many manifests dysfunctions of the family. Context and concepts -------------------- George Murdock’s classic study provides the focus for my work; the nuclear family performs four basic functions in all societies. Which he turned the sexual, reproductive, economical and education. He describes the family as a social group characterised by common residence, economic co- operation and reproduction. It includes an adult of each sex, who maintain a socially approves sexual relationship and one or more children of the sexually cohabitating adults. Therefore from this definition it is clear that ‘fatherless families’ which exist in today’s society are not considered from a functionalist perspective as normal. Harmonious stable families Talcott Parsons argues that the concept of the ‘isolated nuclear family’ describes structure that provides warmth, security and support. He could conceive of no institution other than family that could provide these services. According to Parsons the family retains two basic functions which are common in all societies. These ... ... middle of paper ... ... is held in a mainly ‘white’ area of the Northern City which is the focus of the research. Given this problem the findings will lack generalisability. The theoretical problems I could face are based on the positivitist methodological option I choose to use. This option relies upon the closed questions used in the questionnaires and can therefore lack scope for the volunteers to express true feelings and record personal experiences that would reveal insight in to their lives as single parents. Finally interpretivist sociologists would suggest a major problem with the research design which would be the detachment between researcher and respondent. Given this ‘emotional distance’ it is likely that the volunteers may choose not to reveal certain things which could result in highly invalid data being collected.

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