Family today
Speaking of European and North American societies today,
Agnes Miles (1981, p.115) says that most people live in "family
groups" which are usefully defined as "relatives living in the same
household, sharing common table and living room" (a definition used by
census takers).
Notice that this is a definition of "family groups", not families. A family
group lives together.
Two other definitions she suggests are: elementary or nuclear
family, including "parents and their non-adult children only" and
extended family, which also includes "grandparents, uncles, aunts
and cousins".
The Oxford English Dictionary gives these examples: 1924
B. Malinowski in
Psyche 4 p.294 "The nuclear family complex..is due to a certain type
of social grouping".
1941
G. P. Murdock in
Sociometry 4 p.146 "The
nuclear or individual family, consisting of father, mother, and children,
is universal; no exceptions were found in our 220 societies". 1963 A. Heron
Towards a Quaker View of Sex p.56 "This taboo is of social origin,
designed to protect the basic unit of society the 'nuclear' family from
disintegration". 1990 Courier-Mail (Brisbane) 23 May 23/2 "'The idea
of a nuclear family is a very unnatural way to live,' Dave said".
Other writers have suggested more diverse categories of family groups in
countries such as the present day United Kingdom. In addition to the above:
Lone parent family
Re-constituted family Where individuals separated from one family
relationship become part of another. Where children are involved, this
creates step-families.
Co-habiting couples
Same sex couples
One of the reasons
family is discussed by social theorists is
its
theoretical implication for social theory generally.
Robert Filmer, in the 17th
century, and
and
Roger Scruton, in the 20th,
for
example, both construct views of society around the idea of
family. Both
theorists contrast the idea that
"contract" is the foundation
of society,
with their own view that society is better understood by
thinking about the
relations that exist in the family, between parents and
children.
Scruton
sees the family model as a "conservative" model and contract
as the
"liberal" model.
The title of Jean
Jacques
Rousseau's The Social
Contract shows
that it is in
the contractual, liberal camp. However he combines his
contractual theory
with an analysis of family bonds as the basis of society:
"The family then may be called the first model of political
societies:
the ruler corresponds to the father, and the people to the
children; and
all, being free and equal, alienate their liberty only for
their own
advantage."
Family relations include those between adult partners as well
as those
between adults and children.
Aristotle
conceptualised
the difference
between these
relations, but wives
have often been thought of theoretically as similar to
children in their
relation to the male "head" of the household.
Harriet Taylor and John Stuart
Mill, two
liberal theorists, argued in an
1848
essay that an authoritarian, hierarchical,
paternalist
relationship in which women are
dependent on men is unsuitable to a
modern society based on
self determination. Mill elaborated on this in
The Subjection of
Women
(1869),
arguing that egalitarian families would educate people for
democratic
political societies.
Sigmund Freud
contrasted his
theories of society and human relations, based on an analysis
of the
unconscious mind, with the consciously rational analysis of
Mill (and
Taylor). Mill imagined society and family based on freely
determined relations been autonomous adults,
educating
children in a
school
of freedom. Freud analysed the family as the site
of deadly
conflicts,
conflicts that are
paralleled in
society and history.
One of the issues in dispute between these theorists is the
nature of
science. Those who support the family model against a contract
model tend
to argue that their model is based on analysis of what is real
(a "thing" as
Durkheim
would
say)
rather than on a philosophic rationalism that relates more to
what some
people might want society to be then to what it is.
(See the
positivist
distinction between science and philosophy)