The ideal of family life is that it is a ‘haven in a heartless world’, but that isn’t always what it’s like.
Contemporary family life can also harbour a variety of problems and conflicts.
While some have been in existence for as long as recorded human history, such as family violence, others have emerged more recently.
Just one example of a very contemporary family issue is the issue of the legal status of
parenthood for donors of biological material during gestational surrogate pregnancies.
This is not a question that would have arisen one hundred years ago, or even fifty years ago.
Importantly, the identification of the problems within family life has allowed for the emergence
of insights into family life that go beyond the seeing family life simply in terms of stability and the smooth functioning of society.
In addition to recognising the significant social functions of the family, it’s also important to pay
attention to the problems that can characterize family relationships.
Rather than seeing the family simply as a source of stability in society, many family sociologists view the family as an institution that is also
characterized by conflict and tension, and which reflects and contributes to social inequality.
For example, it’s possible to observe that the social identity families pass on to children can
reinforce social stratification, and cement existing social inequalities.
While some theorists view this in a positive way, because it contributes to the continuation of existing culture, custom and tradition, others
argue that it simply entrenches inequality and reduces the potential for social mobility.
The analysis of family life provided by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels is particularly important here.
A Marxist perspective of family suggests that the nuclear family should be regarded as an arena
for the stabilisation of existing power structures and relationships, as much as for the continuity of culture.
Socialisation within the family, then, is not seen simply as a normal and natural aspect of family life, but also as vehicle for encouraging children
to accept and internalise the values of capitalism and consumerism.
Marx and Engels pointed out that one of the functions of the family is to transmit private
property efficiently from one generation to the next, with the support of the legal system.
As families pass along their wealth to their own children, they reinforce and perpetuate economic
inequality, underpinning the containment of society’s wealth in the hands of a small elite.
Central to Marx and Engel’s analysis of the problems and failings of the family unit, is the
argument that patriarchy and gender inequality, with men remaining at the “head of the household,” is a central aspect of capitalism.
Marxist and Marxist-feminist theorists locate the main cause of women’s oppression in the family not with men, but with capitalism.
This is because capitalism relies on having a large unpaid workforce willing to take responsibility for the unpaid domestic labour
which reproduces the labour force from one day to the next, and from one generation to the next.
Just imagine what the economic implications would be if all domestic labour was paid for at market rates!
A Marxist analysis of the family sees it as a site of the reproduction of class relations, with the
continuity of patriarchal gender roles playing a supporting role.
A different sociological perspective on family life can be found in radical feminist theories of family life.
Like Marxists, radical feminist theorists emphasise the adversarial nature of the family.
However, while Marxists place most emphasis on the inequalities generated by capitalism, radical feminists argue that the unequal relationships
between men and women are the product of a sex-gender system that can’t be explained simply as a product of capitalism.
For radical feminists, patriarchy pre-dates capitalism, and they believe it won’t automatically disappear with a transition to a post-capitalist
economic system, unless and until what is specific about patriarchal social relations is also addressed.
Radical feminists view the family as the core institution of patriarchy, rather than capitalism.
They contend that the family’s position between the public and private sphere makes it a social space where women are controlled at the micro-
level, in addition to macro-level structures such as government and the legal system.
In this approach, fixed gender roles in heterosexual families ensure continued inequality between men and women, because they
underpin economic inequality in the workforce, financial dependence of women on men.
Women also continue to perform unpaid domestic labour, as well as being primarily responsible for
child care, at the expense of their position in the workforce.
In contrast to the assumption that the family is a source of comfort, love and support, feminist theorists draw attention to how this ideal can
disguise the fact that families can also be a source of emotional abuse and physical violence
They point to the fact that family violence is overwhelmingly manifested in violence against
women and children, reinforcing its character as a fundamentally patriarchal institution.
Radical feminists also suggest that the socialisation which occurs within the family is a
form of ideological conditioning which perpetuates social inequality.
They argue that children are socialised from a young age to accept the traditional gender roles
which entrench female disadvantage, in both the private domestic sphere and in the public sphere of employment and political and social life
There is also significant inequality between men and women when it comes to emotional support and comfort.
Some sociologists have examined how from an early age, girls are trained to become emotionally
skilled in empathy, so that they can actively participate in what is called ‘emotion work’,
dealing with emotional and psychological tension and conflict, as well as any form of adversity such as illness or misfortune.
The emotion work women do is not similarly expected of men, leading to what has been called
‘the triple shift,’ whereby in contemporary Western societies women are expected to engage in paid labour outside the home, unpaid
domestic labour within the home, and also additional emotion work in the family.
In contrast, the primary expectation of men remains that they are the ‘breadwinner’, and their role in child care, domestic labour and ‘emotion
work’ is only slowly and unevenly changing.
While it is true that expectations of gender roles are constantly shifting, women still do the overwhelmingly amount of domestic labour and
emotion work, as well as being involved in the paid labour force at lower rates of pay.
Overall the radical feminist argument is that these structural features of family relations are cannot be explained simply in terms of the
effects of capitalism, but require an understanding in terms of a distinct sex-gender
system which systematically places males and females in quite distinct social cultural, political and economic positions.