Industrialization and Formation of the Nuclear Family

444 Words1 Page
bulb-icon

Recommended: The evolution of the nuclear family

Industrialization and Formation of the Nuclear Family

Some have argued that as industrialisation and modernisation continue

to shape our society, the classic extended family is breaking and

kin-ship based society becoming increasingly rare. In its place is the

privatised nuclear family form.

Parsons claims 'the isolated nuclear family' has taken over. The

nuclear family places no emphasis on a wider system of kinship

relationships hence it is structurally isolated. This means it can be

geographically mobile whereas in pre-industrial times kinship links

within the family meant it was limited to a particular area.

Parsons also states how the family has ceased to be an economic unit

of production, more suited to needs of modern society, and in Marxist

perspective, suited to needs of capitalism. The media portrays a

'cereal packet' family which many families feel inclined to achieve -

buy kids latest toys, clothes etc. This shows how the family has

changed from producing to consuming.

Consuming has become the 'norm' especially with the evolution of

institutions which take over many functions of the family. In

pre-industrial times the family helped with medical, financial aid

etc. Now, institutes of society have taken functions such as schools,

hospitals, police force etc. Parsons calls this structural

differentiation.

Goode agrees that geographical mobility, social mobility and functions

once performed by the family being taken over by outside agencies all

weaken wider family ties. Goode also talks of 'role bargaining' - the

nuclear family has more freedom to chose which extended family members

they want to keep in contact with. Usually this is because they can

somehow benefit from being in contact with them.

However, Peter Laslett claims the extended family was not the classic

family form in pre-industrial society, that in fact only 10% of

families contained kin beyond the nuclear family. He argues the common

pre-industrial nuclear family provided favourable conditions for

industrialisation and helped cause industrialisation. This is a

complete reverse, but Laslett's small scale research may not be

entirely accurate.

Page One

Show More
Related

  • Nuclear Families In The 1950s

    403 Words  | 1 Pages

    “In the 1950’s, 86 percent of children lived in two-parent families, and 60 percent of children were born into homes with a male breadwinner and a female homemaker” (Conley 451). In contrast, “in 1986, fewer than 10 percent of U.S. families consisted of a male breadwinner, a female housewife, and their children, a figure that has since fallen to 6 percent” (Conley 455). Modern families come in all shapes and sizes. They no longer follow the strict nuclear family layout. There are many reasons why the nuclear family is no longer the most common family type. Some of these reasons include increased divorces, increased acceptance of different sexual orientations, increased amount of couples choosing not to get married/common-law marriages, increased amount of people choosing not to have children (rise of birth control methods), increased amount of families with both parents working/needing to work, etc. Personally, I do not believe the decrease in the nuclear family model is a bad thing. By definition a family is just a group of people who are related or married/in a relationship and it can still be a healthy and well-functioning unit no matter the size or combination of people it is made up

    Read More

  • Process Philosophy: A Process View Of Life

    1065 Words  | 3 Pages

    In the 19th Century it was the Father who was known to be the one that worked, or the breadwinner for the family. However, after World War II we began to see a shifting in this as the women’s right’s movement took place and women began to get paid more for working and now entered the workplace regularly. This also occurred because of the great economic growth that was occurring at the time. So as things changed economically, the family progressed with it as well. However, not all was a positive progression as during this time we also began to see divorce increase as well as and increase in the number of women who became pregnant without having been married. These were huge changes and shifts in the family dynamics as the family became under pressure from the ever-changing economics and culture. With both parents entering the workforce, little supervision is given to the children. This was totally unlike the Leave it to Beaver family, the Cleavers in which only the father went to work and the mother had time to care for the kids. Having both parents work definitely cut into family time or time that in the past had been spent between parents and children. This gave way to leaving society an open door in having a greater impact on children then they would have received at home through the training and modeling of their parents. Because of their thinking to progress with the world around them and in the way the world was progressing in thought, it left an open door for their families to become impacted negatively by

    Read More

  • The Incredible Shrinking Family Analysis

    163 Words  | 1 Pages

    In the essay “The Incredible Shrinking Family”, the author Robert B. Reich shows that because of today’s living economic conditions, families now are getting smaller and also they don’t spend enough time together. The author believes that the tradition family -a father and a mother who are happily married and spend enough time with their children- may be no longer existed. The author reports that Family members are seeing a lot less of each other. Children are left in day care, because fathers are not the only ones who work, many women work too according to the writer. Reich points out that parents are consumed by their work, and even when they are together they look preoccupied by work. Therefore -Reich says- families eat together a lot less

    Read More

  • Marriage In Jane Lewis's View Of Marriage

    759 Words  | 2 Pages

    She examines this and tries to associate it with her own views of marriage. She then examines the time and money invested by men and women into family and being a couple. Being a social policy analyst, naturally Lewis examined what the role of private law and family policy should be in terms of intimate relationships. In another study (panel) conducted of household Britain (Scott 1997), it was found that the case of individualism taking over is not popular. Although there were couple cohabitating, the study found that these couples still valued family time and family members. By analyzing the data, the study concluded that family was still central in people’s lives; starting a family was still a priority to most of the respondents. Finally, the importance of family varied by gender and age – men being less attached to family and younger people being more self-centered. Lewis makes a very good point in acknowledging the fall of marriage post-19th century by pointing towards the marriage and divorce culture in the US and Western Europe. Lewis makes a point that children are the ones who lose in this occurrence, and a study by Wallerstein, Lewis, & Blakeslee (2000) tells the same story

    Read More

  • Nuclear Power and the Cold War

    1095 Words  | 3 Pages

    The Cold War is famous not only for its long engagement between the two super powers, the U.S. and the Soviet Union, but also because of the heightened physical tension that nuclear power brought to the global stage. Winning the war at the cost of human annihilation was not abnormal political conversation, and from the 1940s onward, fear of global destruction became a daily concern (Granieri, 2011). The circumstances of the Cold War made it different than previous international conflicts because it was the first conflict that could potentially lead to massive, worldwide destruction. Without the dangers of nuclear power, the Cold War wouldn't have differed much from previous historical conflicts between powerful states.

    Read More

  • Talcott Parsons And Bales: Leader Of The 1950s-Nuclear Family

    1505 Words  | 4 Pages

    Family structure and stability have constantly evolved and been researched in aspects of sociology. Following World War II, the family ideology in the 1950’s was brought to the attention of Talcott Parsons and Robert Bales (1955) whom demonstrated how transitioning from an agricultural society to that of an industrialization one played an important role in altering family life and structure. Parsons and Bales further expressed how gender role specialization was vital in the continuous of family solidarity. The “instrumental” male father role as the leader of the family responsible for providing the income and support as the “expressive” role which is that of the female mother delivers her contribution to the family through house work and nurture

    Read More

  • Nuclear Technology After the World War II

    953 Words  | 2 Pages

    After the United States developed the atomic at the end of World War II, interest in nuclear technology increased exponentially. People soon realized that nuclear technology could be used for electricity, as another alternative to fossil fuels. Today, nuclear power has its place in the world, but there is still a lot of controversy over the use of nuclear energy. Things such as the containment of radiation and few nuclear power plant accidents have given nuclear power a bad image. However, nuclear power is a reliable source of energy because it has no carbon emissions, energy is available at any time, little fuel is needed for a lot of energy, and as time goes on, it is becoming safer and safer.

    Read More

  • Sociology 111 Midterm

    1328 Words  | 3 Pages

    As mentioned before, sociologists Coontz and Hochschild further elaborate upon Parsons and Bales’ concepts of the American family, but they mostly critique the idea of the male-breadwinner family. One of the main arguments Coontz and Hochschild present is the decline of the male-breadwinner family due to the economic changes of the United States and the arising social norms of consumerism. Because Parsons and Bales never considered how the changes throughout society would affect family, they believed the male-breadwinner family would continue to be a functional type of family for everyone. However, within her text, “What We Really Miss about the 1950s,” Coontz specifically discusses the major expense of keeping mothers at home as consumption norms...

    Read More

  • Nuclear Fission

    1765 Words  | 4 Pages

    The discovery of fission occurred during a time of great turmoil. Two German physicists then later verified by two Jewish refugee physicists discovered it. Italian Physicists Enrico Fermi later discovered the unique quality of fission that was induced by neutrons but also produced neutrons. This created the idea of a self-sustaining chain reaction, and the large amount of energy found within a nucleus was now accessible at a large scale (Nuclear weapons section, para 1).

    Read More

  • Nuclear Essay

    521 Words  | 2 Pages

    “By 2050, one-third of the world’s energy will need to come from solar, wind, and other renewable resources” (www.altenergy.org). America can no longer rely so heavily on nuclear energy. America needs to harness the energy found within natural, renewable resources. In fact, nuclear energy needs to be phased out completely because of its negative impact on health, the environment, and its overall cost.

    Read More

  • The Nuclear Family

    1441 Words  | 3 Pages

    The nuclear family is a married man and women who are raising their biological children. It is better known as the common view of a household. In the 1960’s this family, and religious, view was followed by the majority of the people in the United States that if one had to guess they type of family one live with there would be an eighty percent chance that they live in a nuclear family (Luscombe). This image of a family has been engraved into our brains that anything else is unacceptable. However, over the years that view has been altered by single divorce, single parenting, cohabitation, children born out of wedlock, and gay parenting. In fact, the U.S. has seen drastic rise different types of families over the last fifty years (Castelloe).

    Read More

  • The Fifties

    785 Words  | 2 Pages

    The 1950s nuclear family differed from previous conceptions of the family in America. Of course, circumscribed gender roles were not new; they had always been around and were particularly reinforced during Victorian times. But the definition of the nuclear family in the 1950s went beyond the concept of the breadwinner husband and homemaker wife. Men found in demeaning for their wives to be working. Women who were in the workforce left because of this concept and fulfill the dreams of motherhood, which required the women’s full-time attention. For the first time in history, Americans were expected to find all their satisfaction and pleasure in the home.

    Read More

  • Divorce in Todays Society

    2064 Words  | 5 Pages

    Boyd, Monica and Doug Norris. “Leaving the Nest? The Impact of Family Structure.” Canadian Social Trends. 15 Oct. 1995: 14-17. SIRS. Family, 5, 58.

    Read More

  • The Nuclear Era Begins: A Brief Background on the Trinity Project

    1005 Words  | 3 Pages

    Szasz, F. M. (1984). The day the sun rose twice: the story of the Trinity Site nuclear

    Read More

  • The Function of the Nuclear Family

    1571 Words  | 4 Pages

    The extended family predominated pre-industrially because of the need for a large family to help tend the land or look after those who were unable to do so. Infant mortality was high so you had to produce more children to be sure of having enough help. The family were a unit of production producing only the goods needed to survive and trading the remainder. Following the Industrial Revolution in the late 19th century, it was replaced by the nuclear family which was a unit of consumption as family members became wage earners and families needed to become more geographically mobile and move to where they could find work.

    Read More

More about Industrialization and Formation of the Nuclear Family

Open Document