The Family: A Sociological Perspective

The Family: A Sociological Perspective Lyn Gardner l.d.gardner@swan.ac.uk NB. THIS LECTURE IS AVAILABLE AS A POWERPOINT PRESENTATION ON: http://shswebspace.swan.ac.uk/HNGardnerLD/

FAMILY RELATIONSHIPS AND HEALTHCARE How sociology can contribute to our understanding of families How this understanding can contribute to patient care

The Role of Sociology • Sociology helps to explain changes and developments in family relationships • Draws on both quantitative (for example social surveys such as the census), and qualitative studies

LEARNING OUTCOMES • Demonstrate an understanding of terminology used to discuss families • Outline the changes that have taken place in the family, and how these link with changes in wider society, for example economic, cultural and so on • Consider the implications of these changes for health care

Suggested Reading • All introductory sociology texts explore this subject • Most of the sociology and health texts have chapters on families • Statistical material from The General Household Survey (2001) http://www.statistics.gov.uk/lib2001/index.html • Look at literary examples too – try biographies, novels and poetry

TERMINOLOGY USED TO DISCUSS FAMILIES • HOUSEHOLD: a person or group of persons who share domestic activities such as eating some meals together, sleeping in the same dwelling and so on. May have kinship link, but increasing trend for single, unrelated persons sharing a dwelling for economic and situational reasons • NUCLEAR FAMILY: A social group consisting of a man and a woman and their dependent (whether natural or adopted) offspring

EXTENDED FAMILY STRUCTURE: includes either ‘vertical’ extensions of a third generation, or ‘horizontal’ extensions such as aunts and uncles, who live close by each other • LONE-PARENT FAMILY: One parent with her/his never married dependent children; they may be widowed, divorced, separated or single never-married women

This Be The VersePhillip Larkin They fuck you up, your mum and dad. They may not mean to, but they do. They fill you with the faults they had And add some extra, just for you. But they were fucked up in their turn By fools in old-style hats and coats, Who half the time were soppy-stern And half at one another's throats. Man hands on misery to man. It deepens like a coastal shelf. Get out as early as you can, And don't have any kids yourself.

The Power of the Family • ‘The ‘family’ is an important organizing feature in our perceptions, our identities and our culture’ • Families are viewed as being capable of ‘doing great harm, or to heal and make things well’ • This rhetoric ‘sweeps through policy assumptions, models used by professionals, and through the lives of ordinary people’. Jones, D.W. (2002) Myths, Madness and the Family. Basingstoke: Palgrave.

An Historical Overview • According to Donzelot (1979) by the C18th the family was perceived to be a key element of the new social order in Western Europe • The family was seen as an institution where children could be disciplined, and adults/parents placed into a role of responsibility for their children • However, as the century moved on and into the C19th, doubts about the ability of some families to fulfil this role were prevalent • At the highest levels of government and elsewhere, debates took place about the impact of industrialisation and urbanization on the moral climate, and upon family life (Weeks, 1981)

The Decline of the Family? • The concern for the moral degeneration of the family was tangible • There were concerns about overcrowding, ‘inbreeding’ amongst the poor, relationships and childbirth outside of marriage • Key to this was also the changing position of women within society – gender roles were being re-negotiated, but at a cost, according to comment at the time. • Such changes threatened to violate ‘all the decencies and moral observances of domestic life’ (Gaskell, 1836)

Rise of the Nuclear Family • The nuclear family was seen by some as being a better ’fit’ with emerging industrial capitalism • Parsonian functionalism dominated sociological thought during the 1950s and 1960s – the idea that the small, nuclear unit was particularly suited/mutually beneficial to a developing capitalist society • But there were challenges from both a burgeoning feminist movement and other social commentators • Despite the ubiquitous nature and enduring appeal of the nuclear family, Simpson (1998) describes an emergence of unclear families

Anti-Family • During the late 1960s and early 70s, ‘anti-family’ movements emerged as a challenge to the apparent damaging effects of family life • The family was seen as a stifling and potentially damaging place to live • Edmund Leach (1967) wrote that ’far from being the basis of the good society, the family, with it’s narrow privacy and tawdry secrets, is the source of all our discontents’. • Laing and Esterson (1970) echoed this position and argued further that small, tight-knit family structures are inherently suffocating – rather than providing comfort and security, they provided space for mediating parental conflicts, which could be damaging for the child as they try to incorporate conflicting values.

Sanity, Madness and the Family (1970) • Laing and Esterson developed Fromm-Reichman’s (1948) idea of the ‘schizophrenogenic mother’ in their book Sanity, Madness and the Family which was based on their interviews with 11 families, each having a family member diagnosed schizophrenic • Their thesis, that madness (particularly schizophrenia) was largely a social creation, with it’s symptoms no more than the manifestation of distress in a person struggling to live in an unliveable situation – the family – was provocative and controversial • Cooper (1972) emphasized the hierarchical structures of families – gender and age – where subservience and dependence is learnt

Something Must be Done! • The growing general anxiety about the state of the family and family life needed to be addressed if families were not to degenerate further. • This manifested itself through the development of state welfare principles and subsequent interventions • The family provided the major reference point for distinguishing between the ‘public’ and the ‘private’ worlds of our society: does the outside world stop at the front door of the family? • Increasingly the state has become involved with managing, maintaining and defining the family: from Thatcher claiming the Tories to be the ‘party of the family’ in 1977, to pleas from all sides of the political spectrum during the last election to be advocates for the so-called ‘hard-working family’

Contemporary Concerns About the Family • Increase in single-parent families • Increase in women in the work place • Childcare – mother care/other care? • Increase in divorce rate • Youth crime, particularly young men • Teenage pregnancies • Poor behaviour in schools • Feeding the family Or could some of the above be simply seen as development/progression of the family, and thus not be problematized?

Is there an alternative to the family? • Changing family forms abound – single parent, reconstituted, civil partnerships, communes and so on • But the idea of family endures, with all that it brings in terms of expectations and obligations • Schnieder (1980, 1984) argues that the belief of family relationships as special, that ‘blood is thicker than water’ is a fundamental truth of Western culture: it is largely unquestioned.

Impact on Health and Care • Expectations that the family will care for sick/disabled/needy family members – obligations of family: the family as the ‘cornerstone’ of care provision • What support is there for families who provide care? Example – the Care Programme Approach (CPA) has provision to support families/carers of mental health service users • The ‘dark’ side of the family – are families the best place to bring up children, for men and women to live?

Conclusion • Whatever family form we live in currently, or have experienced in the past, it almost certainly has the most significant impact on our lives – past, present and future. • From what we learn and what we eat, to how we view ourselves and others: the families we live in shape and influence us • In turn, the family-life we experience is shaped and influenced by changing social, cultural and economic forces

Suggested Reading Allan, G. & Crow, G. (2001) Families, Households and Society. Palgrave: Basingstoke. Bernardes, J. (1997) Family Studies. Routledge: London. Featherstone, B. (2004) Family Life and Family Support. Palgrave: Basingstoke. Jones, D.W. (2002) Myths, Madness and the Family. Palgrave: Basingstoke. Morrow, V. (1998) Understanding Families: Children’s Perspectives. National Children’s Bureau: London. Somerville, J. (2000) Feminism and the Family. Palgrave: Basingstoke.

The Family: A Sociological Perspective