Chapter 12: Life at Home: Families and Relationships: The Changing Family

Today's family is certainly not the same as it was in the past. We are more individualistic today, divorce rates are higher, there are many different family forms that are now considered the norm, and the list goes on.

Some people feel that today's family is in decline and society in endangered because of this; this would be a functionalist point of view. On the other hand, conflict and feminist sociologists disagree with functionalists. They argue that changing family forms do not necessarily represent deterioration in the quality of people's lives. In fact, they contend that these changes in the family may be improvements in the way many people live.

Can you think of reasons for both sides?____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

-use your own word please and DO NOT COPY ANYTHING ON LINE! I will be turn in this home work in turn it in! Please Use easy grammar and must use your word to answer all these questions.

-must be complete by complete sentences (at least Approximately 250-word POST or REPLY that appropriately addresses the topic. )around 7-8 sentences.

-if you need books to answer the questions I will sensed to you.

-use easy grammar and easy to understand! Please!!!!!

———————————————————————Next, read and respond to at least two other students' posts.(for every respond 3-4 sentences

1.The structural functionalist Emile Durkheim suggested that family maintains societal functions, such as socialization of the youth to become the future, sexual control, emotional and instrumental support. The idea of a typical family is called a nuclear family, this type of family is a long term marriage between two individuals of opposite sex. These families continue the idea of norms and values to be the same, but if there is no family there to teach such rules and beliefs to their children there are possible defiants because of the lack of knowldege of society norms. Another point of view to focus on is the conflict theorists and feminists point of view. These observations create the idea of divorce and none married couples to teach their kids different rules of society. They see families as oppressive because of the trouble of rare resources available to society are readily taken by families and not to the non family's. The feminists believe that family is a gender oriented intsitution where there are families taught the rules of gender in society. This idea is where feminists see men holding control over the rules taught to their children and the women feel devalued because of the lack of a main job outside the household.

2.I can definitely think of reason for both side because both sides contains some sound arguments. according to the functionalist point of view, society is in decline because they keep holding on to the old tradition. the old tradition serves a useful purpose because men in the past provide the material goods to the family that is essential to the survival of the family so naturally women want to be dependent on the men but all that changes in the past 100 years of so and gradually woman have gained more equal opportunities in society. but the functionalist does not fully understand or fully accept the changing underlying conditions brought about those changes and thus feeling that the society is in decline.

The opposite is true is according to the conflict sociologist and feminist because they believe this does not represent the deterioration in people's lives, this is only true to an extend. although majority of today's US population have gained greater material satisfaction through more easily accessible food and almost everything material but surprisingly most people's level of happiness does not increase with this high level of material satisfaction. in fact, majority of people feel overwhelmed and stress level is very high in the urban population and with more and more rural population become more urbanized, this phenomenon is only increasing.