Sociological Imagination: How to Gain Wisdom about the Society in which We All Participate and for Whose Future We Are All Responsible (part 33)

I don't want to become a serious, annoying sociologist. I try to regard sociology as a part of everyday life.

Agnes Varda

The Family (Part C)

by

Charles Lamson

 Perspectives on the Family

High divorce rates do not indicate that the family is about to disappear as an institution in modern societies. Even though many marriages end in divorce and increasing numbers of young adults postpone marriage or decide not to marry at all, most do marry, and most of those who divorce will eventually remarry. Far from disappearing, the family is adapting to new social values and to changes in other institutions, especially economic ones. But one need only listen to an hour or two of talk radio or view the Internet to find fierce debate about whether it is morally justified for single people to have children or for members of same-sex unions to be legally married or for unmarried adults to live together outside of wedlock, along with many other issues involving "family" values. Most sociologists leave the moral debates to people with ideological commitment (adherence to a particular totality of ideas and to the corresponding social, moral, and aesthetic ideals; consistent loyalty to these in both theory and practice) to one or another concept of the ideal family. Social scientists devote more thought to theoretical issues and to conducting research designed to obtain factual information about the changing family in the United States and elsewhere in the world. In this section, therefore, we review the basic sociological perspectives on family roles and relationships, as well as research that applies those perspectives.

The Interactionist Perspective

Interactions within the family cover a wide range of emotions and may take very different forms in different families. Families laugh and play together, work together, argue and bicker, and so on. All of these aspects of family interaction are important, but the arguing and bickering often drive family members apart. Studies of family interaction therefore often focus on the sources of tension and conflict within the family.

Problems of family interaction can stem from a variety of sources. Problems often arise in connection with critical life stages or events, such as the loss of the job or the time when adolescent children begin to assert their independence in ways that threaten established family roles and arrangements. Conflicts may occur because of the particular ways in which the family's experiences are shaped by larger social structures. In the armed forces, for example, families often experience severe stress because of frequent moves from one base to another (Shaw, 1979; The Child in the Military Community. In J. D. Call, et al, Eds., Basic Handbook of Child Psychiatry). In many cases such moves draw family members closer together, but in other cases family interactions are marked by tension because children resent their inability to maintain stable friendships.

The context within which family life occurs can affect family interactions in other ways as well. At the lower levels of a society's stratification system, for example, money or the lack of it is often a source of conflict between parents or between parents and children. But the rich are by no means immune to problems of family interaction. Because they do not have to be concerned about the need to earn a living as adults and because their parents can satisfy any desires they may have, the children of the very rich often develop a sadness that resembles anomie (Wixen, 1979. Children of the Rich. In J. D. Call, et al., Eds., Basic Handbook of Child Psychology). Their lack of clear goals, which sometimes expresses itself in a compulsion to make extravagant purchases, may create conflict between them and their parents.

In order to study these situations, either to help a family resolve its problems or to understand the nature of family conflict more thoroughly, the social scientist must interact with and observe the family, either at home, in a laboratory, or in a therapy setting (Minuchin, 1974. Families and Family Therapy; Satir, 1972. Peoplemaking; Whitchurch & Constantine, 1993. Systems Theory. In P. G. Boss, et al., Eds., Sourcebook of Family Theories and Methods). For instance, consider the case described by two family therapists, Augustus Napier and Carl Whitaker (1980. The Family Crucible), in which the parents are deeply troubled by the behavior of their 17 year old daughter, the oldest of their three children. The father is a prominent attorney, the mother a college-educated woman who has devoted herself to homemaking. The parents definition of the situation that has brought them into therapy is that they are worried about their daughter. She disobeys, is delinquent, and is depressed enough to make them fear that she might commit suicide. The mother and daughter fight bitterly, but usually the mother retreats. The father often attempts to defend the daughter, but eventually he sides with the mother.

After a few sessions Napier and Whitaker begin to challenge the parents assumption that it is the daughter who is the problem. They guess that her depression, anger, and delinquent behavior are symptoms of larger problems in the family. After some gentle probing they identify a triangle of family conflict in which two parents are emotionally estranged from each other and in there terrible aloneness they over-involve their children in their emotional distress (p. 83). The children blame themselves for their parents problems and develop a low sense of self-worth. The therapists help the couple face the issues that divide them and thus motivate their children to offer themselves as scapegoats or intermediaries who divert attention from the parents basic problems.

Families like the one just described need to resolve a contradiction inherent in the institution of the family: the need to maintain the individuality of each member while providing love and support for him or her within a set of interdependent relationships. Many families never succeed in developing ways of encouraging each member to realize his or her full potential within the context of family life. Research shows that the core problem is usually the failure of the adult couple, even in intact families, to understand and develop their own relationship. Such a couple may become what John F. Cuber and Peggy B. Haroff (1980, Five Types of Marriage, In A. Skolnick & J. Skolnick, Eds., Family in Transition) term "conflict-habituated" or "devitalized." Couples of the first type have evolved ways of expressing their hostility toward each other through elaborate patterns of conflict that persist over many years. In contrast, the devitalized or "empty-shell" marriage may have began with love and shared interests, but the parents have not grown as a couple and have drifted apart emotionally. Each has the habit of being with the other, a habit that may be strongly supported by the norms of a particular ethnic or religious community. Neither partner is satisfied by the relationship, but neither feels that he or she can do anything to change the situation. Plus the conflicts that might have produced change are reduced to indifference.

Today social scientists who study family interaction must deal with family structures that are more complex than the traditional nuclear family. Divorce and remarriage create many situations in which children have numerous sets of parental figures---parents and step parents, grandparents and surrogate grandparents, and so on. These changes and family form result in new patterns of family interaction. For example, in a study of 2000 children conducted over a five-year period, sociologist Frank Furstenberg found that 52 percent of children raised by their mothers do not see their fathers at all partly because some fathers are absent by choice but also because opportunities for visits decrease as parents remarry or move away (cited in Aspaklaria, 1985. A Divorced Father, a Child, and a Summer Visit Together. New York Times, p. C1). This produces situations in which parents tried to maintain long-distance relationships with their children and occasionally have brief, intense visits with them. Although this specific type of relationship may not be the most desirable, it appears that if parents and children can express love and affection even when the parents are divorced, the children's ability to feel good about themselves and to love others in their turn  may not be impaired.

*MAIN SOURCE:WILLIAM KORNBLUM, 2003. SOCIOLOGY IN A CHANGING WORLD, 6TH ED., PP. 493-494*

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