Talcott Parsons and Robert Bales, two of the leading figures in sociology, may be considered the founding fathers for the ideas of the “modern family” and the “male-breadwinner family.” Collectively, their work has influenced how Americans analyze families and has sparked new ideas regarding the American family from sociologists such as Stephanie Coontz and Arlie Hochschild. However, when studying the American family, Parsons and Bales fail to understand that the “ideal” family may not be so ideal for everyone. They neglect to consider societal influences and economic changes when discussing patriarchal social norms as the most optimal family structure. Their description of the male-breadwinner family consists of the father being the “instrumental leader” within the home, providing economically for his family based on his occupational earnings. Meanwhile, the mother is considered the manager of the household, providing for her husband and children physically, emotionally, and mentally. 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... ... middle of paper ... ...s: their actual occupation in the workforce followed by the work of taking care of the household and children. Parsons and Bales believed sincerely that the modern family and the male-breadwinner family was the ideal family structure for society and would continue to be as time went on. However, their lack of consideration for societal change and adjustments within the American economy, made them ignorant of the burdens placed on mothers because of the patriarchal social norms they heavily supported. Thankfully their work did lead to the further development of studying the family lifestyle by not only Coontz and Hochschild but other sociologists as well. However, the gender norms they constructed must be recognized as public issues society must improve as a whole in order to ease the adjustment of both fathers and mothers earning jobs while maintaining a family.
... “ corporations have done little to accommodate the needs of working parents, and that the government has done little to prod them” ( ) Essentially Hochschild argues that change is possible but really only through government intervention and policy (re)formation. Although the economy was able to transform women it was not able to transform the rest of society. Thus it is up to the government and the corporate sector to do so. If the government were to create “a safer environment for the two-job family” and families in general, men would be drawn out of their gender roles into the lives of children. As a result, women would be greater supported and society as a whole would gear its culture towards a more family oriented atmosphere rather than a capitalistic one. ( )
In his 1943 work, “Sex Roles in the American Kinship System,” Talcott Parsons addresses his beliefs that the individual gendered roles in the nuclear family are essential to creating a functioning family dynamic. During this time period, the United States was in between wars and working to recover from the Great Depression. These significant events greatly shaped society not only at the time, but for future generations as well. It is almost impossible for a theorist of this time, such as Parsons, not to be influenced by such drastic social conditions and changes.
In his novel Our Kids, Robert Putnam speaks on about how the 1970’s brought a change in family structures. The family structure of two strong parents and stigma against wedlock births and pre-marital sex quickly began to fade. Birth control and the feminist revolution contributed to these rapid changes. Women began to work and were “in part, freed from patriarchal norms” (Putnam 62). Rather than conforming the female gender role and staying home, having children, and putting food on the table, women actually started to become a part of the economy. They were not as focused on the idea of marriage and finding an economically stable husband to provide for them. The decrease in family structure quickly began to affect opportunity inequality among individuals. Those children with “neo-traditional” marriages are more like to receive a college degree rather than those without. Having a lower-income family reduces educational opportunities children have. While a child from a two-income family may attend a private school with resources that assist them in getting into ivy league schools, a kid from a single parent family may have to attend a public school where there is not even access to a computer lab or extracurricular activities. The lack of education these kids have contributes to their lack of opportunity to receive a college degree. Normally, a college degree allows individuals to receive a higher income than those who just have a high-school diploma. They simply are not exposed to the resources to succeed. This contributes to the inequality of opportunity, and ultimately, the inequality of income. Not only does the structure of family affect the outcome of children, but also the style of
Warren Farrell is a well educated man who focuses his attention on gender. In his essay “Men as Success Objects,” he writes about gender roles in male-female relationships. He begins, “for thousands of years, marriages were about economic security and survival” (Farrell 185). The key word in that statement is were. This implies the fact that marriage has changed in the last century. He relates the fact that post 1950s, marriage was more about what the male and female were getting out of the relationship rather than just the security of being married. Divorce rates grew and added to the tension of which gender held the supremacy and which role the individuals were supposed to accept. “Inequality in the workplace” covered up all of the conflicts involved with the “inequality in the homeplace”(Farrell). Farrell brings to attention all ...
Destin Cretton’s film titled, Short Term 12 depicts the struggles of young woman named Grace with a tough exterior and how that exterior slowly disintegrates as she learns to deal with her troubled past. While the former troubled teen learns to come to terms with her past, she works as a supervisor and acts as a guide for troubled teens at an at-risk group home. Furthermore, in analyzing this film from a medical sociological perspective, I will focus on the characters and their experience of being a mental patient. Given there were many characters who were deemed as mentally ill, I will focus my character analyzation on Jayden. In discussing Jayden, I will also compare her experience and the experience of other characters to two of this week’s
To begin, the Great Depression caused many societal changes within families. During the Roaring Twenties, males were considered as the “breadwinners” of the family. They provided the family a stable income. However, after the 1929 Stock Market Crash, many businesses lost investments, ceasing production and manufacturing. Without profit and consumers, many men lost their jobs, along with their dignity (“Suffering America”). Men were humiliated and felt like failures by not being able to support their families. In efforts to adjust to this economic crisis, some married women began to work outside home, providing the sole source of income. Many soon recognized “that working-class women played a key role as decision-makers in their families” and
There was a time when women typically maintained the home and raised children while the husbands were the sole bread-winners for the family finances. However, times have changed and so have women’s rights and expectations for divorce, education, an...
The discipline of Sociology has long been interested in the study of human behavior. This interest grows from the sociological conception of relationships which distinguish the individual and differentiate him from other members of society. Through the ages, man has been influenced by social interaction and cultural surroundings. Sociologists have also recognized that a social institution consists of a concept and a structure, and that this structure is a framework made up of permanent relationships. The family is a social institution consisting of a certain structure. In earlier times, society defined “families” as “close-knit, internally organized cooperative units intermediate between the individual and the total society of which he is a part” (Bossard. P.31). The family consisted of a larger unit which along with the parent and children it included the grandparent, aunts and uncles. In those days, life revolved around land cultivation where the large families were essential. Today, it has a very different definition with the Industrialization of society and the influences society imposes on the family structure. Today’s family has dramatically changed from years ago many are marrying later in life due to career choices. The cultivation of land has been taken over by the pursuit of careers and the married couple breaking away from the extended family becoming an individual unit. The pursuit of careers is also causing couples to consider putting off having children until later or not having children at all. Families now are totally dependent on industries for subsistence. In earlier times, the man was the provider for the family, he spent long hours working the land and the woman stayed at home tending to the home and children. As times have become more industrialized, society has become more materialistic. This acquisition of goods has forced the family to seek work outside the home, beginning with the man spending long hours at the office to make enough money to support the family. The woman was also changing but from within the home. All the changes in society and the portrayal of what a “happy family” should be by the media have caused a tremendous strain on the family unit. These strains have taken their toll and have caused significant changes to what is considered the “Tradi...
With the influx of new technology, there’s a possibility that the American family could be in trouble. The media no longer portrays having dinner at the table a norm for American families anymore. It’s a known fact that the traditional American family is changing. There have been in increase in single family households for a long time. Women have gained their independence because of a change in workforce. Since the role of women have dramatically changed, it’s now normal for them to work fulltime jobs and maintain the role of being the head of a family. Some men question their manhood because women are more independent than expected of them. Women’s right was the catalyst to this breakthrough which catapulted with the right to vote in 1920 along with labor law. The American family is changing but not in trouble.
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.
An oft unrecognized phenomena is that men too heard the “call for domesticity,” as social scientists and other “experts” wanted men to “play a greater role” within households, to gain a more influential and physical presence for their children alongside the continual role as head of the family. Men were urged to “partake in raising children,” that the domestic sphere should not be held entirely by the mother of the household. This was wholly in fear of the “overbearing” female figure creating “effeminate” sons that would then engage in sex-crimes such as homosexuality; such thought processes led family professionals to urge more fatherly influence in the life at home. Yet this “posed a dilemma” within fathers, as a balance between “work and home demands” grew more difficult to manage as focusing on the family would lower potential income and thus social status, while attention to career could neglect the children into deviant behaviors. Such contradictory messages in the 1950s were gladly received yet unable to properly be executed, and frustration built under the veneer of traditional American nuclear family until the 1960s, when divorce rates dramatically rose, proving the traditional family mores of the era as incapable of true implementation in any true American lifestyle. And when traditional authorities would not recognize this, the youth culture of the decade implemented one of the first true counter culture movements in
We frequently hear about family values and how they have diminished in modern day society. The majority of society no longer go to church, no longer converse with their neighbours, children no longer play in the streets with a ball. One, that is most notable is a two parent family; where the husband would provide and the wife would manage the home. This had changed considerably in the last 60 years, due to the feminist movement for career options for women, equal opportunities and the two role lifestyle of housewife and employee.
In the late 1920s, this started to change for good. More and more woman was becoming educated and finding work outside of the home. Woman were earning money and doing many of the same jobs as men when the 19th Amendment to the constitution gave women these rights. This changed how modern Parent balance work and family time. Should Women have to work or staying home? “Over the past generation, home prices have risen twice as fast for couples with young children as for those without kids… The average couple with young children now shells out more than $127,000 for a home, up from $72,000 (adjusted for inflation) less than 20 years ago (“Why Women…Work”).” This shows that now days it’s expensive to have kid and for couple’s more adjustment that both support each other economically. Many women and solo parent neglect to stay home because they decide that the cost is just too high, and the choic...
Chasing the elusive ideals of the ever-changing traditional American family proves to be one that is full of consequences. Trying to meet the basic, essential needs of raising a family are becoming increasingly difficult in these trying times. What we do not need as a nation is the pressure to meet these ideals through consumerism and material gain. Brand name appliances, clothing and cars are not necessities for successfully raising a family. However, the pressure on the people is difficult to escape. TVs are blasting, budgets for advertising and marketing increase. No one is safe from this, every one is divided into a demographic. This culture of consumerism exploits everyone, and funnels money mostly towards the richest of the rich. The gap between the rich and the poor is ever increasing. Life is hard enough as it is, so we must not allow ourselves to be misled on how we should live our lives.
“Iconic Jim Anderson from Father Knows Best returned from his insurance job every evening, removed his jacket and rolled up his sleeves to solve the problems of the family–crises that ranged from prom dates to homework to burnt pot roast.” (Forbes). Here we see the father role being played as society would have it, the man providing for the family and the woman staying home tending the children. Television shows of the 50’s and 60’s show the men assuming power in the relationship and women being more domesticated. Most men would prefer to work to put food on the table and provide the essentials rather than nurture children. When arriving home from a day of work many men would tend to want time to themselves, thus avoiding the children. When entering into marriage both the male and female have expectations about the roles they will play. Women highly expect for the male to maintain the financial part of the relationship, while the female take on the domesticated role. This is the way society has viewed families for centuries making it the “norm”. Children who have grown up watching television shows like “Father Knows Best” view them as role models to what healthy marriages look like and try to establish the structure in their own