1、SOCI0021 Marriage and the FamilyFamily:whats in a name?1.Popular sayings and popular imagesa.Whats family anyway?It is the people who make you feel less lonely and really loved.(Mary Tyler Moore)b.Home is where when you have to go there they have to take you in.(Ogden Nash)c.All happy families are a
2、like,but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.(Leo Tolstoy)d.jiajia youben nannian de jing 家家有本難唸的經(Chinese saying)SOCI0021 Marriage and the Family the rewarding and the frustrating side;the nurturing and the abusive the strong emotional investment and strong appeal:natural ties,physical pr
3、oximity(bodily density)and intensive interactions make for either haven in a heartless world or hellish reality it is in the family that we first experience divisions,hierarchy and differences,and in the family they are structured along age and sex.(Bernardes 1997:2)Family is very much about identit
4、y,intimacy,love,commitment,and the self;and peoples experiences of family living may vary a great deal If family is about love and acceptance,then one should know that love and marriage have not always been the universal basis of family;that e.g.,romantic love is a historically-unique product of mod
5、ernityObservationsSOCI0021 Marriage and the Familya.a bounded unit,associated with property,self-sufficiency,with affect and a sphere inside the familyb.married spouses with a rigid gender division of labour,with the wife predominantly responsible for unpaid homemaking and caring and the husband foc
6、using on a bread-winning role (Gonzalez-Lopez)c.Hong Kong Census:a family nucleus consists of 2.More popular conceptions:a married couple without children a married couple with one or more never married children one parent(either father or mother)with one or more never married childrenSOCI0021 Marri
7、age and the Family the importance and satisfaction of conjugality(heterosexual pair)and parenthood constantly being conveyed,as if it is something both natural and universal the image of a co-residing married couple responsible for rearing children the instrumental husband and expressive wife;autono
8、mous male and interdependent female(family as defining identities)BUT:most families are not like that:nuclear family not as pervasive as we thought in western societies;co-residing is a fairly recent element,and is not always practiced;a great proportion of wives and mothers have always been engaged
9、 in public and paid work;many peoples experiences of family life(as husband/father,wife/mother and as children)are vastly divergent from the popular imagesObservationsSOCI0021 Marriage and the Familya.The nuclear family existed only in certain society and perhaps for a limited timeb.The nuclear fami
10、ly is cast as an ideal,the golden age of domestic living;it is said to serve specific functions(socialization,producing stabilized personalities in children)And what about the cohabiting pair?Is theirs less of a family?And the lesbian or gay family?Thus there is a great diversity in doing family;the
11、 popular images and definitions often suggest and focus on one particular form of family and family living;it is a social invention in modern society,and it is an ideologySOCI0021 Marriage and the Family Thus the need to look at the historical formation of this particular form of family and its elev
12、ation into such a valued thing in itself Thus the need to look at the diverse ways(choices and constraints)actual people(of different classes,cultures,ethnicities and sexual orientation)experience family living;how essential tasks of family(caring,sharing,intimacy,household work,coping with crises,e
13、tc.)are being carried out(or fail to be carried out),and how individual identities(as husband,wife,parent,etc.)are being constructed and negotiated through these dynamics And the need to link up individual life course and the family life course:family is about interlinked biographies,and biographies
14、 have transitions(e.g.,transition into parenthood)Lastly,the need to see how the larger society and culture respond to family changes(e.g.,the separation of biological life cycle and social life cycle,where conventional roles of breadwinner or instrumental male no longer apply)SOCI0021 Marriage and
15、the Family3.What is special about family life?Why the powerful appeal of the family?a.Most of us born into and reared in the family;family as the great leveler(unlike class)b.Family experience as first-hand,immediate,and its effects long-lastingc.Four reasons for the powerful appeal of the familyl b
16、eliefs in the family are often rooted in biology(Had God intended equality,he would not have created men and women.):natural biological propensities and needs;female conceives,gives birth and suckles infants,while the male does the hunting;thus biological reproduction led us to focus and emphasize a
17、nd even value one particular form of normal family living(that of a monogamous pair,with distinct role,and family life centred around the rearing of children)SOCI0021 Marriage and the FamilyReasons,contdl At the experiential level:family offers a security not found in other relationships(the other s
18、ide:you may easily ignore relatives that you dont like,but they cannot be disposed of completely);this is emotional dependence which persisted in our adult years;and family is about the familiar(one knows too well other members idiosyncrasies)and the similar(the son has inherited the fathers nose,mo
19、thers eyes;while the sister.);and family is about acceptance of ones self,warts and all -this makes for powerful belonging in our lived experiencesl Familialization of society:children in institutions given surrogate father and mother for them to identify with;job segregation in the labour market mi
20、rrors division of labour at home;such correspondence between private and public means the natural/rational arrangements of the family are diffused throughout society,and we often take them for granted;the larger society is involved in reinforcing the popular appeal of familySOCI0021 Marriage and the
21、 FamilyReasons,contdl History:the belief that industrial society requires a different kind of family(mobile,specialized functions,internal organization as mirroring the larger differentiation in the society);that the modern nuclear family has the right fit with the larger society;but it is mainly hi
22、story of the industrial advanced societies;cultural diversities and different trajectories are evident Because of these four reasons,we often inevitably operate with some notion of the family,which is mostly the modern nuclear form;theres no the family;it is socially constructed and often historical
23、ly/culturally specific But this should not blind us to the great diversities of family life and family experiences;the traditional nuclear family is said to be vanishing,with new forms of family and living arrangements emergingSOCI0021 Marriage and the Family The important thing about families is ho
24、w different they all are,not how they all match a model of the family.(Bernardes 1997:13)4.About diversitiesa.Organizational:internal division of domestic labour;how unpaid work in the family is negotiated;b.Cultural:both within western societies and between societies of different cultural or religi
25、ous backgroundc.Class:different classes have different parental values and arrangements for rearing of childrend.Cohort:different cohorts have different experiences,and such experiences;families with old cohort members might differ from families with more homogeneous cohortse.Family life course:fami
26、lies devastated by a series of unfortunate events(death,unemployment,divorce,illness.)would have very different life course,and impact on membersSOCI0021 Marriage and the Family5.Reminders:as we begin our study of family living and experiencesa.Do not believe that we know very much about family simp
27、ly because we are so close to the topic;our personal intuition and everyday experiences of family provide us with some notion of what family is all about,but we should be aware that people may do family in vastly different ways,and that family is as much a personal experience as an ideologyb.Do not
28、focus only on the normal side;abuse and unhappiness are inherent parts of family life;some scholar see family as anti-social familyc.The negative side need not be problems:divorce and single parenthood might be solutions to intolerable situations SOCI0021 Marriage and the FamilyReminders,concludedd.
29、Instead of taking one particular form of family as typical or ideal,one should look at how relationships(among interlinked biographies)are built up and change;how meanings and practices of fatherhood,motherhood and childhood differ among groups and over time e.Instead of relying on peoples preferenc
30、es or(socially desirable/politically correct)opinions,one should focus on whether people act on their beliefs in their daily lifeSOCI0021 Marriage and the FamilyReferences:1.J.Bernardes,Family Studies:an Introduction.London:Routledge 1997.ch.1.2.D.Morgan,Sociological Perspectives on the Family,in A.
31、Carling et.al.(eds.),Analyzing Families:Morality and Rationality in Policy and Practice.Routledge 2002.3.B.Ehrenreich,Burt,Loni,and Our Way of Life,Oh,Those Family Values,in The Snarling Citizen.HarperPerennial.1996.4.M.Barrett&M.McIntosh,The Anti-Social Family.Verso/NLB.1982.Ch.1.SOCI0021 Marriage
32、and the FamilyRelationships;self,role,negotiate sacrificeDiversity:LAT,etc.;living arrangements,alternative lifestyles,and different ways of negotiating identity,carrying out tasks,etc.Antisocial family:the dark sideThe origin of the powerful appeal of the familyFamily and life course transitionExperiences and practicesHistorical making of modern familySOCI0021 Marriage and the FamilySOCI0021 Marriage and the FamilySOCI0021 Marriage and the FamilySOCI0021 Marriage and the FamilySOCI0021 Marriage and the FamilySOCI0021 Marriage and the Family
