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Personal Life and the Family - Coggle Diagram
Personal Life and the Family
Clarke 1991
Research into marriage and the differences in the reality of how people create married relationships. He looked at what people think about marriage and how they make sense of it. Suggested that marriage is something we need to practise - is it something we 'do' rather than simply 'have'
Nordqvist and Smart 2014
Donor-conceived children for lesbian and gay couples. Research into donor-conceived families found that the issue of blood and genes raised a range of feelings for members of those particular families. Some donor conceived parents emphasised the importance of social relationships and ignored the importance of genetic ones (you don't need to be blood or genetically related in order to be family). Difficult feelings flared up for non-genetic parents when somebody remarked that the child 'looked like them'. Differences in appearances led to parents wondering about the donor's identity and 'donor siblings' as well as questions over whether the donor's parents counted as 'grandparents'.
This study helps illustrate the values of the personal life perspective as it helps us to understand how people construct and define their relationships/families rather than imposing traditional sociological definitions of the family.
Edmund Leach
A study entitled 'A runaway world' 1967 presented a negative view of the family in society. Studied pre-industrial societies where there was an extensive network between large numbers of kin (unit formed by families), which provided practical and psychological support for the individual. In comparison, in modern industrial society, the nuclear family is largely isolated from kin and the wider community.
Leach summarised this: 'in the past, kinsfolk and neighbours gave the individual continuous moral support throughout his life. Today the domestic household is isolated. The family looks inward, there is an intensification of emotional stresses between the husband and wife and parents and children. The strain is greater than most of us can bear'
The nuclear family becomes like an 'overloaded circuit'. The demands made upon it are too great and the fuses blow. In their isolation, family members expect and demand too much from each other and the result is conflict whereby the parents fight and the children rebel.
'Privacy is the source of fear and violence' - the tension and hostility produced within the family finds expression in conflict throughout society. The families in which people huddle together create barriers between them and the wider society.
R D Laing
Psychiatrist. Radical alternative view to the functionalist view of the 'happy family'. Families draw a defensive barrier between themselves and the outside world preventing autonomy and freedom. Argues that schizophrenia can be understood in the context of family relationships where one member has been defined as a schizophrenic. Families act according to alliances, tactical games, offering mutual protection against others violence, a constant demand for attention, and harmful interactions causing emotional distress . This has serious psychological consequences for the family and can lead to schizophrenia. Eg if parents are fighting and the child is inbetween, they may eventually disappear into a dream world because the strain is too much. Consequently they may eventually be diagnosed with schizophrenia
Criticisms
The personal life perspective can be accused of taking too broad a view.
Both Laing and Leach ignore social factors such as class, gender and ethnicity
Functionalism argues that the family can be a place of love and support
Stacey
With increasing divorce, women may have formed strong bonds with their ex-partners families and they may still get a lot of support from their 'divorce-extended' family
Personal Life
Leach and Laings work explores how people may be trapped in violent, abusive relationships or simply in ones where they suffer everyday unhappiness, hurt or lack of respect (this criticises the Functionalists Murdock and Parsons)
Criticises structural approaches for assuming that members of society are passive puppets. Influenced by Interactionism and Postmodernism. Argues we must focus on the 'meanings' that people give to their relationships and situations as opposed to the 'functions' the family performs. Bottom up approach.
They accept that there is diversity of families today with more family types than there were 50 years ago. By focusing on 'meanings' to individuals, they draw attention to a range of other personal relationships that are important to people even if they aren't defined as 'family' eg relationships with friends, 'fictive kin', relationships with dead relatives and relationships with pets