Family in any society is an institutional structure that develops through a society’s efforts to get certain tasks done. The family has been seen as a universal social institution and an inevitable part of human society. It is a group of persons united by ties of marriage, blood, or adoption constituting a single household interacting with each other in their respective social roles of husband and wife, mother and father, and brother and sister creating a common culture.
CHANGING FUNCTIONS OF FAMILY IN THE POSTMODERN ERA
The family is no longer united by shared work, for its members work separately; instead, the family is a unit of economic consumption, united by companionship, affection, and recreation. The economic only function of the family has significantly declined.
The diminishing function of sexual regulation– A research study finds well over 90 percent of college students approve of sexual intercourse among persons who are engaged, in love, or with “strong affection,” while over two-thirds even approve of intercourse among those who are “not particularly affectionate”. Virgin marriage has become relatively uncommon and may virtually disappear shortly.
A decline in Reproductive functions-There is solid research evidence that smaller families are less stressful, more comfortable, and “most satisfactory to spouses, parents, and children” and are happier and better adjusted.
The increasing importance of Socialisation function –An earlier generation knew little about “personality development today nearly every literate parent knows. We know something today about the role of emotional development in school progress, career success, physical well-being, and practically all other aspects of the good life.
CHANGING ATTITUDES TO FAMILY LIFE:
There seem to be substantial class differences affecting reactions to the changing character of family life and the existence of high levels of divorce. The norms that many middle-class parents have accepted, such as the open expression of pre-marital sex, are more widely disapproved of by working-class people, even where they are not particularly religious.
The young people agree that their attitudes towards sexual behavior, marriage, and gender divisions are distinct from those of their parents but they insist that they are not just concerned with pleasure seeking. They simply hold to different values from those of the older generation.
Among young women, there is a desire for autonomy and self-fulfillment’, through work as much as family and the valuing of risk, excitement, and change. In these terms, there is a growing convergence between the traditional values of men and the newer values of women. The value of the younger generation has been shaped by their inheritance of freedoms largely unavailable to earlier generations freedom for women to work and control their reproduction, freedom of mobility for both sexes, and freedom to define one’s style of life. Such freedoms lead to greater openness, generosity, and tolerance; but they can also produce a narrow, selfish individualism and a lack of trust in others.
People who have been married and divorced are more likely to marry again than single people in comparable age groups who are to marry for the first time. At all age levels, divorced men are more likely to remarry than divorced women: three in every four divorced women, but five in every six divorced men, remarry. In statistical terms at least, remarriages are less successful than first marriages. Rates of divorce from second marriages are higher than those from the first marriage.
Step Families- There are joys and benefits associated with reconstituted families and with the growth certain difficulties also tend to arise. Reconstituted families are developing types of kinship connection which are quite recent additions to modern Western societies; the difficulties created by remarriage after divorce is also new. Members of these families are developing their ways of adjusting to the relatively uncharted circumstances in which they find themselves.
ALTERNATIVES FAMILY
Cohabitation – A growing number of couples in committed long-term relationships choose not to marry, but reside together and raise children together. While the older generation saw marriage in terms of obligations and duties, the younger generation emphasized freely given commitments. The main difference between the younger respondents was that some of them preferred to have their commitment recognized publicly through marriage.
Gay and lesbian partnerships – Many homosexual men and women now live in stable relationships as couples. But because most countries still do not sanction marriage between homosexuals, the relationship between gay men and between lesbians is grounded in personal commitment and mutual trust rather than in law. The term families of choice have sometimes been applied to a gay partnership to reflect the positive and creative forms of everyday life.
Relaxation of previously intolerant attitudes toward homosexuality has been accompanied by a growing willingness by the courts to allocate custody of children to mothers living in a lesbian relationship. Techniques of artificial insemination mean that lesbians may have children and become gay-parent families without any heterosexual contact.
Staying single – Recent trends in household composition raise the question: are we becoming a nation of singles? One is a trend towards later marriages. Being single means different things at different periods of the life course. More than ever before, young people are leaving home simply to start an independent life rather than to get married.
THE FUTURE OF THE FAMILY:
If one looks at the divorce rate and dwells on the gloomy strictures of marriage critics, it is easy to wonder whether the family has a future. But there is firm evidence that marriage and the family are not dying. At current marriage and divorce rates, demographers estimate that fewer than two persons in five who marry will become divorced, some of them to be divorced several times, while more than three-fifths of first marriages will last until death (Glick and Norton).
It is even suggested by some scholars that the family is assuming greater importance in modern society. The inadequacy of work as a source of major life satisfaction for working-class people and the loss of the primary community as a source of roots and identity leaves the family as the greatest source of emotional satisfaction.
The really important question is not “Will the family endure?” but, “How will it change?” Some believe that the computer revolution will transform the family, with a greatly increased fraction of all work, shopping, play, and everything else going on at home before the computer terminal. “Productivity climbs when computers allow employees to work at home,” reports the Wall Street Journal.
One family historian believes that the nuclear family is crumbling and will be replaced by the “Free-floating” couple, less tied to children, close friends, or neighbors than in the past. In contrast to this, theorists have predicted that the next few decades may see a return to a more highly structured, traditional, and less permissive family than that of today. the nuclear family will survive because “no complex society has ever survived without a nuclear family. “There is little doubt that the family will survive, the direction of family change cannot confidently be predicted.