Sociological Theory Of Family Sociology

"Family" is an ever-changing institution, which is highly debated amongst sociologists. With no satisfactory definition or description in place to encapsulate the essence of family, we can argue that the dynamic aspect surrounding family makes it impossible to pinpoint, and then rather than being a mere descriptive concept, can argue must be a form of ideology. I will argue this point by looking at the phenomenon of family over time and how it has changed in relation to other institutions. An ideology is defined as “a dominant set of ideas, comprising thoughts, notions, opinions and meanings that people come to attach to a phenomenon” (Linda McKie, 2012), how we interpret ‘the family’ and the functions we adjoin to it, therefore, is dependent

Ideologies change throughout time, and we see this reflected in our conception of what constitutes the family.

In the 1950s, 60s and early 70s, sociology of the family was dominated by the structural functionalist perspective, which treated the family as a universal feature, built around a biological basis surrounding kin relations (McLennan et al, 2010). Dominated by sociologists such as Goode (1963), Parsons and Murdock, this approach saw the nuclear family as the most suitable ideal surrounding family. The nuclear family can be described as “a social group characterised by common residence, economic cooperation, and reproduction. It includes adults of both sexes, at least two of whom maintain a socially approved sexual relationship, and one or more children, own or adopted, of the sexually cohabiting adults.’ (Murdock, 1949 in McLennan et al. 2010: 127). The nuclear family was based on a gendered division of labour, with men expected to be the

The nuclear family is very much presented by the media and government policies as “The family” and associated with being the positive goal everyone should hope to achieve, but really this ideal was and to an extent, still is, riddled with inequalities, abuses and tensions, hidden through such institutions. One such inequality is that of the double shift or double burden. This occurs when a woman receives a wage for labour work, and then at home also holds sole responsibility for unpaid domestic labour, which often goes unrecognised. Another is that the traditional notion of family justifies female inferiority in paid work, in the assumption that women’s work is secondary to that of men, and that women are uniquely suited for domestic caregiving jobs, which are lower salary to male counterparts. (Jon Bernardes,