2131495-Family Theoretical Perspective

The topic of this paper is family and the chosen article is, “Beyond the nuclear family: The increasing importance of multigenerational bonds”. There are several theories that can be used to study the family institution. One of these theories is the symbolic interaction theory. This theory claims that society is made of up ever present interactions among individuals that share symbols and their meanings. This theory is very useful when it comes to understanding other people. This theory magnifies the concepts of meaning in situations. A major realization of this theory is that it helps in realizing other people in ones life. This theory can be used to describe the importance of multigenerational bonds since the theory helps us understand the family institution and how it works.

According to the article, we see that the American society, family relationships over several generations are gaining importance. Family relationships are also becoming more diverse structurally as well as functionally. There are several hypothesis the author puts up which he relates them to the Burgess legacy. Burgess focused on the nuclear family, two generation family, middleclass and family forms which were coming up in the 21st century. Based on the insights made by Burgess the author identifies four major shifts within American families in the course of the 20th century.

The first shift is the emergence of modern nuclear family for. According to Burgess, there has been a lot of change in families. He argues that family has now become specialized when it comes to its function as well as structure. He also states that the objective of family life had become supplanted by subjective and emotional forms. He conceptualized family as a unity of interacting personalities. This statement meant three things; the family is a process and interactional system under the influence of its members, not merely a structure or household. Secondly behaviors of a family member such as a detached father are understandable except in relation to other members of the family, the patterns of how they interact, and personality’s development and changing through these interactions. Third, the central function of families has undergone changes from being structural units of social organizations into relationships that support individual needs. This work was a bridge in the sociological theory from a structural-functionalism into symbolic interaction and phenomenology. The second shift was the decline in the modern nuclear family form. The focus of those in support of the hypothesis is the negative consequences of the changing family structure that come about due to single parenting and divorce, on the social, psychological and economic wellbeing of children. Social norms that have legitimated the pursuit of individual as opposed to collective goals and availability of alternate social groups in order to satisfy basic human needs has led to the weakening of family social institution as an agent of socialization and source of family nurturance (Vem, 2014).

The third shift is the increasing heterogeneity of family forms. Families are now changing in terms of form and meaning, hence expanding beyond the nuclear family set up and now involving a variety of kin and non kin relationships. The economic and social emancipation of women in the past century has now become incongruent when it comes to the nuclear family. There has also been a normalization of divorce as well as step parenting in recent years. There are also children that are being raised by gay and lesbian parents emerging alternative forms of family.

The fourth shift is the increased in importance of multigenerational bonds. These bonds are increasingly becoming important as compared to nuclear family ties for the support and wellbeing of peoples lives.

There has been a widely debated hypothesis of family decline that assumes nuclear family model of biological parents and children the author suggests that there will be an increase in the importance of multigenerational relations in the 21st century. The author sites three reasons for this which are; demographic changes of the aging population that will result to longer shared lives between the generations. Secondly, there is an increasing importance of grandparents and members of kin when it comes to fulfilling functions within the family. Third, there is also an increased in strength and resilience of the solidarity between generations over time. The author also states that the diversity of family multigenerational relations is increasing due to various reasons such as; changes in the structure of the family which involves stepfamily relationships and divorce, an increase in the longevity of kin, and an increased diversity of the types of intergenerational relationships (Vem, 2014).

The author states that multigenerational family bonds are now important in the recent years. Multigenerational relationships are now increasingly becoming diverse when it comes to their structure and how they function. Due to an increase in instability in marriages and divorce many nuclear families have weakened. These multigenerational bonds will enhance and in some cases even replace nuclear family functions. An important point to note is that even if families have changed over the years, their importance has not declined.

Therefore I have learnt that there is an increase in multigenerational relationships and nuclear family setups are now decreasing. People are increasingly moving towards other family structures as opposed to the usual biological parents and children structure. People are becoming more keen on working and living together as a family. therefore, I agree wit the author that there is an increase in multigenerational relationship bonds.

References

Vem, B. (2014). Beyond the nuclear family: The increasing importance of multigenerational bonds.