Sociological Imagination: How to Gain Wisdom about the Society in which We All Participate and for Whose Future We Are All Responsible (part 32)

I love seeing what people are eating. It's a great way of looking at what is similar and what is different about people. It's sociology and anthropology and history rolled into one.

Mark Kurlansky

The Family (Part B)

by

Charles Lamson

Defining the Family

The family is a central institution in all human societies, although it may take many different forms (Bianchi and Casper, 2000. American Families. Population Bulletin, vol. 55, no. 4; Cherlin, 1996. Public and Private Families). A family is a group of people related by blood marriage or adoption. Blood relations are often called consanguineous attachments from the Latin sanguine (meaning "blood"). Relations between adult persons living together according to the norms of marriage or other intimate relationships are called conjugal relations. The role relations among people who consider themselves to be related in these ways are termed kinship.

The familiar kinship terms---father, mother, brother, sister, grandfather, grandmother, uncle, aunt, niece, nephew, cousin---refer to specific sets of role relations that may vary greatly from one culture to another. In many African societies, for example, "mother's brother" is someone to whom the male child becomes closer than he does to his father and from whom he receives more day-to-day socialization than he may from his father. It must be noted that biological or blood ties are not necessarily stronger than ties of adoption. Adopted children are usually loved with the same intensity as children raised by their biological parents. And many family units in the United States and other societies include "fictive kin"---people who are so close to members of the family that they are considered kin despite the absence of blood ties (Stack, 1974. All Our Kin). Finally, neither blood ties nor marriage nor adoption adequately describes the increasingly common relationship between unmarried people who consider themselves a couple or a family.

The smallest units of family structure are usually called nuclear families. This term is usually used to refer to a wife and husband and their children, if any. Nowadays one frequently hears the phrase "the traditional nuclear family" used to refer to a married mother and father and their children living together. Increasingly sociologists use the term nuclear family to refer to two or more people related by consanguineous or conjugal ties or by adoption who share a household; it does not require that both husband and wife be present in the household or that there be any specific set of role relations among the members of the household (Benokraitis, 1996. Marriages and Families).

Variations in Family Structure

The majority of America's 73.7 million children under age 18 (2016) live in families with two parents (69 percent), according to statistics released November 17, 2016 from the US Census Bureau. This is compared to other types of living arrangements, such as living with grandparents or having a single parent. The second most common family arrangement is children living with a single mother at 23% (census.gov.)  

The 1970 to 2000 there was also a significant increase in the number of men and women who live alone, outside family households. These are primarily but not exclusively elderly people. Among family households, there has been a significant increase in the proportion of married couples without children (although their children may be grown and living in families of their own). "Other family households" refers primarily to single-parent families with no spouse present but with other relatives, who may be children. This important category increased from 10.6 percent of all households in 1970 to 16 percent in 2000 (Kornblum, 2003. Sociology in a Changing World, 6th ed., p. 486).

These trends point to a growing diversity of family types, including far more people living alone and far more women raising children alone. There are also more households composed of unrelated single people who live together not just because they are friends but because only by doing so can they afford to live away from their families of orientation (the family of one's parents and relatives). Thus, when they discuss family norms and rules, sociologists must be careful not to represent the traditional nuclear family or even the married couple as typical. As an institution, the contemporary family comprises a far greater array of household types than ever before.

Sociologists are divided on the meaning and implications of these facts. For some, the trend toward greater diversity of family forms means that the family as an institution is adapting to change (2003, p. 487). For others, the decline of the family composed of two married parents living with their biological children poses a serious threat to the well-being of children (Popeno, 1994. Family Decline and Scholarly Optimism. Family Affairs, 6, pp. 9-10). We will return to this debate over the meaning and explanation of changes in family form and function, but first, in the next post, we consider the impact of economic change on the family.

*MAIN SOURCE: WILLIAM KORNBLUM, 2003. SOCIOLOGY IN A CHANGING WORLD, 6TH ED., PP. 484-487*

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