The Institution of Family Analysis Essay

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The institution of the family plays a key role in the social life and development of the state. It is the main unit of society determining its social “health’ and stability. The institution of family was selected because it is one of the most simple and complex issues at the same time influenced by modern economic and social relations. In a family, dominance is formally modeled, where the dominating party is the leader and the dominated party is the follower. It is shown that not only a comparative advantage but also dominance is of importance for time allocation. In the family, cooperation is modeled by an agreement on the sharing of incomes (Farrell, p. 54). The family consists of a dominating party (say, the husband) and a dominated party (the wife). The model has two stages. In the first stage, a decision is made by the dominating spouse concerning how much to contribute to the family. In the second stage, a decision is made by the dominant spouse.

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The positive effect of family and strong power of father is that it controls behavior and education of children, determines strict moral values and family traditions. These decisions are irreversible. Both parties are considered as separate decision units. The gain from forming a family is due to the opportunities to generate benefits that are difficult to generate outside the family. Income from market work is consumed privately and gives utility according to an increasing, strictly concave function (Farrell, p. 91). As in the case with the family production function, we assume that the third-order effects are sufficiently small to be excluded from the analysis (Cooper, p. 32).

The negative impact of dominance in the family is the authoritative style of my father. In some cases, it was really difficult to argue with the father and prove my position or view. Mother and father may differ only in their opportunity costs of contributing to the family and in their effectiveness in supplying family-specific time. Therefore, the preferences of the spouses over the family-specific public good and private consumption can be represented by the same utility function. Once utilities have been defined, it is possible to define formally what we mean by dominance. Dominance by the husband means that he makes his decision assuming that the wife will wait and observe his decision, making her own based on his (Cooper, p. 66).

In the family, symbolic interaction is achieved with the help of unique words and gestures known and understandable only by family members. These words are nicknames of family members and invested names of meals we like. This is thus caused only by the force of dominance (Farrell 34). Although the husband and the wife may be identical with respect to preferences and comparative advantages, the husband will supply more time to the market than the wife. This result is different from the result obtained from the welfare-maximizing models, where only comparative advantage matters (Farrell, p. 31).

In terms of functionalism, the husband is the leader. In this way, the husband is able to influence the decision which his wife takes. Knowing his wife’s preferences, the husband can calculate how she will react to the decisions which he makes. The reaction function reflects what extent the husband is able to affect the wife’s decisions. To examine the effects of dominance, it is useful to refer to the case where there is no dominance. Since dominance by the husband occurs when he is able indirectly to influence the decisions of his wife, no dominance occurs when neither party is able to influence the actions of the other. First, the proposition says that the effect of dominance is to lower the total provision of the family-specific public good (Farrell, p. 55). When the husband dominates, he will lower his contributions to the family, knowing that the wife will then increase her contributions. However, the wife’s increased contributions will never totally compensate for the lower contributions made by the husband, and the effect is that dominance decreases the total provision. Also, incomes from market work are affected by dominance. The change in the allocation of time to market work means that the husband’s income is increased and the wife’s income is decreased by dominance. Therefore, as stated in the second part of the proposition, utilities are affected by dominance. Since the total provision of the family-specific public good, and the wife’s income, are lowered by dominance, the utility of the wife is lower when the husband dominates than when he does not (Farrell, p. 37).

Conflict theory can help to understand relations and communication between family members. One further thing to notice is that when there is no dominance, the husband and the wife may attain the same utility level, which occurs when there are no comparative advantages. But when there is dominance by the husband, he attains a strictly higher utility level than the wife, even in the case where there are no comparative advantages. Conflicts can be caused by different social backgrounds and work-related questions, gender issues, and responsibilities (Farrell, p. 34).

In sum, family is based on the strong power of the father (husband) and the subordinate role of a wife and children. To an advocate of the view that family should imply equal sharing of incomes and that men and women should both supply time to both the market and the household, this is a rather discouraging result. It means that, when the husband dominates, specialization is a necessary condition for efficiency, although there are no comparative advantages.

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Works Cited

  1. Cooper, J. K. Family. Anchor; 1st Anchor Books Ed edition, 1991.
  2. Farrell, B. G. Family: The Making of an Idea, an Institution, and a Controversy in American Culture. Westview Press; 1 edition, 1999.
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IvyPanda. 2021. "The Institution of Family Analysis." October 15, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-institution-of-family-analysis/.

1. IvyPanda. "The Institution of Family Analysis." October 15, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-institution-of-family-analysis/.


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IvyPanda. "The Institution of Family Analysis." October 15, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-institution-of-family-analysis/.

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