Family transitions in contemporary society

Abstract

THE study of the family in contemporary society has been approached by several disciplines, each claiming proprietary rights and distinctive theoretical contributions. As the study of sexual behaviour has, until recently, been an interstitial field-falling between the domains of family researchers on the one hand and clinical observers on the other it is difficult to link what is coming to light in the emerging sex-behaviour research field to the larger bodies of existing literature. Our own search for linking points is therefore both speculative and tentative. As this is a background paper, we first give a rough idea of the main contours of the social science literature on the nature of the family and of sexual patterns of behaviour in relation to it in contemporary society; secondly, we describe the particular approach to family research with which we have been working; and finally we indicate the possible relevance of our approach for some issues in the study and treatment of unsatisfactory sexual patterns. Our data are neither clinical (they do not encompass materials from people who were considered to be disordered) nor epidemiological (they do not relate to prevalence patterns in a defined population). References to case materials collected in research contexts are merely illustrative of the general argument being proposed. The general picture of family life provided by contemporary social scientists depicts a progressive specialization and differentiation of functions out of the family into other institutions in society, leaving the modern family with few core residual functions. Procreation, early socialization and affectual gratification are the functions mentioned by Talcott Parsons as still fundamental [l]. A wide variety of specific patterns of value and behaviour is tolerated within broad limits and there is a tendency toward social isolation of the nuclear family, whose external relationships are increasingly in ‘loose-knit’ networks rather than the more traditional forms of kinship and tightknit community imbeddedness [2]. The trend toward what is sometimes called the ‘democratization of sex roles’ has called into question the inevitability of the widespread and historically deep tendency for the male role to be what Parsons termed “instrumental” (i.e. concentrated on accomplishing the tasks of the family in adapting to its environment) and the female role to be ‘expressive’ (i.e. focused on providing emotional supports within the family). Along with the attrition of the tight-knit external networks, the internal division of labour in the family is tending to become more ‘joint’ or interchangeable and less ‘segregated’ along traditional lines of division of labour. Roles are less prescribed in terms of specific behaviour patterns than in terms of a range of possibilities within sanctioned limits. Different families may show different patterns of male participation in internal, domestic tasks; and of female participation in the occupational world. The prevailing cultural norms tend toward being permissive rather than prescriptive. All the above trends are subject to qualification and, in any particular subculture they may not be present.