Family Disorganisation

FYS SOC 14 - FAMILY DISORGANIZATION


 Many marriages don't live up to high expectations, of people and families, so they break down or are violent. Some believe these are exceptional problems, but feminists believe it's because of male/female inequities.

FAMILY DISORGANISATION

This describes breakdown, due to functional failure and role failure.
Causes and effects of disorganization include:

  • Death,  disability or serious illness.
  • Births outside marriage.
  • Divorce, separation, desertion of living in an empty-shell marriage (partners live together but really all over).
  • Conflict, including abuse/neglect.
  • Disruption caused from outside by unemployment, war, imprisonment or persecution.

CAUSES OF AN INCREASING DIVORCE RATE

  • Big increase since sixties. One in three in divorce. reasons include:
  • Changing attitudes to morality, marriage, divorce, related to secularization, i.e. the decline of religion's influence.
  • Welfare state declines extended family, women can live more easily without men.
  • Legally, divorce is easier and cheaper.
  • Women's roles and attitudes changed.
  • More women work.
  • Oakley argued more feminist set of reasons.
  • Marriage doesn't meet women's expectations, because all work and dependence.
  • Men rely on women emotionally, but women have no one to turn to.
  • Women feel lack of control economically.
  • Men try to control sexuality and fertility.

CONSEQUENCES OF AN INCREASING DIVORCE RATE

  • More one parent families, cohabiting, remarriage, step-parents, and reconstituted families, where both married before and both bring children to the new union.
  • Increased welfare dependence.
  • Disadvantaged children, a subject of debate.
  • Decline in the importance of family

IS THE FAMILY IN DECLINE?

Arguments predicting decline:

  • It failed, oppressive (Leach), encourages violence (Dobash and Dobash), exploits women (Bernard).
    Supporters of the nuclear family condemn decline of family values (e.g. Marslands attack on single mothers).
  • Arguments against decline (by functionalist supporters of the family).
  • Divorce is because of higher expectations, so people think more of marriage as an institution.
  • Divorce is the failure of individual marriages, not families in general.
  • Remarriage suggests discontent with a person, not an institution.
  • Serial monogamy (multiple marriages over a lifetime) and reconstituted family are change in structure, not decline in the family itself.

Other Views


Marxist: Family changes as capitalism develops but continues to reproduce inequality.
Feminist: Family changes but continues to exploit women.


www.jrf.org.uk, reports.

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