The Item discusses Parson’s argument further as he believes that the nuclear family ‘was particularly well suited to an industrial economy’ due to role specialisation and the fact it could be ‘geographically mobile’. This item therefore agrees with the statement above as it states that the structure of the family changed with industrial society.
Parsons has provided a valuable contribution to this study of the change in family structure and argues that role conflict is another reason for the break-up of the extended family. Industrialisation meant that social status was no longer ascribed and could not be achieved by people’s own ability. This caused conflicts in extended families due to children challenging the authority of their parents and this inevitably produced the nuclear family.
It is argued that Parson’s theory is too simplistic and being a typical functionalist view and his studies have been challenged by other Sociologists.
Anderson argues that this idea is ‘over simple’ and that industrialisation increased people’s dependency on their families as some members went out to work. He discovered that in the 1850’s families in the newly industrialised north lived close to their kin because of needing help in sickness and in helping each other find work. This theory is backed up by Chris Harris (in Anderson 1980) who states that ‘there is no hard evidence to support this view of transforming effect of industrialisation on family structure.’ Anderson’s theory is valuable as it shows that industrialisation actually encouraged the growth of the extended family and that the family was just broken down into different households.
Laslett also disagrees with Parson’s theory claiming that the extended family was not the ordinary institution for pre-industrial England and that this is just a ‘matter of ideology’. He states that the nuclear family ‘predominates numerically almost everywhere, even in under developed parts of the world’ and that the extended family, although existing, was never dominate. Laslett believes this was partly due to low life expectancy meaning that not many families managed to have three generations alive at the same time. To back up this theory Laslett stated that 4.75 people was the average household number in the period 1600-1900. He also found that families lived in close communities where friends and relatives lived near by.
Wilmott and Young have also provided a challenging contribution to this study by looking at a working class town in North London in the 1980s. Wilmott suggested that there are three types of kinship arrangement: the local extended family, the dispersed extended family and the attenuated extended family. Family groups spreading over two or more houses were found to be the common feature of kinship in the East End proving that the extended family is still visible in modern industrialised society.
There are other issues to consider when looking at family structure such as ethnic minority families. Ballard in 1982 studied south Asian families and found that they are concerned with maintaining a wider kin-ship network and being loyal to the family. The most common structure of the Asian family is the nuclear family but this does not mean the importance of extended family ties has diminished. Asian families travel miles to be together for family events and attend Sunday gatherings where the warmth and support of the family is shared. The forming of the nuclear family among ethnic minority families is said to be down to immigration patterns not industrialisation and the nuclear family is also most common in Caribbean families. However, studies from Sallie Westwood and Parminder Bhachu warn of generalisations in Asian households and Ann Phoenix says there is ‘no more a typical Afro Caribbean family than a typical white family’.
Another issue to consider is the structure of families from different classes. Elizabeth Bott in 1957 found that joint conjugal roles were more likely to be apparent in middle class families where there is no rigid value system of peer pressure. In working class families roles are segregated due to tight-knit kins and friendships.
