SNAF
Standard North American Family
Ideology
System of beliefs that justify certain actions/behaviours
Religious definitions of family
Concerned with moral issues and obligations, and teachings of faith
Legal/Official
May change depending on specific needs
Scholarly Definitions
Tend to focus on functions, processes or common elements
Eichler (1988)
- Focus on dimensions of interaction
1. Procreation
2. Socialization
3. Sexual relations
4. Residence
5. Economic co-operation
6. Emotional ties
McDaniel and Tepperman (2004)
- Focus on common elements/processes
1. Relation Type of Attachment
2. Sexual Relations tend to be Regulated
3. Most families exhibit some degree of power imbalance
4. Families tend to guard their members against internal and external danger
40s, 50s, 60s
- Family is the basic institution of society
* Nuclear family
“The Family” Permeates two spheres
- Policy Making
2. Economic and Social Scientific Theories
Fictive Kin
Non-relatives sometimes considered “family”
Cohen (2018)
- Family as an institutional arena
- A social space in which relations between people in particular social positions are governed by accepted rules of interaction
Family arena
Where people practice intimacy, childbearing, socialization and caring work
Cohen (2018) two other institutional arenas
- The state
- The market
* the state and market interact
The State
Behaviour is legally regulated, violence is controlled, and resources redistributed
* Family is directly affected through regulation and redistribution of resources
The Market
Labour for pay, economic exchange, wealth accumulation
*Affects families and their decisions
The Family Decline Hypothesis
David Popenoe (1996, 93, 98)
- Nuclear family is in decline
- Increase in alternative family forms
- Families ill suited to serve two basic functions: Child rearing and providing emotional sustenance
- modern-day families, relative to families of the past, are in trouble and in “crisis”
The Family Change Perspective
Judith Stacey (1996)
- Family is not in decline, but changing
- Visions of traditional family no longer viable
Present Family Trends
- Young adults take longer to establish themselves
* Non-traditional families
The Family Decline View of the Present Trends
- Young people are rejecting the institution of marriage and family
- Hedonistic and individualized culture, secularization is bad for families
- Technology undermines family communication and interaction
- Reproductive technologies allow us to reject “natural” family transitions
The Family Change View of the Present Trends
- Delayed marriage just an extension of young adulthood
- Trends show continuity and change, not a linear decline
- Need to consider lower life expectancy in the past
- “The Family” was patriarchal and not sustainable
Family
a micro-social group that reciprocally links and reflects other macro-level institutions of society
Social demography
the scientific study of population
The Family (40’s, 50’s, 60’s)
Family is the basic institution of society and that it was a social and economic unit consisting of two adults of the opposite sex who shared economic resources, sexual intimacy, labour, accomodation, reproduction and child-rearing
Vanier Institute definition of the Family
- physical maintenance and care of group members
- Addition of new members through procreation or adoption
- Socialization of children
- Social control of members
- production, consumption, distribution of goods and services
- affective nurturance-love
