The Contemporary Family

CONTEMPORARY FAMILY

Introduction

Family, as social group, is object of study for a lot of science disciplines, like: demography, juridical sciences, pedagogy and psychology, anthropology, medicine, economic sciences, etc. Scientific knowledge about family have some important objectives:

• to get some notes more exactly about family’s dimensions, dynamics and functions;

• tendency through a global approach of family, including the cultural space and temporal components;

• To elaborate assumptions and theory which have a predictive power and to create a base for practical interventions.

The visions and preoccupations of most discipline which approach family are varied because of some co-ordinate: from macrosocial (sociology, demography, history) to microsocial (social psychology); from familial-normative (juridical sciences) to descriptive-informal (sociology, demography, social psychology).

The sociology of family’s problems

The sociology of family’s problems is varied and the points of view are very different. The most important problems which are vise by family’s sociology are: the family as element of social structure, the biological base of family, partner’s choice and marriage, forms of marriage, rules of descent, the intercourse of role of partners and parents in family and society, the social stratification and family, the family dissolution, the effects of social changes about family, the family attack, the prediction of success of family, the influence of social classes about family, the family’s structure, the relationship’s structure, rules and intercourse from he inside of familial group, the conception about education, the specific nature of family, the system of intercourse family-society at the primary or secondary institution level and the evolution of these intercourse trough history.

Topical themes in family’s sociology

The new wave of women’s movement, which bring in attention the explanation of “woman’s statue inside the family” and the accumulation of new data and methods as part of the convex disciplines, determine new theoretic orientations as part of family’s sociology. From among we mention:

• The cycle of family life: the period before marriage, the children’s birth, the socialization, the old age, the widowhood, etc.

• The relation between means of subsistence’s production and the family’s pattern;

• The divorce and marriage for second time, with accent on causes and consequences of divorce;

• The ways of life alternative to family like the living tally, family with only one parent, migrant family, etc.

• The relationship between parents and children and children with parents (when they are old).

Obviously, because this domain is very large and complex, these themes don’t exhaust all problems about family. On the other hand, seeing the continuous evolution of this domain, with the others subsystems of social system, it isn’t possible an exhaustive approach of problems which could constitute the object of study of family’s sociology.

Family’s structure and functions

Family is primary social group which posses a certain structure. Family can be characterize reported it to two criteria:

• Quantitative (number of members in familial group and the network of statute and rules in familial group);

• Qualitative (the rule’s division in familial group and the way that the authority is exerted).

The descendant’s numbers from a family vary from a society to other and from a social category to other. In every society is recorded a continuos diminution of children’s number because the children’s rule in family changed and because the parent’s attitude for children changed.

The evolutions intervened in family’s structure lead to a redistribution of authority in familial group. The result is the relative equalization of couple’s partner’s authority. The family from Europe is characterizes through an equilibrated distribution of authority inside the familial group. There are important varieties about the socio-cultural characteristics of couples. The possibilities of exerting equilaterally the authority bring up at once with the level of instruction of partners. We can observe a common tendency of relative diminution of parents’ authority on children. This authority diminution is regarding at the parent’s influence on children in choosing the school and professional carrier, partner choose, etc. In town community, the old parents don’t exert only a weak influence on their children; on the contrary, the children exert an authority on parents became old and dependent.