Universal Concept of Family: Future Perspectives Report

The Universality of family

The writer Melford E. Spiro features insights of American anthropologist Murdock who managed to ratify the suppositions on the universality of family based on the scholar’s critical contribution of the cross-cultural study of Kinship. The presentation by Melford features a groundbreaking contribution based on research findings by Murdock that by extension to the universality of family, the nuclear family is also universal in the empirical contributions of Murdock. In Murdock’s perspective the nuclear family which is also universal (Murdock) has fundamentally four principal functions which are sexual, economic, reproductive and educational.

Nuclear family Irreplaceable

In relation to the perspective of the Anthropologist captured in the preceding entry, Murdock is quoted in the same paragraph articulating that there is no society to date that has been successful in replacing the nuclear family to which these critical functionalities can be feasibly transferred. Melford leverages on the empirical insight offered by Murdock to assert that that there is little reason to probe or query the scholars prediction that is it remarkably doubtful whether any society ever will succeed in such an attempt , ” Utopian advocating for the eradication of family to the contrary notwithstanding’ ( Murdock cited in Melford Spiro).

Family Functions Critical

In the extract , Melford points out that Murdock accounts for the universality of the Nuclear family on the basis that the functionalities of the nuclear family are of fundamental importance and are prerequisite for the survival of any society hence the universality of the nuclear family.

References to Murdock’s insights in the following paragraphs hold that without provision for the sexual and reproductive functions of the family unit, society would eventually dissipate and become extinct. For the second dimension of economics, Murdock asserts that life would cease. On the fourth dimension Murdock articulates that if any society where to lack the fourth aspect of faulty functionality which is education, the culture fabric of tan society would denudate, in simpler terms it would come to an end.

Societal Sub-groups and socialisation

Melford takes a rare yet significant thrust at exploring how it is surprising that although the four critical functionalities of the society are universal, they are fulfilled by one social group. He presents an assumption that on purely priori grounds, that with overwhelming levels of variability and diverse that characterise human cultures, there must be some cultures where these four cardinal functionalities are distributed among subgroups within the main social grouping of those societies. In the perspectives of Melford, this assumption is not baseless factoring in that some empirical researches have unearthed this form of societal roles distribution of small utopian cultures or social groupings.

A case scenario

The scholar touches on a case scenario explored with a particular thrust to establish the feasibility of the notion of socialisation roles distributions in the small utopian community. The focus community for the case scenario is the Israeli Kibbutz. What is underscore here is that the community has developed a social system which excludes the family. This lays formidable challenges to the notion of the Universality of family. The point of dissonance here lies in the elimination of the nuclear familial role by a new social system where in the family the society is replaced by a special social grouping which is designed to perform the four critical socialisation roles which are educative, reproductive, sexual and economic.

The Place of Feminism in Family Studies

Linda Thompson and Alexis J. Walker

Family studies scholarship

Thompson Linda and Walker Alexis focus of the question of what the place of feminism is family studies. The scholars explore the family studies scholarship published between 1984 and 1993; the Journal of marriage and family as the journals of family relations and the journal of family issues. The valuable contribution that the two scholars have made pertains to the characterisations of the feminist scholarship in five thematic categories which are as follows:

1. social construction go gender as a integral concept,
2. commitment to gender equality as well the aspect of social change,
3. feminist practice,
4. the centrality of women’s lives as well as experiences and lastly,
5. the probe into ‘family’.

In analysing the slot of feminism in family studies, the two scholars are making two important acknowledgements that in the premise of family women have particulate kinds of challenges and roles which are different from those of their male counterpart. This leads to the notion that the matter of feminism the place of feminism has to explore in a manner that recognises varying of forms of this concept as one moves from culture to the next. This is due to the fact that societies have varying family structures and in relation to the contribution of Melford in relation to insights constituted in the first Journal, the form and place of feminism has to be explored in a manner that acknowledges particular family forms and social characteristics. These are expected to have significant bearing on the understanding of feminism in various social contexts

The state of the field

The scholars refer to their work some years ago when they searched for evidence of feminism in family research journals. The scholars then collated articles and sorted as into feminist and non-feminist categories. This was a way of establishing progress mad on the thrust of feminism by the scholars. What is important in the reference the scholars make to their past work is that the scholars then also sought to determine if feminism in the perspective was in tandem with positivist social science. The scholars declare that after so many years they are revising the work of establishing the pace of feminism in family studies noting that the landscape has changed now and they can no longer apply similar research instrumentations to those that they used over ten year ago.

Contemporary Researches

The scholars Linda and Thompson admit that the landscape under probe has changed and that thy have had to change as well as a way of adjusting to the developments that have characterised their focus research framework in the interim. As the place of the feminism remains indefinite what can be deduce from the contribution of the scholars is that it has been difficult to find the place of feminism in family studies. Contemporary researches thus have to devise customised and feasible research instrumentation that will suffice in locating the slot and domains of feminism in modern day family studies and researches as this is a key research interest are in sociology and other domains that relate to it.

Little Progress for feminism in family studies

Linda and Thompson mention that for each of the themes used in the characterisations of the feminist scholarships, they focus on the challenges, the contradictions as well as tensions and other thematic concerns. The underlying summations that scholars insinuate is hat the discipline of family studies has created a considerable slot for feminism. What must be noted at the mention of the foregoing is that the identified and establishable place of feminism is almost always at the peripheries of family studies rather that at the center. The two scholars concur that it is only in the domains of housework that feminism has moved to a central spot. What is derivable from the entries featured is that there is a lag on the part of feminism thrust in most researches and studies. This can be premised on the finding that most researchers have not prioritised the significance of gender in their explorations of the concept/s of family.

Roles of Family in Migration

Yukari Takai takes a thrust at exploring the family networks in the premise of geographic mobility with particular focus on the French Canadian Immigrants in the early twentieth Century. His thrust is aimed at breaking down the patterns of the French Canadian migrants’ mobility in their move to Lowell Massachusetts in the period 1900 to 1920. His study comes to fill the gap that exists in the field of systematic analysis of the roles of family as well as kinship in the process of migration in relation to the considerable proportion of investigations of immigrants in the process of settlement as well as insertion. By extension Takai sheds further light into a more composite and gender -specific viewpoint of the French Canadian immigrants southwards shifts by analysing various matters entailed in the migratory progressions also incorporating the geographic itineraries, occupational experiences as well the movements’ networks of the immigrants.

Post Familial family

Elisabeth Beck Gernsheim has taken a rare direction in exploring the developments that have characterised the shift from the pre-industrial family concept to the post industrial family concept. The launch pad of her work is on the finding that in preindustrial society, The family was mainly a community of need bound up by an obligation of solidarity and this has evolved into more individuality forms of lives that dominate the contemporary world. the acknowledgements made tacitly is that even is the family concept still exists, this now obtains as an elective association where each interested and connected member has his/her own interest. By extension the scholar has underscored that each member of the post industrial family unit will bring to it his/her different plans and experiences and will be subjected to varying forms of control and risks as well as constraints. Where is the pre-industrial family concepts the family held together by common cause of solidarity, it is more difficult nowadays to keep the family unit intact and this demands more effort that in the preindustrial family concepts.

What is important as also and tacit acknowledgement by the scholar that the family concept is not disappearing by evolving in a pattern drive by contemporary challenges from economic and socio-political paradigms. Gernsheim expresses the traditional and typically preindustrial family mould is loosing its monopoly while also its quantitative essence is deteriorating as new lifestyles appear and spread. These according to the scholar represent what will characterise future families or she terms ‘post-familial family’.

Middle Class Women and Fatherhood

Jessica Weiss probes into the sources of so called new fatherhood in which arguments are made that the mothers of the baby boom presented a framework for the charted patterns of fatherhood in the 1970-1990 phases. The scholar assert that for the women in the post war era, assisting men to father was a “prescriptive role as well as a necessity”. Women in there are guided fathers together with children outlining the ideals for fathers’ conduct while their spans of their own tasks broadened. Te scholars have used longitudinal survey data to bring to light the hidden roles and functionalities that a particular generation of women integrated with the conventional and traditional roles performed in driving change in the concept of family. The thrust taken Jessica Weiss also details the forms of disappointment experienced by the women in this critical era.

Conclusion

What can be deduced from the import of all recorded journals in this paper is that the concept of family will remain universal. What has been establishable upon the mention o f the foregoing is that the universal family concept can not be thought to be heterogeneous or uniform as implied by the ‘universal’ term. Different societies in different periods of time have experienced the evolutions of the family concept. In all the forms of family which evolve from the traditional and typically preindustrial molds of family , the bottom-line to fulfill the inalienable societal roles which are sexual, reproductive, economic and educational as outlined by Murdock.

References

Melford E. S. (1954).Is The Family Universal? American Anthropologist, New Series, Vol. 56, No. 5, Part 1 (1954), 2009. Web.

Linda, T. & Alexis, J. W. (1995) The Place of Feminism in Family Studies. Journal of Marriage and the Family, Vol. 57, No. 4 (1995). 2009. Web.

Yukari T (2001) The Family Networks and Geographic Mobility of French Canadian Immigrants in Early-Twentieth-Century Lowell, Massachusetts. Journal of Family History 26, no. 3. 2009. Web.

Beck, G. E. (2003) On the way to a post-familial family: from a community of need to elective affinitie, Journal of Theory, Culture and Society, 15, 34, 53−70, 2009. Web.

Jessica, W.”(1999).A Drop-In Catering Job”: Middle-Class Women and Fatherhood, Journal of Family History, Vol. 24, No. 3, 374-390. 2009. Web.