family assignment sociology

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15.2 Sociological Perspectives on the Family

Learning objective.

• Summarize understandings of the family as presented by functional, conflict, and social interactionist theories.

Sociological views on today’s families generally fall into the functional, conflict, and social interactionist approaches introduced earlier in this book. Let’s review these views, which are summarized in Table 15.1 “Theory Snapshot” .

Table 15.1 Theory Snapshot

Social Functions of the Family

Recall that the functional perspective emphasizes that social institutions perform several important functions to help preserve social stability and otherwise keep a society working. A functional understanding of the family thus stresses the ways in which the family as a social institution helps make society possible. As such, the family performs several important functions.

First, the family is the primary unit for socializing children . As previous chapters indicated, no society is possible without adequate socialization of its young. In most societies, the family is the major unit in which socialization happens. Parents, siblings, and, if the family is extended rather than nuclear, other relatives all help socialize children from the time they are born.

One of the most important functions of the family is the socialization of children. In most societies the family is the major unit through which socialization occurs.

Colleen Kelly – Kids Playing Monopoly Chicago – CC BY 2.0.

Second, the family is ideally a major source of practical and emotional support for its members. It provides them food, clothing, shelter, and other essentials, and it also provides them love, comfort, help in times of emotional distress, and other types of intangible support that we all need.

Third, the family helps regulate sexual activity and sexual reproduction . All societies have norms governing with whom and how often a person should have sex. The family is the major unit for teaching these norms and the major unit through which sexual reproduction occurs. One reason for this is to ensure that infants have adequate emotional and practical care when they are born. The incest taboo that most societies have, which prohibits sex between certain relatives, helps minimize conflict within the family if sex occurred among its members and to establish social ties among different families and thus among society as a whole.

Fourth, the family provides its members with a social identity . Children are born into their parents’ social class, race and ethnicity, religion, and so forth. As we have seen in earlier chapters, social identity is important for our life chances. Some children have advantages throughout life because of the social identity they acquire from their parents, while others face many obstacles because the social class or race/ethnicity into which they are born is at the bottom of the social hierarchy.

Beyond discussing the family’s functions, the functional perspective on the family maintains that sudden or far-reaching changes in conventional family structure and processes threaten the family’s stability and thus that of society. For example, most sociology and marriage-and-family textbooks during the 1950s maintained that the male breadwinner–female homemaker nuclear family was the best arrangement for children, as it provided for a family’s economic and child-rearing needs. Any shift in this arrangement, they warned, would harm children and by extension the family as a social institution and even society itself. Textbooks no longer contain this warning, but many conservative observers continue to worry about the impact on children of working mothers and one-parent families. We return to their concerns shortly.

The Family and Conflict

Conflict theorists agree that the family serves the important functions just listed, but they also point to problems within the family that the functional perspective minimizes or overlooks altogether.

First, the family as a social institution contributes to social inequality in several ways. The social identity it gives to its children does affect their life chances, but it also reinforces a society’s system of stratification. Because families pass along their wealth to their children, and because families differ greatly in the amount of wealth they have, the family helps reinforce existing inequality. As it developed through the centuries, and especially during industrialization, the family also became more and more of a patriarchal unit (see earlier discussion), helping to ensure men’s status at the top of the social hierarchy.

Second, the family can also be a source of conflict for its own members. Although the functional perspective assumes the family provides its members emotional comfort and support, many families do just the opposite and are far from the harmonious, happy groups depicted in the 1950s television shows. Instead, and as the news story that began this chapter tragically illustrated, they argue, shout, and use emotional cruelty and physical violence. We return to family violence later in this chapter.

Families and Social Interaction

Social interactionist perspectives on the family examine how family members and intimate couples interact on a daily basis and arrive at shared understandings of their situations. Studies grounded in social interactionism give us a keen understanding of how and why families operate the way they do.

Some studies, for example, focus on how husbands and wives communicate and the degree to which they communicate successfully (Tannen, 2001). A classic study by Mirra Komarovsky (1964) found that wives in blue-collar marriages liked to talk with their husbands about problems they were having, while husbands tended to be quiet when problems occurred. Such gender differences seem less common in middle-class families, where men are better educated and more emotionally expressive than their working-class counterparts. Another classic study by Lillian Rubin (1976) found that wives in middle-class families say that ideal husbands are ones who communicate well and share their feelings, while wives in working-class families are more apt to say that ideal husbands are ones who do not drink too much and who go to work every day.

Other studies explore the role played by romantic love in courtship and marriage. Romantic love , the feeling of deep emotional and sexual passion for someone, is the basis for many American marriages and dating relationships, but it is actually uncommon in many parts of the contemporary world today and in many of the societies anthropologists and historians have studied. In these societies, marriages are arranged by parents and other kin for economic reasons or to build alliances, and young people are simply expected to marry whoever is chosen for them. This is the situation today in parts of India, Pakistan, and other developing nations and was the norm for much of the Western world until the late 18th and early 19th centuries (Lystra, 1989).

Key Takeaways

• The family ideally serves several functions for society. It socializes children, provides practical and emotional support for its members, regulates sexual reproduction, and provides its members with a social identity.
• Reflecting conflict theory’s emphases, the family may also produce several problems. In particular, it may contribute for several reasons to social inequality, and it may subject its members to violence, arguments, and other forms of conflict.
• Social interactionist understandings of the family emphasize how family members interact on a daily basis. In this regard, several studies find that husbands and wives communicate differently in certain ways that sometimes impede effective communication.

For Your Review

• As you think how best to understand the family, do you favor the views and assumptions of functional theory, conflict theory, or social interactionist theory? Explain your answer.
• Do you think the family continues to serve the function of regulating sexual behavior and sexual reproduction? Why or why not?

Komarovsky, M. (1964). Blue-collar marriage . New York, NY: Random House.

Lystra, K. (1989). Searching the heart: Women, men, and romantic love in nineteenth-century America . New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Rubin, L. B. (1976). Worlds of pain: Life in the working-class family . New York, NY: Basic Books.

Tannen, D. (2001). You just don’t understand: Women and men in conversation . New York, NY: Quill.

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Unit 6 – the family.

Objectives:

At the end of this unit, students will be able to:

1.  Identify what is meant by the phrase “diversity of the family.

2.  Outline the changing demographic characteristics of the family.

3.  Outline the difference between complementary and companionate roles in the family.

4.  Understand the family’s role in the socialization of the individual.

Core Readings:

Steckley, John and Letts, G. Chapter Seven: The Family.

Commentary:

In this unit, we take a look at one of the major institutions of our social world; the family. Now, we’ve already looked at the family in the context of culture and socialization and have seen how the family takes part, through its day to day practices (pink for girls, blue for boys), in the replication of the social order. In this section, we are going to extend our understanding of that process a bit by looking in more detail at the importance of the family in relation to “the system” of productive and reproductive labor in our society.

Although it is true that times have changed, and although it is true that families perform a number of different functions; nevertheless, it is also true in all cases that the family unit (whether that be in the form of the nuclear family or extended family) is a part of the productive apparatus of society. That is, in addition to its other functions, the family serves the system of production.

What does that mean?

If you take a look at the society around you, you will notice that society is organized around the production of goods and services. Except for our limited leisure time (which amounts to a couple of hours each night and weekend), everything we do is geared toward work and labor. Everything from our roadways (whose main arteries lead to industrial and business centers), to our calendars (organized around a 35 to 40 day “work week”), to our schools (which teach a “hidden curriculum” that prepares us for the routines of the labor force), to our media presentations of reality, point us in the direction of work.

It is the same with the family. From the perspective of the productive requirements of society, the family is an incredibly important site for the reproduction of the “the system” of work, labor, and production and it is so in a number of ways. As noted in the last section, it is the family unit that reproduces the labor force of society. That is, each new generation of laborers is trained by the family and the socialization practices reflect this. For example, it is typical in the middle class neighborhood where I live for families to spend a lot of time training their kids to be productive and competitive and self sufficient. They are placed in competitive sports, taught the importance of “performance” and assessment (i.e., they put in sports that reward high performance and punish those who don’t), and their days are filled (from morning to night) with activity after activity after activity. To the parents who do it, this seems normal (cause everyone else around them is doing it), but it’s not necessarily ideal or healthy for the children. What it does do; however, is hard wire into the body and mind of the children a typical pattern of middle class managerial and professional ethics. Get up in the morning, work hard, compete, and perform all day, and go to bed at night to regenerate and prepare for the next day.

Now of course, in our modern society, families are not given the sole responsibility for raising children. Schools are also important here. As noted in the last section, schools are also implicated in the transference of the productive values of society,  but even then, families are important for reinforcement. If children are not performing at school, if they are not “making the grade,” if they are not paying attention, if they are too fidgety or unfocussed, if the schools can’t control the kids, parents are brought in to help in which case, intense pressure is brought to bear on parents in order to make their children conform “behind the closed doors” of the family milieu.

As I said in the last section, the family performs multiple roles. In addition to the role the family plays in training the next generation of working class or middle class “production units,” the family also plays a supportive role in maintenance of the social order.

What do I mean by that?

Well, think for a few moments of the traditional western nuclear family. You have a stay at home mom who is responsible for looking after the children, keeping the house clean, the clothes washed, and lunches and dinner ready, while the dad goes off to work. This work that the mom provides is valuable support work for the system of productive labor. She basically raises the next generation of workers and; more importantly for us here, performs a physical and emotional service for the male breadwinner who, having had to work long and stressful hours at a stressful, hierarchical, and high stress factory or office, gets to enjoy a relaxing evening in a clean home, with a prepared meal, cloths washed, and various levels of emotional support. Feminist scholars have argued that without this unpaid supporting role (raising kids, helping to “regenerate” the husband), society would not be able to function as it currently does.

There are a couple of things to note here. On the one hand, and as many feminist critics of modern society have pointed out, although the labor that women provide in raising the next generation and in providing emotional and physical support for the principle breadwinner in a home is valuable; nevertheless, it is unpaid labor and this is quite unfair. The extensive time women put into raising children and caring for the family is not recognized in our society and although you may not think twice about this initially, because this is what we’ve all learned as “normal,” if you think about it, in the context of an advanced industrial society where you even have to pay for the water you drink, it approaches the bizarre. In a world where every little action and reaction is charged for, taxed, and interest rated, an entire “realm” of work and effort, totally necessary and absolutely indispensable to the continuation of society is undervalued and even devalued.

Well, the “obvious” answer, i.e., the one that pops into our heads when we think about this sort of thing, is that it’s women’s “natural” instinct or “natural” duty or (if we’re religious) her “God given” role and therefore, it’s just something that she should do and shut up about it. But, that’s not good social science. That’s patriarchal ideology [1] and we’d like to avoid that here.

Now, the less obvious answer for “why” is that developing an ideology and exploiting women’s unpaid labor is beneficial for some. That is, we (and by “we”, I mean governments and corporate leaders) devalue women’s labor, force single parents into poverty, fail to provide adequate supports, and generally force a form of financial and emotional slavery in the home because it means more profit. Think about it. What would it do to the bottom line of this world’s major multi-billion dollar corporations and governments if they were required to contribute financially to the reproduction of their labor force? I’m sure it wouldn’t break the system. There are trillions of dollars floating around in this world’s economic system these days and even a small  fraction of those trillions, if  devoted to supporting the reproduction of this world’s labor force, would make a huge difference in the lives of millions of women. But, it would require less private profit and that’s the problem. Nobody wants to be held responsible for the reproduction of the labor force because it’s costly. Better to pretend that it is natural women’s work and leave it at that. [2]

Now, to some of you reading this, this may seem like a hypercritical, even cynical look at the family and it is in a way. It is true that for most of us, families and having children are important, loving activities that are part of the magic and mystery of life. However, that most of us enter into family arrangements for loving reasons doesn’t change the fact that families, the way they are currently organized, are designed with “the system” in mind. And, we can highlight this by considering the fact that there are alternative ways of organizing the family (i.e., extended families, families where when a child is born, both parents stay home to raise the child to ensure healthy psychological and sociological development). In fact, before the industrial revolution, the family was quite different. Changes to the family, and the imposition of the nuclear family, came about as a result of the needs of the emerging industrial system for mobile, flexible, and cheap labor.

Keeping in mind a critical focus on the family’s importance in the context of sociology where our goal is to understand the world, how it operates, and how we create it, it’s also important at an individual level, especially when we consider the economic circumstances of women. Historically, women often experience great financial harm and hardship as a result of their status as unpaid supporters of the labor system of society. Despite the fact that women perform an essential service for society (i.e., they raise the next generation of workers who then go on to help society “profit” from their labor), society doesn’t value the reproductive labor of women. It doesn’t value the raising of children as a valuable economic contribution to society and women often pay a heavy price for this. Consider what happens; for example, when the spouse of a mother of three leaves her? Limited social supports, the breakdown of the extended family, limited family supports, the high cost of housing and daycare, all this leads to a rather negative outcome for many women (i.e., poverty and despair). There is the financial hardship that often goes with being a single parent female, not to mention the psychological harm that comes as a result of having to single-handily bear the intense social pressure and expectation placed on women to raise a good, well oiled worker bee. There is a reason that women experience psychological depression more often than men and this is it. [3]

Now, despite this cynical account given above, it is important to note that the family is changing. As the textbook points out, there have been many different demographic changes. The stereotypical image of the family presented above; i.e., stay at home mom, dad as breadwinner, is changing. Family roles are no longer rigid and variation is allowed (if not yet common). For example, we do see men (on occasion) staying home and being the stay at home dad while mom is in the work force. We do notice that roles have shifted and that there is more cooperation and sharing of family responsibilities. But, this doesn’t mean the primary economic relationships have changed. In the context of the reproduction of the labor force, the primary function of the family is still to reproduce labor and raising the next generation of workers is still unpaid labor. Despite the fact that society and corporations benefit, parents are expected to bear the cost.

Now, if you have doubts about the importance of the family to the reproduction system, you may want to consider the colonization of Canada and the efforts the Canadian government put into destroying the native family form. Take a look at the text book on colonization and residential schools in Canada and take a look at this week’s additional reading. You will see the importance that government places on the form and function of a native family. Now, most of us will be familiar with the fact that before the Europeans came here (the French and the English), the native populations of Canada subsisted in this vast country unencumbered by the European laws and conventions. As a result, natives had very different life styles. They had extended families, did not believe that they should spend life working, and did enough to survive and prosper, but did not accumulate wealth as the Europeans liked to do. In fact, quite the opposite. On the prosperous west coast, the natives there used to perform a ceremony called a potlatch. In this potlatch (which means to “give away”), wealthy families called together a feast for the sole purpose of redistributing their accumulated surplus wealth. In this “anti-european” (from the perspective of the Europeans anyway) ceremony, the family that gives away the most wealth wins. Now obviously, in the context of the European values which emphasize the selfish accumulation of wealth even in the face of surrounding poverty, such family traditions would have been considered anathema to the productive system and in fact, the government of Canada banned the potlatch and made it illegal to carry out because the example it set called into question the production and system values they brought. And the government of Canada didn’t stop there. In addition to banning the potlatch, the government also engaged in a systematic attempt to wipe out the native family form across Canada. During the turn of the century, colonization and for many decades afterward, the Canadian government had a policy of directly interfering in the native family. Why? Recognizing the role that family had in shaping and socializing the next generation of worker, and recognizing that assimilation of natives into the emerging productive apparatus of Canada required modifying the native family, the Canadian government set up an “Indian Affairs” ministry and then for decades, engaged in a violent assault on the native family structure. Agents of the government would basically go in and take native children out of their home without permission, and with only the flimsiest of moral justification. They then institutionalized native children in residential schools, isolated them from their families, and subjected them to horrific levels of physical, psychological, and sexual abuse in an attempt to eliminate family patterns and destroy a culture and heritage that simply did not fit into the white European model of wage and productive slavery. White rulers saw native traditions and family as a threat to the productive order in Canada. It is hard to understand why the government would conduct such an aggressive and destructive attack on the native social institution of family and unless you realize the role the family plays in “fitting people” into the productive system of a society, it makes more sense.  Sadly, the Canadian attack on the native family was quite effective and it not only destroyed strong native ties and values, but literally undermined the self esteem and psychological health of generations of natives. It is something that we, as a nation of colonizers, are only now beginning to take full responsibility for. [4]

And that’s family. For me, a sociological analysis of the family is one of the clearest sites of hegemonic domination and a location where we can clearly see the application of power to create a specific world. This is particularly clear in the case of the native family structure that was changed and destroyed as a result of the powerful application of force by the Canadian government. It’s also reflective of our “nuclear” family which survives because it fits the current system of production.

Nevertheless, it is important to understand that though the family form is imposed upon us, the family is also one of the best examples of our ability to create and change things. We see this clearly in the changing demographics of family, the weakening of ridged gender roles, and the changes in the way work is distributed within family units. As the textbook demonstrates, men are slowly taking over some of the unfair responsibilities dumped on women. Although social change can be painstakingly slow, we still see the change.

Through writing, social unrest, political action, long term efforts to education and enlighten people, the family is changing and expanding. And of course, you don’t have to wait for social change to catch up. Of all the “sites” of socialization and control, the family is probably the easiest location to change. If there is something about common socialization patterns you don’t like, if you  want to resist stereotyped gender or de-emphasize competition and constant work, this is within your power. It is just a question of observation, seeing what you are doing, and changing the behaviors you don’t agree with. This is the root of social change and something that we study in greater detail in my course, Sociology 288 – Social Movements.

Anyway, that’s the family. There is a lot more that could be said about it, its functions, its changing demographics, etc. We could talk about violence in the family, the changing perceptions of children, talk more about changing gender roles or the differential emotional experiences of men and women in the family, but this I think is a sufficient introduction.  Just keep in mind, as with all other social institutions, the family is created and recreated by us, though not in a simple way. As we should be clearly getting the idea at this point, “reality” is a contested place characterized by struggle, unequal power, and unequal influence. As we can see by our discussions of deviance and the family, and as we will see when we discuss ethnicity, stratification, and gender, we do create the world—but we do it from locations of unequal power.

When you pause to take a critical sociological look, it becomes clear. Some of us have more power than others to create and shape reality. As we have seen, a white male government official, who is capable of setting a law that determines how, for example, the RCMP acts, has way more power to create the world as he wants than say the native people’s whose children were stolen from them. It’s an important insight. It’s true that sociology is the study of the world we create, but it is also true that in this study, the dimension of POWER is of critical importance.

Assignment:

In this weeks assignment, I want you to take an 800 to 1200 word look at power in your family. Ask yourself the question, “who has the power in your family?” Who defines what is right and wrong?” What is good behavior or bad”? Who defines the rules?” Who controls the money?” Who makes the decisions?” Is it the parents equally? Is it just one parent (the father)? Do the kids have any kind of say? If you have kids, you may also want to consider how your family intersects with the authority of the school. Does your family take on the responsibility for enforcing school expectations (grades, attendance, behavior in class?) And if so, why and how? Schools are no longer able to physically punish children for failing to conform, but now, the expectation is placed on parents who, if they fail to discipline their kids and make them conform, will find the schools pushing for chemical straight jacking of children. What do you think would happen to your family if you refused to educate your children as specified by the government? If you choose different values and different ways of existing? Compare this to the residential school experience of natives in Canada.

Alternatively, use valid academic resources and do some additional reading. When you are done, provide and 800-1200 word commentary on the purpose of residential schools in Canada. Be sure to include common course themes like power and the social order and socialization. Why did the Canadian government involve itself in residential schools.

Additional Reading:

A lost heritage. Canada’s Residential Schools. http://archives.cbc.ca/society/education/topics/692/

Residential Schools Background. http://www.albertasource.ca/treaty8/eng/1899_and_After/Implications_and_Contentions/residential_schools.html

Practice Questions:

What does it mean to say that “reality is a contested place.” Discuss.

Explain the difference between matrilineal and patrilineal kinship lines.

What is the difference between a ‘simple’ and a ‘complex’ household? Which is more common?

Discuss the notion of the ‘crude marriage rate’. What were the trends with regards to this statistic over the course of the twentieth century?

Why are people who live in common-law relationships and then marry more likely than marriages that don’t involve cohabitation to end in divorce?

How is ‘fecundity’ related to the concept of fertility?

What is the ‘replacement rate’? Why is it an important factor in the growth of the Canadian population?

The divorce rate has fluctuated a great deal since 1968. What are some of the primary reasons for these fluctuations?

Distinguish between the terms ‘cluttered nest’ and ‘empty nest’. What factors lead to the ‘cluttered nest’?

What are some of the unique issues in the province of Quebec that relate to the family? Discuss any three.

What is the difference between ‘segregated’ and ‘joint’ roles as they relate to marital roles?

What are complimentary roles as they relate to the family? Why are they no longer the norm in Canada?

What is the relationship between gender and housework in Canadian society?

What are some of the factors that lead to occupational segregation between men and women?

Why do women seek out jobs that allow them greater flexibility?

Why might women be more likely than men to experience work interruptions?

What is ‘scientific racism’? How could it possibly lead to genocide?

What is eugenics? Is it still relevant today?

What is the basic position of the ‘blaming the victim’ perspective?

What is the ‘sixties scoop’? What types of problems did this cause for Aboriginals?

[1] See http://www.thespiritwiki.com/index.php/Ideology

[2] Incidentally, the same sort of argument is made when we consider the use of resources in production. Factories; for example, often release a lot of dangerous and toxic chemicals into the environment as a result of their production process. This release of toxins by corporations is a major cost to society. The most obvious of the costs is the cleanup (when required) and medical costs that are often born by individual citizens and/or governments when people get sick and die because of toxic effluents. I know where I live, I have to pay a per-bag fee for the garbage I dump into the environment, but historically, corporations dump for free and offload the cost onto private citizens. It is great for them because it allows them to pad their bottom lines, but they are really just offloading the costs.

[3] See for example this Mayo Clinic report on the causes of women’s depression http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/depression/MH00035. Ignore the biological factors and focus on the social factors identified at the bottom of the article.

[4] See for example the recent 2008 apology by Stephen Harper to the natives of Canada for their horrid treatment in the residential schools of this nation. http://www.thestar.com/News/Canada/article/441820

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Sociology 101

Families and Relationships ¶

In this lesson, we examine society’s most fundamental social group—the family. Yet what makes a family is subject to debate. Sociology doesn’t define a family by who its members are but by what they do, how they relate to one another, and their relationship to the larger society. You will probably see some of your own family’s story in these discussions. We’ll look at the dynamic diversity of family forms in the contemporary United States, the functions of the family for society, the hierarchies of inequality that shape family life, the work that gets done by and in families, the kinds of troubles families experience, and the political and cultural controversies that affect families. You will learn that when it comes to family life, change is the only constant.

Learning Objectives ¶

By the end of this lesson, you will be able to:

Describe society’s current understanding of family and recognize change in marriage and family patterns.

Discuss the social impact of changing family structures.

Analyze health benefits associated with marriage.

Deadlines ¶

Be sure to hand these in before the deadline

InQuizitive Chapter Set 12 (Thursday at 9:30am)

Marriage case (Sunday at 10:00pm)

Families on TV Application

Film reflection (Sunday at 10:00pm)

‘ Families and Relationships ’, Chapter 12 in Real World

Class Lecture Slides

Theories About Family & Marriage

Stages of Family Life

Discuss (Thursday during class): ¶

Dick johnson is dead ¶, questions ¶.

If you have any questions at all about what you are supposed to do on this lesson, please remember I am here to help. Reach out any time so I can support your success.

Post it in the Slack #questions channel!

Signup for virtual office hours !

Email me or your TA.

Lesson Keywords ¶

extended family

nuclear family

patriarchal & companionship family types

family historical trends

fictive kin

Propinquity

antimiscegenation

cohabitation

instrumental & expressive tasks

second shift

The least you need to know ¶

Theoretical perspectives on the family

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Chapter 14. Marriage and Family

Learning objectives, 14.1. what is marriage what is a family.

• Describe society’s current understanding of family
• Recognize changes in marriage and family patterns
• Differentiate between lines of decent and residence

14.2. Variations in Family Life

• Recognize variations in family life
• Understand the prevalence of single parents, cohabitation, same-sex couples, and unmarried individuals
• Discuss the social impact of changing family structures

14.3. Challenges Families Face

• Understand the social and interpersonal impact of divorce
• Describe the social and interpersonal impact of family abuse

Introduction to Marriage and Family

Christina and James met in college and have been dating for more than five years. For the past two years, they have been living together in a condo they purchased jointly. While Christina and James were confident in their decision to enter into a commitment like a 20-year mortgage, they are unsure if they want to enter into marriage . The couple had many discussions about marriage and decided that it just did not seem necessary. Wasn’t it only a piece of paper? And didn’t half of all marriages end in divorce?

Neither Christina nor James had seen much success with marriage while growing up. Christina was raised by a single mother. Her parents never married, and her father has had little contact with the family since she was a toddler. Christina and her mother lived with her maternal grandmother, who often served as a surrogate parent. James grew up in a two-parent household until age seven, when his parents divorced. He lived with his mother for a few years, and then later with his mother and her boyfriend until he left for college. James remained close with his father who remarried and had a baby with his new wife.

Recently, Christina and James have been thinking about having children and the subject of marriage has resurfaced. Christina likes the idea of her children growing up in a traditional family, while James is concerned about possible marital problems down the road and negative consequences for the children should that occur. When they shared these concerns with their parents, James’s mom was adamant that the couple should get married. Despite having been divorced and having a live-in boyfriend of 15 years, she believes that children are better off when their parents are married. Christina’s mom believes that the couple should do whatever they want but adds that it would “be nice” if they wed. Christina and James’s friends told them, married or not married, they would still be a family.

Christina and James’s scenario may be complicated, but it is representative of the lives of many young couples today, particularly those in urban areas (Useem 2007). Statistics Canada (2012) reports that the number of unmarried, common-law couples grew by 35 percent between 2001 and 2011 to make up a total of 16.7 percent of all families in Canada. Cohabitating, but unwed, couples account for 16.7 percent of all families in Canada. Some may never choose to wed (Jayson 2008). With fewer couples marrying, the traditional Canadian family structure is becoming less common. Nevertheless, although the percentage of traditional married couples has declined as a proportion of all families, at 67 percent of all families, it is still by far the predominant family structure.

Marriage and family are key structures in most societies. While the two institutions have historically been closely linked in Canadian culture, their connection is becoming more complex. The relationship between marriage and family is an interesting topic of study to sociologists.

What is marriage? Different people define it in different ways. Not even sociologists are able to agree on a single meaning. For our purposes, we will define marriage as a legally recognized social contract between two people, traditionally based on a sexual relationship and implying a permanence of the union. In creating an inclusive definition, we should also consider variations, such as whether a legal union is required (think of “common- law” marriage and its equivalents), or whether more than two people can be involved (consider polygamy). Other variations on the definition of marriage might include whether spouses are of opposite sexes or the same sex, and how one of the traditional expectations of marriage (to produce children) is understood today.

Sociologists are interested in the relationship between the institution of marriage and the institution of family because, historically, marriages are what create a family, and families are the most basic social unit upon which society is built. Both marriage and family create status roles that are sanctioned by society.

So what is a family? A husband, a wife, and two children—maybe even a pet—served as the model for the traditional Canadian family for most of the 20th century. But what about families that deviate from this model, such as a single-parent household or a homosexual couple without children? Should they be considered families as well?

The question of what constitutes a family is a prime area of debate in family sociology, as well as in politics and religion. Social conservatives tend to define the family in terms of structure with each family member filling a certain role (like father, mother, or child). Sociologists, on the other hand, tend to define family more in terms of the manner in which members relate to one another than on a strict configuration of status roles. Here, we will define family as a socially recognized group (usually joined by blood, marriage, or adoption) that forms an emotional connection and serves as an economic unit of society. Sociologists identify different types of families based on how one enters into them. A family of orientation refers to the family into which a person is born. A family of procreation describes one that is formed through marriage. These distinctions have cultural significance related to issues of lineage.

Drawing on the three sociological paradigms we have been studying in this introduction to sociology, the sociological understanding of what constitutes a family can be explained by symbolic interactionism, critical sociology, and functionalism. Symbolic interactionist theories indicate that families are groups in which participants view themselves as family members and act accordingly. In other words, families are groups in which people come together to form a strong primary group connection, maintaining emotional ties to one another over a long period of time. Such families could potentially include groups of close friends as family. Critical sociology emphasizes that the forms that define the “typical” family unit are not independent of historical changes in the economic structures and relations of power in society. The typical large, extended family of the rural, agriculture-based economy 100 years ago in Canada was much different from the single breadwinner-led “nuclear” family of the Fordist economy following World War II and different again from today’s families who have to respond to economic conditions of precarious employment, fluid modernity, and norms of gender and sexual equality.

In addition, the functionalist perspective views families as groups that perform vital roles for society—both internally (for the family itself) and externally (for society as a whole). Families provide for one another’s physical, emotional, and social well-being. Parents care for and socialize children, a function that prepares new members of society for their future roles. While interactionism helps us to understand the subjective experience of belonging to a “family” and critical sociology focuses on how families configure themselves in response to political-economic pressures and changes, functionalism illuminates the many purposes of families and their role in the maintenance of a balanced society (Parsons and Bales 1956). We will go into more detail about how these theories apply to family in later sections.

Challenges Families Face

North Americans are somewhat divided when it comes to determining what does and what does not constitute a family. In a 2010 survey conducted by Ipsos Reid, participants were asked what they believed constituted a family unit. Eighty percent of respondents agreed that a husband, wife, and children constitute a family. Sixty-six percent stated that a common-law couple with children still constitutes a family. The numbers drop for less traditional structures: a single mother and children (55 percent), a single father and children (54 percent), grandparents raising children (50 percent), common-law or married couples without children (46 percent), gay male couples with children (45 percent) (Postmedia News 2010). This survey revealed that children tend to be the key indicator in establishing “family” status: the percentage of individuals who agreed that unmarried couples constitute a family nearly doubled when children were added.

Another study also revealed that 60 percent of North Americans agreed that if you consider yourself a family, you are a family (a concept that reinforces an interactionist perspective) (Powell et al. 2010). Canadian statistics are based on the more inclusive definition of “census families.” Statistics Canada defines a census family as “composed of a married or common-law couple, with or without children, or of a lone parent living with at least one child in the same dwelling. Couples can be of the opposite sex or of the same sex” (Statistics Canada 2012). Census categories aside, sociologists would argue that the general concept of family is more diverse and less structured than in years past. Society has given more leeway to the design of a family making room for what works for its members (Jayson 2010).

Family is, indeed, a subjective concept, but it is a fairly objective fact that family (whatever one’s concept of it may be) is very important to North Americans. In a 2010 survey by Pew Research Center in Washington, D.C., 76 percent of adults surveyed stated that family is “the most important” element of their life—just 1 percent said it was “not important” (Pew Research Center 2010). It is also very important to society. American President Ronald Reagan notably stated, “The family has always been the cornerstone of American society. Our families nurture, preserve, and pass on to each succeeding generation the values we share and cherish, values that are the foundation of our freedoms” (Lee 2009). The dark side of this importance can also be seen in Reagan’s successful use of “family values” rhetoric to attack welfare mothers. His infamous “welfare queen” story about a black single mother in Chicago, who supposedly defrauded the government of $150,000 in welfare payments, was a complete fabrication that nevertheless “worked” politically because of social anxieties about the decline of the family. While the design of the family may have changed in recent years, the fundamentals of emotional closeness and support are still present. Most responders to the Pew survey stated that their family today is at least as close (45 percent) or closer (40 percent) than the family with which they grew up (Pew Research Center 2010).

Alongside the debate surrounding what constitutes a family is the question of what North Americans believe constitutes a marriage. Many religious and social conservatives believe that marriage can only exist between man and a woman, citing religious scripture and the basics of human reproduction as support. As Prime Minister Stephen Harper put it, “I have no difficulty with the recognition of civil unions for nontraditional relationships but I believe in law we should protect the traditional definition of marriage” ( Globe and Mail 2010). Social liberals and progressives, on the other hand, believe that marriage can exist between two consenting adults—be they a man and a woman, a woman and a woman, or a man and a man —and that it would be discriminatory to deny such a couple the civil, social, and economic benefits of marriage.

Marriage Patterns

With single parenting and cohabitation (when a couple shares a residence but not a marriage) becoming more acceptable in recent years, people may be less motivated to get married. In a recent survey, 39 percent of respondents answered “yes” when asked whether marriage is becoming obsolete (Pew Research Center 2010). The institution of marriage is likely to continue, but some previous patterns of marriage will become outdated as new patterns emerge. In this context, cohabitation contributes to the phenomenon of people getting married for the first time at a later age than was typical in earlier generations (Glezer 1991). Furthermore, marriage will continue to be delayed as more people place education and career ahead of “settling down.”

One Partner or Many?

North Americans typically equate marriage with monogamy , when someone is married to only one person at a time. In many countries and cultures around the world, however, having one spouse is not the only form of marriage. In a majority of cultures (78 percent), polygamy , or being married to more than one person at a time, is accepted (Murdock 1967), with most polygamous societies existing in northern Africa and east Asia (Altman and Ginat 1996). Instances of polygamy are almost exclusively in the form of polygyny. Polygyny refers to a man being married to more than one woman at the same time. The reverse, when a woman is married to more than one man at the same time, is called polyandry . It is far less common and only occurs in about 1 percent of the world’s cultures (Altman and Ginat 1996). The reasons for the overwhelming prevalence of polygamous societies are varied but they often include issues of population growth, religious ideologies, and social status.

While the majority of societies accept polygyny, the majority of people do not practise it. Often fewer than 10 percent (and no more than 25 to 35 percent) of men in polygamous cultures have more than one wife; these husbands are often older, wealthy, high-status men (Altman and Ginat 1996). The average plural marriage involves no more than three wives. Negev Bedouin men in Israel, for example, typically have two wives, although it is acceptable to have up to four (Griver 2008). As urbanization increases in these cultures, polygamy is likely to decrease as a result of greater access to mass media, technology, and education (Altman and Ginat 1996).

In Canada, polygamy is considered by most to be socially unacceptable and it is illegal. The act of entering into marriage while still married to another person is referred to as bigamy and is prohibited by Section 290 of the Criminal Code of Canada (Minister of Justice 2014). Polygamy in Canada is often associated with those of the Mormon faith, although in 1890 the Mormon Church officially renounced polygamy. Fundamentalist Mormons, such as those in the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS), on the other hand, still hold tightly to the historic Mormon beliefs and practices and allow polygamy in their sect.

The prevalence of polygamy among Mormons is often overestimated due to sensational media stories such as the prosecution of polygamous sect leaders in Bountiful, B.C., theYearning for Zion ranch raid in Texas in 2008, and popular television shows such as HBO’s Big Love and TLC’s Sister Wives . It is estimated that there are about 37,500 fundamentalist Mormons involved in polygamy in the United States, Canada, and Mexico, but that number has shown a steady decrease in the last 100 years (Useem 2007).

North American Muslims, however, are an emerging group with an estimated 20,000 practicing polygamy. Again, polygamy among North American Muslims is uncommon and occurs only in approximately 1 percent of the population (Useem 2007). For now polygamy among North American Muslims has gone fairly unnoticed by mainstream society, but like fundamentalist Mormons whose practices were off the public’s radar for decades, they may someday find themselves at the centre of social debate.

Residency and Lines of Descent

When considering their lineage, most Canadians look to both their father’s and mother’s sides. Both paternal and maternal ancestors are considered part of one’s family. This pattern of tracing kinship is called bilateral descent . Note that kinship , or one’s traceable ancestry, can be based on blood, marriage or adoption. Sixty percent of societies, mostly modernized nations, follow a bilateral descent pattern. Unilateral descent (the tracing of kinship through one parent only) is practised in the other 40 percent of the world’s societies, with high concentration in pastoral cultures (O’Neal 2006).

There are three types of unilateral descent:  patrilineal , which follows the father’s line only;  matrilineal , which follows the mother’s side only; and ambilineal , which follows either the father’s only or the mother’s side only, depending on the situation. In partrilineal societies, such as those in rural China and India, only males carry on the family surname. This gives males the prestige of permanent family membership while females are seen as only temporary members (Harrell 2001). North American society assumes some aspects of partrilineal decent. For instance, most children assume their father’s last name even if the mother retains her birth name.

In matrilineal societies, inheritance and family ties are traced to women. Matrilineal descent is common in Native American societies, notably the Crow and Cherokee tribes. In these societies, children are seen as belonging to the women and, therefore, one’s kinship is traced to one’s mother, grandmother, great grandmother, and so on (Mails 1996). In ambilineal societies, which are most common in Southeast Asian countries, parents may choose to associate their children with the kinship of either the mother or the father. This choice may be based on the desire to follow stronger or more prestigious kinship lines or on cultural customs such as men following their father’s side and women following their mother’s side (Lambert 2009).

Tracing one’s line of descent to one parent rather than the other can be relevant to the issue of residence. In many cultures, newly married couples move in with, or near to, family members. In a patrilocal residence system it is customary for the wife to live with (or near) her husband’s blood relatives (or family or orientation). Patrilocal systems can be traced back thousands of years. In a DNA analysis of 4,600-year-old bones found in Germany, scientists found indicators of patrilocal living arrangements (Haak et al. 2008). Patrilocal residence is thought to be disadvantageous to women because it makes them outsiders in the home and community; it also keeps them disconnected from their own blood relatives. In China, where patrilocal and patrilineal customs are common, the written symbols for maternal grandmother ( wáipá ) are separately translated to mean “outsider” and “women” (Cohen 2011).

Similarly, in matrilocal residence systems, where it is customary for the husband to live with his wife’s blood relatives (or her family of orientation), the husband can feel disconnected and can be labelled as an outsider. The Minangkabau people, a matrilocal society that is indigenous to the highlands of West Sumatra in Indonesia, believe that home is the place of women and they give men little power in issues relating to the home or family (Joseph and Najmabadi 2003). Most societies that use patrilocal and patrilineal systems are patriarchal, but very few societies that use matrilocal and matrilineal systems are matriarchal, as family life is often considered an important part of the culture for women, regardless of their power relative to men.

Stages of Family Life

As we have established, the concept of family has changed greatly in recent decades. Historically, it was often thought that most (certainly many) families evolved through a series of predictable stages. Developmental or “stage” theories used to play a prominent role in family sociology (Strong and DeVault 1992). Today, however, these models have been criticized for their linear and conventional assumptions as well as for their failure to capture the diversity of family forms. While reviewing some of these once-popular theories, it is important to identify their strengths and weaknesses.

The set of predictable steps and patterns families experience over time is referred to as the family life cycle . One of the first designs of the family life cycle was developed by Paul Glick in 1955. In Glick’s original design, he asserted that most people will grow up, establish families, rear and launch their children, experience an “empty nest” period, and come to the end of their lives. This cycle will then continue with each subsequent generation (Glick 1989). Glick’s colleague, Evelyn Duvall, elaborated on the family life cycle by developing these classic stages of family (Strong and DeVault 1992):

Table 14.1. Stage Theory. This table shows one example of how a “stage” theory might categorize the phases a family goes through.

The family life cycle was used to explain the different processes that occur in families over time. Sociologists view each stage as having its own structure with different challenges, achievements, and accomplishments that transition the family from one stage to the next. For example, the problems and challenges that a family experiences in Stage 1 as a married couple with no children are likely much different than those experienced in Stage 5 as a married couple with teenagers. The success of a family can be measured by how well they adapt to these challenges and transition into each stage. While sociologists use the family life cycle to study the dynamics of family over time, consumer and marketing researchers have used it to determine what goods and services families need as they progress through each stage (Murphy and Staples 1979).

As early “stage” theories have been criticized for generalizing family life and not accounting for differences in gender, ethnicity, culture, and lifestyle, less rigid models of the family life cycle have been developed. One example is the family life course , which recognizes the events that occur in the lives of families but views them as parting terms of a fluid course rather than in consecutive stages (Strong and DeVault 1992). This type of model accounts for changes in family development, such as the fact that today, childbearing does not always occur with marriage. It also sheds light on other shifts in the way family life is practised. Society’s modern understanding of family rejects rigid “stage” theories and is more accepting of new, fluid models. In fact contemporary family life has not escaped the phenomenon that Zygmunt Bauman calls fluid  (or liquid ) modernity , a condition of constant mobility and change in relationships (2000).

Making Connections: Sociology in the Real World

The evolution of television families.

Whether you grew up watching the Cleavers, the Waltons, the Huxtables, or the Simpsons, most of the iconic families you saw in television sitcoms included a father, a mother, and children cavorting under the same roof while comedy ensued. The 1960s was the height of the suburban American nuclear family on television with shows such as The Donna Reed Show and Father Knows Best . While some shows of this era portrayed single parents ( My Three Sons and Bonanza , for instance), the single status almost always resulted from being widowed, not divorced or unwed.

Although family dynamics in real North American homes were changing, the expectations for families portrayed on television were not. North America’s first reality show, An American Family (which aired on PBS in 1973) chronicled Bill and Pat Loud and their children as a “typical” American family. Cameras documented the typical coming and going of daily family life in true cinéma-vérité style. During the series, the oldest son, Lance, announced to the family that he was gay, and at the series’ conclusion, Bill and Pat decided to divorce. Although the Loud’s union was among the 30 percent of marriages that ended in divorce in 1973, the family was featured on the cover of the March 12 issue of Newsweek with the title “The Broken Family” (Ruoff 2002).

Less traditional family structures in sitcoms gained popularity in the 1980s with shows such as Diff’rent Strokes (a widowed man with two adopted African American sons) and One Day at a Time (a divorced woman with two teenage daughters). Still, traditional families such as those in Family Ties and The Cosby Show dominated the ratings. The late 1980s and the 1990s saw the introduction of the dysfunctional family. Shows such as Roseanne , Married with Children , and The Simpsons portrayed traditional nuclear families, but in a much less flattering light than those from the 1960s did (Museum of Broadcast Communications 2011).

Over the past 10 years, the nontraditional family has become somewhat of a tradition in television. While most situation comedies focus on single men and women without children, those that do portray families often stray from the classic structure: they include unmarried and divorced parents, adopted children, gay couples, and multigenerational households. Even those that do feature traditional family structures may show less traditional characters in supporting roles, such as the brothers in the highly rated shows Everybody Loves Raymond and Two and Half Men . Even wildly popular children’s programs as Disney’s Hannah Montana and The Suite Life of Zack & Cody feature single parents.

In 2009, ABC premiered an intensely nontraditional family with the broadcast of Modern Family . The show follows an extended family that includes a divorced and remarried father with one stepchild, and his biological adult children—one of who is in a traditional two-parent household, and the other who is a gay man in a committed relationship raising an adopted daughter. While this dynamic may be more complicated than the typical “modern” family, its elements may resonate with many of today’s viewers. “The families on the shows aren’t as idealistic, but they remain relatable,” states television critic Maureen Ryan. “The most successful shows, comedies especially, have families that you can look at and see parts of your family in them” (Respers France 2010).

The combination of husband, wife, and children that 80 percent of Canadians believes constitutes a family is not representative of the majority of Canadian families. According to 2011 census data, only 31.9 percent of all census families consisted of a married couple with children, down from 37.4 percent in 2001. Sixty-three percent of children under age 14 live in a household with two married parents. This is a decrease from almost 70 percent in 1981 (Statistics Canada 2012). This two-parent family structure is known as a nuclear family , referring to married parents and children as the nucleus, or core, of the group. Recent years have seen a rise in variations of the nuclear family with the parents not being married. The proportion of children aged 14 and under who live with two unmarried cohabiting parents increased from 12.8 percent in 2001 to 16.3 percent in 2011 (Statistics Canada 2012).

Single Parents

Single-parent households are also on the rise. In 2011, 19.3 percent of children aged 14 and under lived with a single parent only, up slightly from 18 percent in 2001. Of that 19.3 percent, 82 percent live with their mother (Statistics Canada 2012).

Stepparents are an additional family element in two-parent homes. A stepfamily is defined as “a couple family in which at least one child is the biological or adopted child of only one married spouse or common-law partner and whose birth or adoption preceded the current relationship” (Statistics Canada 2012). Among children living in two parent households, 10 percent live with a biological or adoptive parent and a stepparent (Statistics Canada 2012).

In some family structures a parent is not present at all. In 2010, 106,000 children (1.8 percent of all children) lived with a guardian who was neither their biological nor adoptive parent. Of these children, 28 percent lived with grandparents, 44 percent lived with other relatives, and 28 percent lived with non-relatives or foster parents. If we also include families in which both parents and grandparents are present (about 4.8 percent of all census families with children under the age of 14), this family structure is referred to as the extended family , and may include aunts, uncles, and cousins living in the same home. Foster children account for about 0.5 percent of all children in private households.

In the United States, the practice of grandparents acting as parents, whether alone or in combination with the child’s parent, is becoming more common (about 9 percent) among American families (De Toledo and Brown 1995). A grandparent functioning as the primary care provider often results from parental drug abuse, incarceration, or abandonment. Events like these can render the parent incapable of caring for his or her child. However, in Canada, census evidence indicates that the percentage of children in these “skip-generation” families remained more or less unchanged between 2001 and 2011 at 0.5 percent (Statistics Canada 2012).

Changes in the traditional family structure raise questions about how such societal shifts affect children. Research, mostly from American sources, has shown that children living in homes with both parents grow up with more financial and educational advantages than children who are raised in single-parent homes (U.S. Census Bureau 2010). The Canadian data is not so clear. It is true that children growing up in single-parent families experience a lower economic standard of living than families with two parents. In 2008, female lone-parent households earned an average of $42,300 per year, male lone-parent households earned $60,400 per year, and two-parent families earned $100,200 per year (Williams 2010). However, in the lowest 20 percent of families with children aged four to five years old, single parent families made up 48.9 percent of households while intact or blended households made up 51.1 percent (based on 1998/99 data). Single parent families do not make up a larger percentage of low-income families (Human Resources Development Canada 2003). Moreover, both the income (Williams 2010) and the educational attainment (Human Resources Development Canada 2003) of single mothers in Canada has been increasing, which in turn is linked to higher levels of life satisfaction.

In research published from the National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth, a long-term study initiated in 1994 that is following the development of a large cohort of children from birth to the age of 25, the evidence is ambiguous as to whether having single or dual parents has a significant effect on child development outcomes. For example, indicators of vocabulary ability of children aged four to five years old did not differ significantly between single- and dual-parent families. However, aggressive behaviour (reported by parents) in both girls and boys aged four to five years old was greater in single-parent families (Human Resources Development Canada 2003). In fact, significant markers of poor developmental attainment were more related to the sex of the child (more pronounced in boys), maternal depression, low maternal education, maternal immigrant status, and low family income (To et al. 2004). We will have to wait for more research to be published from the latest cycle of  the National Longitudinal Survey to see whether there is more conclusive evidence concerning the relative advantages of dual- and single-parent family settings.

Nevertheless, what the data show is that the key factors in children’s quality of life are the educational levels and economic condition of the family, not whether children’s parents are married, common-law, or single. For example, young children in low-income families are more likely to have vocabulary problems, and young children in higher-income families have more opportunities to participate in recreational activities (Human Resources Development Canada 2003). This is a matter related more to public policy decisions concerning the level of financial support and care services (like public child care) provided to families than different family structures per se. In Sweden, where the government provides generous paid parental leave after the birth of a child, free health care, temporary paid parental leave for parents with sick children, high-quality subsidized daycare, and substantial direct child-benefit payments for each child, indicators of child well-being (literacy, levels of child poverty, rates of suicide, etc.) score very high regardless of the difference between single- and dual-parent family structures (Houseknecht and Sastry 1996).

Cohabitation

Living together before or in lieu of marriage is a growing option for many couples. Cohabitation, when a man and woman live together in a sexual relationship without being married, was practised by an estimated 1.6 million people (16.7 percent of all census families) in 2011, which shows an increase of 13.9 percent since 2006 (Statistics Canada 2012). This surge in cohabitation is likely due to the decrease in social stigma pertaining to the practice. In Quebec in particular, researchers have noted that it is common for married couples under the age of 50 to describe themselves in terms used more in cohabiting relationships than marriage: mon conjoint (partner) or mon chum (intimate friend) rather than mon mari (my husband) (Le Bourdais and Juby 2002). In fact, cohabitation or common-law marriage is much more prevalent in Quebec (31.5 percent of census families) and the northern territories (from 25.1 percent in Yukon to 32.7 percent in Nunavut) than in the rest of the country (13 percent in British Columbia, for example) (Statistics Canada 2012).

Cohabitating couples may choose to live together in an effort to spend more time together or to save money on living costs. Many couples view cohabitation as a “trial run” for marriage. Today, approximately 28 percent of men and women cohabitated before their first marriage. By comparison, 18 percent of men and 23 percent of women married without ever cohabitating (U.S. Census Bureau 2010). The vast majority of cohabitating relationships eventually result in marriage; only 15 percent of men and women cohabitate only and do not marry. About one-half of cohabitators transition into marriage within three years (U.S. Census Bureau 2010).

While couples may use this time to “work out the kinks” of a relationship before they wed, the most recent research has found that cohabitation has little effect on the success of a marriage. Those who do not cohabitate before marriage have slightly better rates of remaining married for more than 10 years (Jayson 2010). Cohabitation may contribute to the increase in the number of men and women who delay marriage. The average age of first marriage has been steadily increasing. In 2008, the average age of first marriage was 29.6 for women and 31 for men, compared to 23 for women and 25 for men through most of the 1960s and 1970s (Milan 2013).

Same-Sex Couples

The number of same-sex couples has grown significantly in the past decade. The Civil Marriage Act (Bill C-38) legalized same sex marriage in Canada on July 20, 2005. Some provinces and territories had already adopted legal same-sex marriage, beginning with Ontario in June 2003. In 2011, Statistics Canada reported 64,575 same-sex couple households in Canada, up by 42 percent from 2006. Of these about three in ten were same-sex married couples compared to 16.5 percent in 2006 (Statistics Canada 2012). These increases are a result of more coupling, the change in the marriage laws, growing social acceptance of homosexuality, and a subsequent increase in willingness to report it.

In Canada, same-sex couples make up 0.8 percent of all couples. Unlike in the United States where the distribution of same-sex couples nationwide is very uneven, ranging from as low as 0.29 percent in Wyoming to 4.01 percent in the District of Columbia (U.S. Census Bureau 2011), the distribution of same-sex couples in Canada by province or territory is similar to that of opposite-sex couples. However, same-sex couples are more highly concentrated in big cities. In 2011, 45.6 percent of all same-sex sex couples lived in Vancouver, Toronto, and Montreal, compared to 33.4 percent of opposite-sex couples (Statistics Canada 2012). In terms of demographics, Canadian same-sex couples tended to be younger than opposite-sex couples. Twenty-five percent of individuals in same-sex couples were under the age of 35 compared to 17.5 percent of individuals in opposite-sex couples. There were more male-male couples (54.5 percent) than female-female couples (Milan 2013). Additionally, 9.4 percent of same-sex couples were raising children, 80 percent of whom were female-female couples (Statistics Canada 2012).

While there is some concern from socially conservative groups, especially in the United States, regarding the well-being of children who grow up in same-sex households, research reports that same-sex parents are as effective as opposite-sex parents. In an analysis of 81 parenting studies, sociologists found no quantifiable data to support the notion that opposite-sex parenting is any better than same-sex parenting. Children of lesbian couples, however, were shown to have slightly lower rates of behavioural problems and higher rates of self-esteem (Biblarz and Stacey 2010).

Staying Single

Gay or straight, a new option for many Canadians is simply to stay single. In 2011, about one-fifth of all individuals over the age of 15 did not live in a couple or family (Statistics Canada 2012). Never-married individuals accounted for 73.1 percent of young adults in the 25 to 29 age bracket, up from 26 percent in 1981 (Milan 2013). More young men in this age bracket are single than young women—78.8 percent to 67.4 percent—reflecting the tendency for men to marry at an older age and to marry women younger than themselves (Milan 2013).

Although both single men and single women report social pressure to get married, women are subject to greater scrutiny. Single women are often portrayed as unhappy “spinsters” or “old maids” who cannot find a man to marry them. Single men, on the other hand, are typically portrayed as lifetime bachelors who cannot settle down or simply “have not found the right girl.” Single women report feeling insecure and displaced in their families when their single status is disparaged (Roberts 2007). However, single women older than 35 report feeling secure and happy with their unmarried status, as many women in this category have found success in their education and careers. In general, women feel more independent and more prepared to live a large portion of their adult lives without a spouse or domestic partner than they did in the 1960s (Roberts 2007).

The decision to marry or not to marry can be based a variety of factors including religion and cultural expectations. Asian individuals are the most likely to marry while black North Americans are the least likely to marry (Venugopal 2011). Additionally, individuals who place no value on religion are more likely to be unmarried than those who place a high value on religion. For black women, however, the importance of religion made no difference in marital status (Bakalar 2010). In general, being single is not a rejection of marriage; rather, it is a lifestyle that does not necessarily include marriage. By age 40, according to census figures, 20 percent of women and 14 of men will have never married (U.S. Census Bureau 2011).

Making Connections: Sociological Research

Deceptive divorce rates.

It is often cited that half of all marriages end in divorce. This statistic has made many people cynical when it comes to marriage, but it is misleading. A closer look at the data reveals a different story.

Using Statistics Canada data from 2008 that show a marriage rate of 4.4 (per 1,000 people) and a divorce rate of 2.11, it would appear that slightly less than one-half of all marriages failed (Employment and Social Development Canada 2014a, 2014b). Similar United States data for 2003 showed more or less exactly 50 percent of marriages ending in divorce (Hurley 2005). This reasoning is deceptive, however, because instead of tracing actual marriages to see their longevity (or lack thereof), this compares what are unrelated statistics: that is, the number of marriages in a given year does not have a direct correlation to the divorces occurring that same year. American research published in the New York Times took a different approach—determining how many people had ever been married, and of those, how many later divorced. The result? According to this analysis, American divorce rates have only gone as high as 41 percent (Hurley 2005).

Another way to calculate divorce rates is the total divorce rate , which projects how many new marriages would be expected to fail after 30 years based on the divorce rate by marriage duration observed in a given year. In Canada, the total divorce rate figure reached a high of 50.6 percent in 1987 after the Divorce Act was amended to allow divorces after just one year of separation (rather than the mandatory three years previously). Since then, the total divorce rate has remained steady at between 35 percent and 42 percent. In 2008, 40.7 percent of marriages were projected to end before their 30th anniversary (Employment and Social Development Canada 2014a).

Sociologists can also calculate divorce rates through a cohort study. For instance, we could determine the percentage of marriages that are intact after, say, five or seven years, compared to marriages that have ended in divorce after five or seven years. Sociological researchers must remain aware of research methods and how statistical results are applied. As illustrated, different methodologies and different interpretations can lead to contradictory, and even misleading, results.

Theoretical Perspectives on Marriage and Family

Sociologists study families on both the macro and micro level to determine how families function. Sociologists may use a variety of theoretical perspectives to explain events that occur within and outside of the family. In this Introduction to Sociology , we have been focusing on three perspectives: structural functionalism, critical sociology, and symbolic interactionism.

Functionalism

When considering the role of family in society, functionalists uphold the notion that families are an important social institution and that they play a key role in stabilizing society. They also note that family members take on status roles in a marriage or family. The family—and its members—perform certain functions that facilitate the prosperity and development of society.

Sociologist George Murdock conducted a survey of 250 societies and determined that there are four universal residual functions of the family: sexual, reproductive, educational, and economic (Lee 1985). In each society, although the structure of the family varies, the family performs these four functions. According to Murdock, the family (which for him includes the state of marriage) regulates sexual relations between individuals. He does not deny the existence or impact of premarital or extramarital sex, but states that the family offers a socially legitimate sexual outlet for adults (Lee 1985). This outlet gives way to reproduction, which is a necessary part of ensuring the survival of society.

Once children are produced, the family plays a vital role in training them for adult life. As the primary agent of socialization and enculturation, the family teaches young children the ways of thinking and behaving that follow social and cultural norms, values, beliefs, and attitudes. Parents teach their children manners and civility. A well-mannered child reflects a well-mannered parent.

Parents also teach children gender roles. Gender roles are an important part of the economic function of a family. In each family, there is a division of labour that consists of instrumental and expressive roles. Men tend to assume the instrumental roles in the family, which typically involve work outside of the family that provides financial support and establishes family status. Women tend to assume the expressive roles, which typically involve work inside of the family, which provides emotional support and physical care for children (Crano and Aronoff 1978). According to functionalists, the differentiation of the roles on the basis of sex ensures that families are well balanced and coordinated. Each family member is seen as performing a specific role and function to maintain the functioning of the family as a whole.

When family members move outside of these roles, the family is thrown out of balance and must recalibrate in order to function properly. For example, if the father assumes an expressive role such as providing daytime care for the children, the mother must take on an instrumental role such as gaining paid employment outside of the home in order for the family to maintain balance and function.

Critical Sociology

Critical sociologists are quick to point out that North American families have been defined as private entities, the consequence of which historically has been to see family matters as issues concerning only those within the family. Serious issues including domestic violence and child abuse, inequality between the sexes, the right to dispose of family property equally, and so on, have been historically treated as being outside of state, legal, or police jurisdiction. The feminist slogan of the 1960s and 1970s—“the personal is the political”—indicates how feminists began to draw attention to the broad social or public implications of matters long considered private or inconsequential. As women’s roles had long been relegated to the private sphere, issues of power that affected their lives most directly were largely invisible. Speaking about the lives of middle-class women in mid-century North America, Betty Friedan described this problem as “the problem with no name”:

The problem lay buried, unspoken, for many years in the minds of American women. It was a strange stirring, a sense of dissatisfaction, a yearning that women suffered in the middle of the 20th century in the United States. Each suburban wife struggled with it alone. As she made the beds, shopped for groceries, matched slipcover material, ate peanut butter sandwiches with her children, chauffeured Cub Scouts and Brownies, lay beside her husband at night—she was afraid to ask even of herself the silent question—“Is this all?” (1963, p. 15).

One focus of critical sociology therefore is to highlight the political-economic context of the inequalities of power in family life. The family is often not a haven but rather an arena where the effects of societal power struggles are felt. This exercise of power often entails the differentiation and performance of family status roles. Why are women expected to perform the “expressive” roles in the family while the men perform “instrumental” roles, and what are the implications of this division of labour? Critical sociologists therefore study conflicts as simple as the enforcement of rules from parent to child, or more serious issues such as domestic violence (spousal and child), sexual assault, marital rape, and incest, as products of power structures in broader society. Blood and Wolfe’s classic (1960) study of marital power found that the person with the most access to value resources held the most power. As money is one of the most valuable resources, men who worked in paid labour outside of the home held more power than women who worked inside the home. Disputes over the division of household labour tend also to be a common source of marital discord. Household labour offers no wages and, therefore, no power. Studies indicate that when men do more housework, women experience more satisfaction in their marriages, reducing the incidence of conflict (Coltrane 2000).

The political and economic context is also key to understanding changes in the structure of the family over the 20th and 21st centuries. The debate between functionalist and critical sociologists on the rise of non-nuclear family forms is a case in point. Since the 1950s, the functionalist approach to the family has emphasized the importance of the nuclear family—a married man and woman in a socially approved sexual relationship with at least one child—as the basic unit of an orderly and functional society. Although only 39 percent of families conformed to this model in 2006, in functionalist approaches, it often operates as a model of the normal family, with the implication that non-normal family forms lead to a variety of society-wide dysfunctions. On the other hand, critical perspectives emphasize that the diversity of family forms does not indicate the “decline of the family” (i.e., of the ideal of the nuclear family) so much as the diverse response of the family form to the tensions of gender inequality and historical changes in the economy and society. The nuclear family should be thought of less as a normative model for how families should be and more as an historical anomaly that reflected the specific social and economic conditions of the two decades following the World War II.

Symbolic Interactionism

Interactionists view the world in terms of symbols and the meanings assigned to them (LaRossa and Reitzes 1993). The family itself is a symbol. To some, it is a father, mother, and children; to others, it is any union that involves respect and compassion. Interactionists stress that family is not an objective, concrete reality. Like other social phenomena, it is a social construct that is subject to the ebb and flow of social norms and ever-changing meanings.

Consider the meaning of other elements of family: “parent” was a symbol of a biological and emotional connection to a child. With more parent-child relationships developing through adoption, remarriage, or change in guardianship, the word “parent” today is less likely to be associated with a biological connection than with whoever is socially recognized as having the responsibility for a child’s upbringing. Similarly, the terms “mother” and “father” are no longer rigidly associated with the meanings of caregiver and breadwinner. These meanings are more free-flowing through changing family roles.

Interactionists also recognize how the family status roles of each member are socially constructed, playing an important part in how people perceive and interpret social behaviour. Interactionists view the family as a group of role players or “actors” that come together to act out their parts in an effort to construct a family. These roles are up for interpretation. In the late 19th and early 20th century, a “good father,” for example, was one who worked hard to provided financial security for his children. Today, a “good father” is one who takes the time outside of work to promote his children’s emotional well-being, social skills, and intellectual growth—in some ways, a much more daunting task.

Symbolic interactionism therefore draws our attention to how the norms that define what a “normal” family is and how it should operate come into existence. The rules and expectations that coordinate the behaviour of family members are products of social processes and joint agreement, even if the agreements are tacit or implicit. In this perspective, norms and social conventions are not regarded as permanently fixed by functional requirements or unequal power relationships. Rather, new norms and social conventions continually emerge from ongoing social interactions to make family structures intelligible in new situations and to enable them to operate and sustain themselves.

14.3. Challenges Families Face

As the structure of family changes over time, so do the challenges families face. Events like divorce and remarriage present new difficulties for families and individuals. Other long-standing domestic issues such as abuse continue to strain the health and stability of families.

Divorce and Remarriage

Divorce, while fairly common and accepted in modern Canadian society, was once a word that would only be whispered and was accompanied by gestures of disapproval. Prior to the introduction of the Divorce Act in 1968 there was no federal divorce law in Canada. In provincial jurisdictions where there were divorce laws, spouses had to prove adultery or cruelty in court. The 1968 Divorce Act broadened the grounds for divorce to include mental and physical cruelty, desertion, and/or separation for more than three years, and imprisonment. In 1986 the Act was amended again to make “breakdown of marriage” the sole ground for divorce. Couples could divorce after one year’s separation, and there was no longer a requirement to prove “fault” by either spouse.

These legislative changes had immediate consequences on the divorce rate. In 1961, divorce was generally uncommon, affecting only 36 out of every 100,000 married persons. In 1969, the year after the introduction of the Divorce Act, the number of divorces doubled from from 55 divorces per 100,000 population to 124. The divorce rate peaked in 1987 after the 1986 amendment at 362 divorces per 100,000 population. Over the last quarter century, divorce rates have dropped steadily reaching 221 divorces per 100,000 population in 2005 (Kelly 2010). The dramatic increase in divorce rates after the 1960s has been associated with the liberalization of divorce laws (as noted above) and the shift in societal makeup including the increase of women entering the workforce (Michael 1978) and marital breakdowns in the large cohort of baby boomers (Kelly 2010). The decrease in divorce rates can be attributed to two probable factors: an increase in the age at which people get married, and an increased level of education among those who marry—both of which have been found to promote greater marital stability.

So what causes divorce? While more young people are choosing to postpone or opt out of marriage, those who enter into the union do so with the expectation that it will last. A great deal of marital problems can be related to stress, especially financial stress. According to researchers participating in the University of Virginia’s National Marriage Project, couples who enter marriage without a strong asset base (like a home, savings, and a retirement plan) are 70 percent more likely to be divorced after three years than are couples with at least $10,000 in assets. This is connected to factors such as age and education level that correlate with low incomes.

The addition of children to a marriage creates added financial and emotional stress. Research has established that marriages enter their most stressful phase upon the birth of the first child (Popenoe and Whitehead 2001). This is particularly true for couples who have multiples (twins, triplets, and so on). Married couples with twins or triplets are 17 percent more likely to divorce than those with children from single births (McKay 2010). Another contributor to the likelihood of divorce is a general decline in marital satisfaction over time. As people get older, they may find that their values and life goals no longer match up with those of their spouse (Popenoe and Whitehead 2004).

Divorce is thought to have a cyclical pattern. Children of divorced parents are 40 percent more likely to divorce than children of married parents. And when we consider children whose parents divorced and then remarried, the likelihood of their own divorce rises to 91 percent (Wolfinger 2005). This might result from being socialized to a mindset that a broken marriage can be replaced rather than repaired (Wolfinger 2005). That sentiment is also reflected in the finding that when both partners of a married couple have been previously divorced, their marriage is 90 percent more likely to end in divorce (Wolfinger 2005).

Samuel Johnson is quoted as saying that getting married a second time was “the triumph of hope over experience.” In fact, according to the 2001 Statistics Canada General Social Survey, 43 percent of individuals whose first marriage failed married again, while 16 percent married again after the death of their spouse. Another 1 percent of the ever-married population aged 25 and over had been married more than twice (Clark and Crompton 2006). American data show that most men and women remarry within five years of a divorce, with the median length for men (three years) being lower than for women (4.4 years). This length of time has been fairly consistent since the 1950s. The majority of those who remarry are between the ages of 25 and 44 (Kreider 2006).

Marriage the second time around (or third or fourth) can be a very different process than the first. Remarriage lacks many of the classic courtship rituals of a first marriage. In a second marriage, individuals are less likely to deal with issues like parental approval, premarital sex, or desired family size (Elliot 2010). Clark and Crompton suggest that second marriages tend to be more stable than first marriages, largely because the spouses are older and more mature. At the time of the Statistics Canada General Social Survey, 71 percent of the remarried couples surveyed were still together and had been for an average of 13 years. Couples tend to marry a second time more for intimacy-based reasons rather than external reasons and therefore enjoy a greater quality of relationship (Clark and Crompton 2006).

Children of Divorce and Remarriage

Divorce and remarriage can be stressful for partners and children alike. Divorce is often justified by the notion that children are better off in a divorced family than in a family with parents who do not get along. Others argue that parents who divorce sacrifice their children’s well-being to pursue their own happiness. Research suggests that separating out particular factors of the divorce, especially whether or not the divorce is accompanied by parental conflict, is key to determining whether divorce has a significant negative impact on children (Amato and Keith 1991). Certainly while marital conflict does not provide an ideal childrearing environment, going through a divorce can also be damaging. Children are often confused and frightened by the threat to their family security. They may feel responsible for the divorce and attempt to bring their parents back together, often by sacrificing their own well-being (Amato 2000). Only in high-conflict homes do children benefit from divorce and the subsequent decrease in conflict. The majority of divorces come out of lower-conflict homes, and children from those homes are more negatively impacted by the stress of the divorce than the stress of unhappiness in the marriage (Amato 2000). On the other hand, Amato and Keith have argued that the overall the effect of divorce on children’s well-being is relatively weak and has been declining over time (Amato and Keith 1991).

Children’s ability to deal with a divorce may depend on their age. Research has found that divorce may be most difficult for school-aged children, as they are old enough to understand the separation but not old enough to understand the reasoning behind it. Older teenagers are more likely to recognize the conflict that led to the divorce but may still feel fear, loneliness, guilt, and pressure to choose sides. Infants and preschool-age children may suffer the heaviest impact from the loss of routine that the marriage offered (Temke 2006).

Proximity to parents also makes a difference in a child’s well-being after divorce. Boys who live or have joint arrangements with their fathers show less aggression than those who are raised by their mothers only. Similarly, girls who live or have joint arrangements with their mothers tend to be more responsible and mature than those who are raised by their fathers only. Nearly 70 percent of the children of parents who are divorced have their primary residence with their mother, leaving many boys without a father figure residing in the home. Another 15 percent of the children lived with their father and 9 percent moved back and forth between both parents equally (Sinha 2014). Still, researchers suggest that a strong parent-child relationship can greatly improve a child’s adjustment to divorce (Temke 2006).

There is empirical evidence that divorce has not discouraged children in terms of how they view marriage and family. In a survey conducted by researchers from the University of Michigan, about three-quarters of high school students said it was “extremely important” to have a strong marriage and family life. And over half believed it was “very likely” that they would be in a lifelong marriage (Popenoe and Whitehead 2001). These numbers have continued to climb over the last 25 years.

Violence and Abuse

Violence and abuse are among the most disconcerting of the challenges that today’s families face. Abuse can occur between spouses, between parent and child, as well as between other family members. The frequency of violence among families is a difficult to determine because many cases of spousal abuse and child abuse go unreported. In any case, studies have shown that abuse (reported or not) has a major impact on families and society as a whole.

Domestic Violence

Domestic violence is a significant social problem in Canada. One in four victims of violent crime in Canada was victimized by a spouse or family member in 2010 (Sinha 2012). Domestic violence is often characterized as violence between household or family members, specifically spouses. To include unmarried, cohabitating, and same-sex couples, family sociologists have created the term intimate partner violence (IPV) . Women are the primary victims of intimate partner violence. It is estimated that 1 in 4 women has experienced some form of IPV in her lifetime (compared to 1 in 7 men) (Catalano 2007). In 2011, women in Canada had more than double the risk of men of becoming a victim of police-reported family violence (Sinha 2012). IPV may include physical violence, such as punching, kicking, or other methods of inflicting physical pain; sexual violence, such as rape or other forced sexual acts; threats and intimidation that imply either physical or sexual abuse; and emotional abuse, such as harming another’s sense of self-worth through words or controlling another’s behaviour. IPV often starts as emotional abuse and then escalates to other forms or combinations of abuse (Centers for Disease Control 2012).

In 2010, of IPV acts that involved physical actions against women, 71 percent involved physical assault (57 percent were common assault including punching, slapping, and pushing, while another 10 percent were major assaults involving a weapon or causing major bodily injury); 3 percent involved sexual assault; 10 percent involved uttering threats; 5 percent indecent or threatening phone calls; and 9 percent criminal harassment or stalking (Sinha 2012). This is slightly different than IPV abuse patterns for men, which show that 79 percent of acts of IPV take the form of physical violence and less than 1 percent involve sexual assault (Sinha 2012). Interestingly, in 2011, a slightly larger proportion of physical assaults against male intimate partners resulted in injury (55 percent) compared to female intimate partners (51 percent) (Sinha 2013). IPV affects women at greater rates than men because women often take the passive role in relationships and may become emotionally dependent on their partner.  Perpetrators of IPV work to establish and maintain such dependence in order to hold power and control over their victims, making them feel stupid, crazy, or ugly—in some way worthless. Between 2000 and 2010, nearly one-quarter of women murdered by their intimate partners were murdered for reasons of jealousy (compared to 10 percent of male victims) (Sinha 2012).

IPV affects different segments of the population at different rates. The rate of self-reported IPV for aboriginal women is about 2.5 times higher than for non-aboriginal women (Sinha 2013). The severity of intimate partner violence also differed. Nearly 6 in 10 aboriginal women reported injury as a result of IPV compared to 4 in 10 non-aboriginal women. As a result, aboriginal female victims were also much more likely to report that they feared for their lives as a result of IPV (52 percent compared to 31 percent of non-aboriginal women) (Sinha 2013). On the other hand, visible minority and immigrant groups do not have significantly different levels of self-reported spousal violence than the rest of the population (Statistics Canada 2011).

Those who are separated report higher rates of abuse than those with other marital statuses, as conflict is typically higher in those relationships. Similarly, those who are cohabitating or living in a common-law relationship are more likely than those who are married to experience IPV (Statistics Canada 2011). American researchers have found that the rate of IPV doubles for women in low-income disadvantaged areas when compared to IPV experienced by women who reside in more affluent areas (Benson and Fox 2004). In Canada, the statistics do not bear this relationship out. Household income and education levels appear to have little effect on experiencing spousal violence. Regardless of income level, the proportion of reported spousal violence was between 1 and 2 percent. However, rates of IPV were nearly double in rural Canada than in the major metropolitan areas (542 incidents per 100,000 population compared to 294). Overall, women ages 25 to 34 are at the greatest risk of physical or sexual assault by an intimate partner (Statistics Canada 2011).

Accurate statistics on IPV are difficult to determine, as less than one-quarter of victims report incidents to the police (Statistics Canada 2011). It is not until victims choose to report crimes that patterns of abuse are exposed. Two-thirds of victims in Statistics Canada self-reported victimization studies stated that abuse had occurred more than once prior to their first police report. Nearly 3 in 10 stated that they had been abused more than 10 times prior to reporting (Statistics Canada 2011).

According to the Statistics Canada General Social Survey (2009) , victims cite varied reason why they are reluctant to report abuse, as shown in Table 14.3.

IPV has significant long-term effects on individual victims and on society. Studies have shown that IPV damage extends beyond the direct physical or emotional wounds. Extended IPV has been linked to unemployment among victims, as many have difficulty finding or holding employment. Additionally, nearly all women who report serious domestic problems exhibit symptoms of major depression (Goodwin, Chandler, and Meisel 2003). Female victims of IPV are also more likely to abuse alcohol or drugs, suffer from eating disorders, and attempt suicide (Silverman et al. 2001).

IPV is indeed something that impacts more than just intimate partners. In a survey, 34 percent of respondents said they have witnessed IPV, and 59 percent said that they know a victim personally (Roper Starch Worldwide 1995). Many people want to help IPV victims but are hesitant to intervene because they feel that it is a personal matter or they fear retaliation from the abuser—reasons similar to those of victims who do not report IPV.

Child Abuse and Corporal Punishment

Children are among the most helpless victims of abuse. In 2010, more than 18,000 children and youth under the age of 17 were victims of police-reported family violence in Canada, accounting for nearly a quarter of all violent offences against children and youth (Sinha 2012). Child abuse may come in several forms, the most common being neglect, followed by physical abuse, sexual abuse, psychological maltreatment, and medical neglect (Child Help 2011). Whereas the overall rate of violent crime involving children and youth is lower than the rate for the population as a whole, the rate of sexual assault is five times higher (Sinha 2012). Level 1 sexual assault (not involving a weapon or aggravated assault) comprised 75 percent of these offences, while child-specific sexual crimes including sexual interference, invitation to sexual touching, luring a child via a computer, and corrupting children comprised another 22 percent. Girls were 37 percent more likely than boys to be the victim of family violence (and almost twice as likely by the time they reached ages 12 to 17). In large part this is because girls are almost four times as likely to be a victim of sexual assault by a family member than boys are.

Twenty-five percent of all violent crime against children and youth was perpetrated by a family member (parent, sibling, extended family member, or spouse), while another 54 percent involved an accused known to the victim (casual acquaintances, close friends, or dating partners) (Sinha 2012). Fifty-nine percent of family violence against children was committed by parents, 19 percent by siblings, and 22 percent by other family members (Statistics Canada 2011). Understandably, these figures vary with the age of the child. As Sinha (2012) notes, “among youth aged 12 to 17 who had been victimized, about one in five (18%) were violently victimized by someone within their own family network. This compares to 47% of child victims aged 3 to 11 years, and 70% of infant and toddler victims under the age of 3 years” (p. 58).

In terms of child abuse reported to provincial and territorial child welfare authorities, infants (children less than 1 year old) were the most victimized population with an incident rate of 52 investigations per 1,000 children (compared to 43 per 1,000 for 1 to 3 year olds, the next highest category) (Public Health Agency of Canada 2010). Infants younger than 1 year are also the most vulnerable to family homicide, 98 percent of which were committed by parents (27 per million between 2000 and 2010, compared to 9 per million for 1 to 3 year olds, the next highest category) (Sinha 2012). This age group is particularly vulnerable to neglect because they are entirely dependent on parents for care. Some parents do not purposely neglect their children; factors such as cultural values, standard of care in a community, and poverty can lead to hazardous level of neglect. If information or assistance from public or private services are available and a parent fails to use those services, child welfare services may intervene (Public Health Agency of Canada 2010).

Infants are also often victims of physical abuse, particularly in the form of violent shaking. This type of physical abuse is referred to as shaken-baby syndrome , which describes a group of medical symptoms such as brain swelling and retinal hemorrhage resulting from forcefully shaking or causing impact to an infant’s head. A baby’s cry is the number one trigger for shaking. Parents may find themselves unable to soothe a baby’s concerns and may take their frustration out on the child by shaking him or her violently. Other stress factors such as a poor economy, unemployment, and general dissatisfaction with parental life may contribute to this type of abuse. Shaken-baby syndrome was attributed as the cause of nearly one-third (31 percent) of family-related homicides of infants less than 1 year between 2000 and 2010 (Sinha 2012).

Making Connections: Social Policy and Debate

Corporal punishment.

News reports in June 2013 broke the sensational story of dozens of children being apprehended by Child and Family Services from a small Old Order Mennonite community in southern Manitoba. Several members of the community were charged by police with assault when they received reports that children had been disciplined using a leather strap, whip, and cattle prod (Hitchen 2013). At one point, all the children except for one 17 year old had be apprehended by authorities (CBC News 2013). The 1892 law that permits the use of corporal punishment for children in Canada was upheld by a Supreme Court ruling in 2004 within certain restrictions, but corporal punishment remains a controversial issue in Canada (CBC News 2004).

Physical  abuse of children may come in the form of beating, kicking, throwing, choking, hitting with objects, burning, or other methods. Injury inflicted by such behaviour is considered abuse even if the parent or caregiver did not intend to harm the child. Other types of physical contact that are characterized as discipline (spanking, for example) are not considered abuse as long as no injury results. The Supreme Court ruling stated that teachers and parents can use reasonable corrective force against children between the ages of 2 and 12 years old as long as the force is “minor” and of “a transitory and trifling nature” (CBC News 2004). The court ruled that it was unacceptable to strike a child with an object, like a strap or whip, and striking a child in the head was also unacceptable.

This issue is rather controversial among modern-day Canadians. While some parents feel that physical discipline, or corporal punishment, is an effective way to respond to bad behaviour, others feel that it is a form of abuse. According to a 2005 study of mothers with preschoolers in Manitoba and Ontario, 70 percent of respondents reported using corporal punishment. One-third of them used it at least once a week. A poll conducted by the Globe and Mail in 2007 found that 78 percent of Canadian parents with children under 18 believed that parents do not discipline their children enough and another 42 percent believed spanking benefited child development (Pearce 2012).

However, studies have shown that spanking is not an effective form of punishment and may lead to aggression by the victim, particularly in those who are spanked at a young age (Berlin 2009). A meta-analysis of research conducted over two decades published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal found that spanking was no better than other parenting methods at eliciting compliance in children and was in fact linked not only to increased levels of childhood aggression but also to long-term effects such as depression, emotional and behavioural problems, and drug and alcohol use in adulthood (Durrant and Ensom 2012). This research led the editor-in-chief of the journal to call for the repeal of the spanking law from the Criminal Code. “It is time for Canada to remove this anachronistic excuse for poor parenting from the statute book” (Fletcher 2012, p. 1339).

ambilineal a type of unilateral descent that follows either the father’s or the mother’s side exclusively

bigamy the act of entering into marriage while still married to another person

bilateral descent the tracing of kinship through both parents’ ancestral lines

cohabitation when a couple shares a residence but is not married

extended family a household that includes at least one parent and child as well as other relatives like grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins

family socially recognized groups of individuals who may be joined by blood, marriage, or adoption and who form an emotional connection and an economic unit of society

family life course a sociological model of family that sees the progression of events as fluid rather than as occurring in strict stages

family life cycle a set of predictable steps and patterns families experience over time

family of orientation the family into which one is born

family of procreation a family that is formed through marriage

fluid modernity a condition of constant mobility and change in relationships within contemporary society

intimate partner violence (IPV) violence that occurs between individuals who maintain a romantic or sexual relationship; includes unmarried, cohabiting, and same-sex couples as well as heterosexual married couples

kinship a person’s traceable ancestry (by blood, marriage, and/or adoption)

liquid modernity see fluid modernity

marriage a legally recognized contract between two or more people in a sexual relationship who have an expectation of permanence about their relationship

matrilineal descent a type of unilateral descent that follows the mother’s side only

matrilocal residence a system in which it is customary for a husband to live with his wife’s family

monogamy when someone is married to only one person at a time

nuclear family two parents (traditionally a married husband and wife) and children living in the same household

patrilineal descent a type of unilateral descent that follows the father’s line only

patrilocal residence a system in which it is customary for the a wife to live with (or near) her husband’s family

polyandry a form of marriage in which one woman is married to more than one man at one time

polygamy the state of being committed or married to more than one person at a time

polygyny a form of marriage in which one man is married to more than one woman at one time

shaken-baby syndrome a group of medical symptoms such as brain swelling and retinal hemorrhage resulting from forcefully shaking or impacting an infant’s head

total divorce rate projects how many new marriages would be expected to fail after 30 years based on the divorce rate by marriage duration observed in a given year

unilateral descent the tracing of kinship through one parent only.

Section Summary

14.1. What Is Marriage? What Is a Family? Sociologists view marriage and families as societal institutions that help create the basic unit of social structure. Both marriage and a family may be defined differently—and practised differently—in cultures across the world. Families and marriages, like other institutions, adapt to social change.

14.2. Variations in Family Life Canadians’ concepts of marriage and family are changing. Increases in cohabitation, same-sex partners, and singlehood are altering of our ideas of marriage. Similarly, single parents, same-sex parents, cohabitating parents, and unwed parents are changing our notion of what it means to be a family. While many children still live in opposite-sex, two-parent, married households, these are no longer viewed as the only type of nuclear family.

14.3. Challenges Families Face Families face a variety of challenges, including divorce, domestic violence, and child abuse. While divorce rates have decreased in the last 25 years, many family members, especially children, still experience the negative effects of divorce. Children are also negatively impacted by violence and abuse within the home, with 18,000 children victimized by family violence each year.

Section Quiz

14.1. What Is Marriage? What Is a Family? 1. Sociologists tend to define family in terms of

• How a given society sanctions the relationships of people who are connected through blood, marriage, or adoption
• The connection of bloodlines
• The status roles that exist in a family structure
• How closely members adhere to social norms

2. Research suggests that people generally feel that their current family is _______ than the family they grew up with.

• At least as close
• None of the above

3. A woman being married to two men would be an example of:

• cohabitation

4. A child who associates his line of descent with his father’s side only is part of a _____ society.

• Matrilineal
• Patrilineal

5. Which of the following is a criticism of the family life cycle model?

• It is too broad and accounts for too many aspects of family.
• It is too narrowly focused on a sequence of stages.
• It does not serve a practical purpose for studying family behaviour.
• It is not based on comprehensive research.

14.2. Variations in Family Life 6. The majority of Canadian children live in ______.

• Two-parent households
• One-parent households
• No-parent households
• Multigenerational households

7. According to the study cited from Statistics Canada, children who live with ______ grow up with more advantages than children who live with ______.

• One unwed parent; one divorced parent
• One divorced parent; two married parents
• One grandparent; two married parents
• One divorced parent; one unwed parent

8. Couples who cohabitate before marriage are ______ couples who did not cohabitate before marriage to be married at least 10 years.

• Far more likely than
• Far less likely than
• Slightly less likely than
• Equally as likely as

9. Same-sex couple households account for _____ percent of Canadian households.

10. The median age of first marriage has ______ in the last 50 years.

• Increased for men but not women
• Decreased for men but not women
• Increased for both men and women
• Decreased for both men and women

14.3. Challenges Families Face 11. Current divorce rates are _______.

• At an all-time high
• At an all-time low
• Steadily increasing
• Steadily declining

12. Children of divorced parents are _______ to divorce in their own marriage than children of parents who stayed married.

• More likely
• Less likely
• Equally likely

13. In general, children in ______ households benefit from divorce.

• Multigenerational
• High-conflict
• Low-conflict

14. Which of the following is true of intimate partner violence (IPV)?

• IPV victims are more frequently men than women.
• One in 10 women is a victim of IPV.
• Aboriginal women are nearly 2.5 times more likely to be a victim of IPV than non-aboriginal women.
• Rape is the most common form of IPV.

15. Which type of child abuse is most prevalent in Canada?

• Physical abuse
• Shaken-baby syndrome
• Internet stalking

Short Answer

14.1. What Is Marriage? What Is a Family?

• According to research, what are Canadians’ general thoughts on family? How do they view nontraditional family structures? How do you think these views might change in 20 years?
• Explain the difference between bilateral and unilateral descent. Using your own association with kinship, explain which type of descent applies to you.

14.2. Variations in Family Life

• Explain the different variations of the nuclear family and the trends that occur in each.
• Why are some couples choosing to cohabit before marriage? What effect does cohabitation have on marriage?
• Explain how financial status impacts marital stability. What other factors are associated with a couple’s financial status?
• Explain why more than half of intimate partner violence goes unreported? Why are those who are abused unlikely to report the abuse?

Further Research

14.1. What Is Marriage? What Is a Family? For more information on family development and lines of descent, visit the Library and Archives Canada “Genealogy and Family History” website to find out how to research family genealogies in Canada. http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/022/index-e.html

For more statistics on marriage and family, see the Statistics Canada report based on the 2011 census:   Portrait of Families and Living Arrangements in Canada: Families, households and marital status, 2011 Census of Population . http://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2011/as-sa/98-312-x/98-312-x2011001-eng.pdf

To find more information on child abuse, visit the Canadian Child Welfare Research portal at http://cwrp.ca/child-abuse-neglect

14.. Introduction to Marriage and Family Jayson, Sharon. 2008. “Census Reports More Unmarried Couples Living Together.” USA Today , July 28. Retrieved February 12, 20212 ( http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/census/2008-07-28-cohabitation-census_N.htm ).

Statistics Canada. 2012. Portrait of Families and Living Arrangements in Canada: Families, households and marital status, 2011 Census of Population . Statistics Canada Catalogue no. 98-312-X2011001. Retrieved July 2, 2014, from http://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2011/as-sa/98-312-x/98-312-x2011001-eng.pdf

Useem, Andrea. 2007. “What to Expect When You’re Expecting a Co-Wife.” Slate , July 24. Retrieved January 16, 2012 ( http://www.slate.com/articles/life/faithbased/2007/07/what_to_expect_when_youre_expecting_a_cowife.html ).

14.1. What Is Marriage? What Is a Family? Altman, Irwin and Joseph Ginat. 1996. Polygamous Families in Contemporary Society . New York: Cambridge University Press.

Bauman, Zymunt. 2000. Liquid Modernity . Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. Retrieved Sept 2014 from  http://english.360elib.com/datu/J/EM353297.pdf

Cohen, Philip. 2011. “Chinese: Maternal Grandmothers, Outside Women.” FamilyInequality.com , Retrieved February 13, 2012 ( http://familyinequality.wordpress.com/2011/11/16/chinese-maternal-grandmothers-outside-women/ ).

Glezer, Helen. 1991. “Cohabitation.” Family Matters 30:24–27.

Glick, Paul. 1989. “The Family Life Cycle and Social Change.” Family Relations 38(2):123–129.

Globe and Mail . 2010. “The quotable Stephen Harper: Not exactly Churchill, but not bad either.” The Toronto Globe and Mail. October 8. Retrieved July 2, 2014, from http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/books-and-media/the-quotable-stephen-harper-not-exactly-churchill-but-not-bad-either/article1214563/

Griver, Simon. 2008. “One Wife Isn’t Enough … So They Take Two or Three.” The Jewish Chronicle Online , April 24. Retrieved February 13, 2012 ( http://www.thejc.com/lifestyle/lifestyle-features/one-wife-isn’t-enough-so-they-take-two-or-three ).

Haak, Wolfgang et al. 2008. “Ancient DNA Reveals Male Diffusion through the Neolithic Mediterranean Route.” Proceedings of the National Association of Sciences , November 17. Retrieved February 13, 2012 ( http://www.pnas.org/content/105/47/18226 ).

Harrell, Stevan. 2001. “Mountain Patterns: The Survival of Nuosu Culture in China.” Journal of American Folklore 114:451.

Jayson, Sharon. 2010. “What Does a ‘Family’ Look Like Nowadays?” USA Today , November 25. Retrieved February 13, 2012 ( http://www.usatoday.com/yourlife/sex-relationships/marriage/2010-11-18-pew18_ST_N.htm ).

Joseph, Suad and Afsaneh Najmabadi. 2003. “Kinship and State: Southeast Asia, East Asia, Australia and the Pacific.” Pp. 351–355 in Encyclopedia of Women and Islamic Cultures: Family, Law, and Politics . Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill Academic Publishers.

Lambert, Bernd. 2009. “Ambilineal Descent Groups in the Northern Gilbert Islands.” American Anthropologist 68(3):641–664.

Lee, Richard. 2009. The American Patriot’s Bible: The Word of God and the Shaping of America . Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson.

Mails, Thomas E. 1996. The Cherokee People: The Story of the Cherokees from Earliest Origins to Contemporary Times . New York: Marlowe & Co.

Minister of Justice. 2014. Criminal Code R.S., c. C-34, s. 1. Minister of Justice. July 11. Retrieved September 23, 2014, from http://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/PDF/C-46.pdf

Murdock, George P. 1967. Ethnographic Atlas: A Summary . Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press.

Murphy, Patrick and William Staples. 1979. “A Modernized Family Life Cycle.” Journal of Consumer Research 6(1):12–22.

Museum of Broadcast Communications. 2010. “Family on Television.” Retrieved January 16, 2012.

O’Neal, Dennis. 2006. “Nature of Kinship.” Palomar College. Retrieved January 16, 2012 ( http://anthro.palomar.edu/kinship/kinship_2.htm ).

Parsons, Talcott and Robert Bales. 1955. Family Socialization and Interaction Process . London: Routledge.

Pew Research Center. 2010. “The Decline of Marriage and Rise of New Families.” November 18. Retrieved February 13, 2012 ( http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1802/decline-marriage-rise-new-families ).

Postmedia News. 2010. “Poll: How Canadians see the family.” Canada.com. October 5. Retrieved July 2, 2014, from http://www.canada.com/life/Poll+Canadians+family/3604119/story.html

Powell, Brian, Catherine Bolzendahl, Claudia Geist, and Lala Carr Steelman. 2010. Counted Out: Same-Sex Relations and Americans’ Definitions of Family . New York: Russell Sage Foundation.

Respers France, Lisa. 2010. “The Evolution of the TV Family.” CNN , September 1. Retrieved February 13, 2012 ( http://www.cnn.com/2010/SHOWBIZ/TV/09/01/families.on.tv/index.html ).

Ruoff, Jeffrey. 2002. An American Family: A Televised Life . Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Strong, B. and C. DeVault. 1992. The Marriage and Family Experience . 5th ed. St. Paul, MN: West Publishing Company.

14.2. Variations in Family Life Bakalar, Nicholas. 2010. “Education, Faith, and a Likelihood to Wed.” New York Times , March 22. Retrieved February 14, 2012 ( http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/23/health/23stat.html ).

Biblarz, Tim. J. and Judith Stacey. 2010. “How Does the Gender of Parents Matter?” Journal of Marriage and Family 72:3–22.

Blood, Robert Jr. and Donald Wolfe. 1960. Husbands and Wives: The Dynamics of Married Living . Glencoe, IL: The Free Press.

Coltrane, Scott. 2000. “Research on Household Labor: Modeling and Measuring the Social Embeddedness of Routine Family Work.” Journal of Marriage and the Family 62:1209–1233.

Crano, William and Joel Aronoff. 1978. “A Cross-Cultural Study of Expressive and Instrumental Role Complementarity in the Family.” American Sociological Review 43:463–471.

De Toledo, Sylvie and Deborah Edler Brown. 1995. Grandparents as Parents: A Survival Guide for Raising a Second Family . New York: Guilford Press.

Employment and Social Development Canada. 2014a. “Indicators of Well-Being in Canada: Family Life – Divorce.” Employment and Social Development Canada. Retrieved July 5, 2014, from http://www4.hrsdc.gc.ca/[email protected]?iid=76

Employment and Social Development Canada. 2014b. “Indicators of Well-Being in Canada: Family Life – Marriage.” Employment and Social Development Canada. Retrieved July 5, 2014, from http://www4.hrsdc.gc.ca/[email protected]?iid=78

Friedan, Betty. 1963. The Feminine Mystique. (NY: W.W. Norton & Company)

Houseknecht, Sharon and Jaya Sastry. 1996. “Family ‘Decline’ and Child Well-Being.” Journal of Marriage and the Family. 58: 726-739.

Human Resources Development Canada. 2003. A New Generation of Canadian Families Raising Young Children: A New Look at Data from National Surveys. Human Resources Development Canada: Applied Research Branch. September. Retrieved July 4, 2014, from http://www.gov.mb.ca/healthychild/ecd/raising_young_children.pdf

Hurley, Dan. 2005. “Divorce Rate: It’s Not as High as You Think.” New York Times , April 19 . Retrieved February 14, 2012 ( http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/19/health/19divo.html ).

Jayson, Sharon. 2010. “Report: Cohabiting Has Little Effect on Marriage Success.” USA Today, October 14. Retrieved February 14, 2012 ( http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2010-03-02-cohabiting02_N.htm ).

LaRossa, Ralph and Donald Reitzes. 1993. “Symbolic Interactionism and Family Studies.” Sourcebook of Family Theories and Methods: A Contextual Approach . New York: Plenum Press.

Le Bourdais, Celine and Heather Juby. 2002. “The Impact of Cohabitation on the Family Life Course in Contemporary North America: Insights from across the Border.” Pp. 107-118 in Booth, Alan and Ann Crouter (ed.s). Just Living Together: Implications of Cohabitation for Children, Family and Social Policy. (NY: Psychology Press).

Lee, Gary. 1982. Family Structure and Interaction: A Comparative Analysis . Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.

Milan, Anne. 2013. Marital Status: Overview, 2011. Statistics Canada Catalogue no. 91-209-X. July. Retrieved July 4, 2014, from http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/91-209-x/2013001/article/11788-eng.pdf

Roberts, Sam. 2007. “51% of Women Are Now Living Without a Spouse.” New York Times , January 16. Retrieved from February 14, 2012 ( http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/16/us/16census.html?pagewanted=all0 ).

To, Teresa, Astrid Guttmann, Paul Dick, Jay Rosenfield, Patricia Parkin, Marjan Tassoudji, Tatiana Vydykhan, Hongmei Cao, Jennifer K. Harris. 2004. “Risk Markers for Poor Developmental Attainment in Young Children: Results from a Longitudinal National Survey.” Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine. 158(7):643-649.

U.S. Census Bureau. 2010. “Current Population Survey (CPS).” Retrieved January 16, 2012 ( http://www.census.gov/population/www/cps/cpsdef.html ).

U.S. Census Bureau. 2011. “America’s Children: Key National Indicators of Well-Being. Forum on Child and Family Statistics. Retrieved January 16, 2012 ( http://www.childstats.gov/americaschildren/famsoc1.asp ).

Venugopal, Arun. 2011. “New York Leads in Never-Married Women.” WNYC , December 10. Retrieved February 14, 2012 ( http://www.wnyc.org/blogs/wnyc-news-blog/2011/sep/22/new-york-never-married-women/ ).

Williams, Cara. 2010. “Economic Well-Being” Women in Canada: A Gender –based Statistical Report. Statistics Canada Catalogue no. 89-503-X. December. Retrieved July 4, 2014, from http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/89-503-x/2010001/article/11388-eng.pdf

14.3. Challenges Families Face Amato, Paul. 2000. “What Children Learn From Divorce.” Journal of Family Issues 21(8):1061–1086.

Amato, Paul and Bruce Keith. 1991. “Parental Divorce and the Well-Being of Children: A Meta-Analysis.” Psychological Bulletin. 110: 26-46.

Benson, Michael and Greer Fox. 2004. When Violence Hits Home: How Economics and Neighborhood Play a Role . Washington, DC: National Institutes of Justice.

Berlin, Lisa. 2009. “Correlates and Consequences of Spanking and Verbal Punishment for Low-Income White, African American, and Mexican American Toddlers.” Child Development 80(5):1403–1420.

Catalano, S. 2007. Intimate Partner Violence in the United States . Washington, DC: US Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics. Retrieved April 30, 2012 ( http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/pub/pdf/ipvus.pdf ).

CBC News. 2004. “Supreme Court upholds spanking law.” CBC News. January 30. Retrieved July 6, 2014, from http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/supreme-court-upholds-spanking-law-1.496454

CBC News. 2013. “Dozens of children seized from Manitoba Mennonite community: RCMP lay multiple assault charges against 3 men and a woman.” CBC News. June 19. Retrieved July 6, 2014, from http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/dozens-of-children-seized-from-manitoba-mennonite-community-1.1323892

Centers for Disease Control. 2012. “Understanding Intimate Partner Violence.” Retrieved January 16, 2012 ( http://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/pdf/ipv_factsheet-a.pdf ).

Clark, Warren and Susan Crompton. 2006. “Till death do us part? The risk of first and second marriage dissolution.” Canadian Social Trends. Statistics Canada — Catalogue No. 11-008. Summer. Retrieved July 5, 2014, from http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/11-008-x/2006001/pdf/9198-eng.pdf

Durrant, Joan and Ron Ensom. 2012. “Physical Punishment of Children: Lessons from 20 Years of Research.” Canadian Medical Association Journal. 184(12): 1373–1377. Retrieved July 6, 2014, from http://www.cheo.on.ca/uploads/Durrant%20EnsomCMAJ2012.pdf

Elliot, Diana. 2010. “Embracing the Institution of Marriage: The Characteristics of Remarried Americans.” U.S. Census Bureau.

Fletcher, John. 2012. “Positive parenting, not physical punishment.” Canadian Medical Association Journal. 184(12): 1339.

Goodwin, S.N., S. Chandler, and J. Meisel. 2003. “Violence Against Women: The Role of Welfare Reform.” Final Report to the National Institute of Justice.

Hitchen, Ian. 2013. “Community’s children apprehended by province: Four Old Order Mennonite members accused of assaulting youths.” Winnipeg Free Press. June 6. Retrieved July 6, 2014, from http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/local/communitys-children-apprehended-by-province-212106141.html

Kelly, Mary Bess. 2010. “The processing of divorce cases through civil court in seven provinces and territories.” Statistics Canada Juristat Article. 30 (1): Spring. Retrieved July 5, 2014, from http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/85-002-x/2010001/article/11158-eng.pdf

Kreider, Rose. 2006. “Remarriage in the United States.” U.S. Census Bureau.

McKay, Stephen. 2010. “The Effects of Twins and Multiple Births on Families and Their Living Standards.” University of Birmingham. Retrieved February 24, 2012 ( http://www.tamba.org.uk/document.doc?id=268 ).

Michael, Robert. 1978. “The Rise in Divorce Rates, 1960–1974: Age-Specific Components.” Demography 15(2):177–182.

Pearce, Tralee. 2012. “Spanking your kid: Does it help or hurt?” The Toronto Globe and Mail. Sept. 6. Retrieved July 6, 2014, from http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/parenting/spanking-your-kid-does-it-help-or-hurt/article543483/

Popenoe, David and Barbara D. Whitehead. 2001. “Top Ten Myths of Divorce University of Virginia/National Marriage Project/The State of Our Unions.” Retrieved January 16, 2012.

Popenoe, David and Barbara D. Whitehead. 2004. “Ten Important Research Findings on Marriage and Choosing a Marriage Partner.” University of Virginia/National Marriage Project/The State of Our Unions. Retrieved January 16, 2012.

Public Health Agency of Canada. 2010. Canadian Incidence Study of Reported Child Abuse and Neglect – 2008: Major Findings. (Ottawa: Public Health Agency of Canada).

Roper Starch Worldwide. 1995. Domestic Violence: Views on Campus Survey . New York: Liz Claiborne.

Silverman, J.G., A. Raj, L. A. Mucci, and J. E. Hathaway. 2001. “Dating Violence Against Adolescent Girls and Associated Substance Abuse, Unhealthy Weight Control, Sexual Risk Behavior, Pregnancy and Suicide.” Journal of the American Medical Association 286:572–579.

Sinha, Maire. 2012. “Family violence in Canada: A statistical profile, 2010 .” Statistics Canada Juristat Article. Catalogue no. 85-002-X. May 22. Retrieved July 5, 2014, from http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/85-002-x/2012001/article/11643-eng.pdf

Sinha, Maire (ed.). 2013. “Measuring violence against women: Statistical trends.” Statistics Canada . Catalogue no. 85-224-X. February 25. Retrieved July 5, 2014, from http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/85-002-x/2013001/article/11766-eng.pdf 

Sinha, Maire. 2014. “Parenting and Child Support after Separation or Divorce.” Statistics Canada Catalogue no. 89‑652‑X–No. 001. February. Retrieved July 5, 2014, from http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/89-652-x/89-652-x2014001-eng.pdf

Statistics Canada. 2011. “Family Violence in Canada: A Statistical Profile.” Statistics Canada Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics. Catalogue no. 85-224-X. January. Retrieved July 5, 2014, from http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/85-224-x/85-224-x2010000-eng.pdf

Temke, Mary W. 2006. “The Effects of Divorce on Children.” Durham: University of New Hampshire. Retrieved January 16, 2012.

Wolfinger, Nicholas. 2005. Understanding the Divorce Cycle . New York: Cambridge University Press.

Solutions to Section Quiz

1. A  |  2. C  |  3. C  |  4. D  |  5. B  |  6. A  |  7. D  |  8. C  |  9. A  |  10. C  |  11. D  |  12. A  |  13. C  |  14. C  |  15. B

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Figure 14.9.  This CT scan is an example of Subdural haemorrhage caused by trauma by Glitzy queen00 ( http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ficheiro:Trauma_subdural_arrow.jpg ) is in the public domain ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain )

Introduction to Sociology - 1st Canadian Edition Copyright © 2014 by William Little and Ron McGivern is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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The Sociology of the Family Unit

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• Key Concepts
• Major Sociologists
• News & Issues
• Research, Samples, and Statistics
• Recommended Reading
• Archaeology

Sociology of the family is a subfield of sociology in which researchers examine the family as one of several key social institutions and units of socialization. The sociology of the family is a common component of introductory and pre-university academic curricula because the topic makes for a familiar and illustrative example of patterned social relations and dynamics.

Culture of the Family

To consider the sociology of a family, sociologists utilize family culture as the biggest research tool at their disposal. They do this by examining the existing structures and practices of each family to make sense of the pieces of the larger unit. The sociology of a family is founded on many cultural factors that shape its structures and processes, and sociologists must look at these to understand many complexities of the field.

Factors like gender , age, race , and ethnicity are just some of the factors that influence the relationships, structures, and practices within each family. Shifting demographics also tend to affect family culture and sociologists seek to understand why and how.

Family Relationships

Relationships should be closely investigated to better understand family dynamics. The stages of coupling (courtship, cohabitation, engagement, and marriage ), relationships between spouses through time and parenting practices and beliefs must all be examined.

These elements of relationships can be approached differently, depending on the goals for research. For example, some sociologists have studied how differences in income between partners influences the likelihood of infidelity, while others have examined how education affects the success rate of marriage. Relational nuances contribute substantially to the sociology of the family.

Parenting is especially significant to the sociology of a family unit. The socialization of children, parental roles, single parenting, adoption and foster parenting, and the roles of children based on gender are each handled differently by every family. Sociological research has found that gender stereotypes influence the parenting of children at a very young age and could even manifest in a gender pay gap for children's chores. Sociologists have also studied the effects of homosexuality on parenting to understand the influence of this type of romantic parental relationship on children. Parenting relationships are deeply important to family culture.

Family Structures

Common and alternative family forms are also leveraged to gain insight into the sociology of the family. Many sociologists study the roles and influence of family members within and beyond the nuclear or immediate family, including grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, godparents, and surrogate kin. Families affected by marital disunions and divorce often have very different dynamics than families with stable, healthy marriages. Singlehood is another structure that is important to study.

Family Systems and Other Institutions

Sociologists who study the family also look at how other institutions and family systems affect each other. The influence of religion on a family is often worth considering and the influence of a family on religion can be equally insightful. Even unreligious and agnostic families often have some spiritual practices. Likewise, sociologists are interested in the way that a family is affected by work, politics, mass media, and the effect of family on each of these.

Overview of Focus Areas

The following gives a brief summary of the technical themes present in the study of the sociology of the family. Understanding each of these concepts makes it possible to understand the sociology of the family.

Demographics

A focus on the demographic makeup of families and how they shift with time or location is a major point of discussion in the sociology of the family. For example, research in 2019 found that millennial adults were most likely to live at home with their parents in smaller cities than any other generation and were also responsible for increasing racial diversity most within their families.

Social Class

How social class affects a family and how the family itself might help or hinder individual social mobility, or movement through systems of society, is another key topic of discussion in beginning sociology. Disparities not only within a family but between impoverished and wealthy families are often very informative.

Social Dynamics

When researching the sociology of the family, it is important to study familial social dynamics and note the various interactions that take place. This includes looking at the relative roles and routines of family members in a larger unit over a long period of time.

Other Topics

Other topics likely to be covered when exploring the sociology of the family include:

• How social and economic changes affect families.
• The diversity of families and households.
• How family beliefs and principles influence choices and behaviors.

Edited by Nicki Lisa Cole, Ph.D.

Unknown. "American Time Use Survey — 2017 Results." Bureau of Labor Statistics, June 28, 2018, Washington, D.C.

• Introduction to Sociology
• Sociology of Health and Illness
• All About Marxist Sociology
• Sociology of Work and Industry
• The Sociology of Race and Ethnicity
• Macro- and Microsociology
• Data Sources For Sociological Research
• Understanding Diffusion in Sociology
• The History of Sociology Is Rooted in Ancient Times
• Biography of Patricia Hill Collins, Esteemed Sociologist
• Understanding Socialization in Sociology
• How Intervening Variables Work in Sociology
• Definition of Idiographic and Nomothetic
• The Sociology of Gender
• Famous Sociologists
• Definition of Aggregate and Social Aggregate

ReviseSociology

A level sociology revision – education, families, research methods, crime and deviance and more!

Families and Households

Table of Contents

Last Updated on November 21, 2023 by Karl Thompson

This page provides links to blog posts on the main topics of the AQA’s  Families and Households module. If you like this sort of thing – you might like to check out my various revision resources for sale on Sellfy.

An Introduction to the Sociology of the Family

Families and Households: Key Concepts – definitions of key terms covering most of the major sociological concepts relevant to the AQA’s families and households module. Let’s face it, learning the language of sociology is half the battle!

Defining the Family – your perspective on the family will depend on how you define the family. Defining the family isn’t necessarily as easy as you might think! Is it acceptable to include friends, or pets as part of your definition of ‘the family’ for example? This post covers this important introductory topic. 

Families  in the UK – Seven Interesting Statistics  –  class notes on some basic statistics on family life in the UK, from 2017. 

Surveys on family life in the UK – this post presents the results on four surveys on different aspects of family life in the UK. It includes some thoughts on the strengths and limitations of the data.

Families and Households Exam Advice (AQA A-level) 

AQA A-level paper 2: topics in sociology exam advice – a general post explaining the 3 styles of questions in this section of paper 2. Only covers the families and households section (section A) of paper 2.

How I would have answered the 2017 A-level Sociology paper 2 exam (families and households section) – brief notes briefly outlining how I would have tackled this exam paper.

Perspectives on The Family

Sociological perspectives include Functionalism, Marxism, Feminism, post and late modernism and the personal life perspective. Generally the first three all focus on the nuclear family in relation to social structure. The final three focus on how families are becoming more diverse with social changes in recent years.

An Overview of what you need to know  – a knowledge check list covering key concepts, research studies, sociologists. Includes suggested short answer and essay style exam questions for this aspect of the A-level sociology specification. 

Structuralist perspectives on the family

The Functionalist perspective on the family  –  detailed class notes covering Murdock’s 4 functions of the family, Talcott Parson’s functional fit theory, and his ‘two irreducible functions of the nuclear family in industrial society’, as well as a reminder about Functionalist ideas on traditional gender roles.

The Marxist perspective on the family  –  detailed class notes covering Engel’s theory of the relationship between private property and the emergence of the nuclear family, as well as contemporary Marxist views on the family as a unit of consumption.

The Marxist perspective on the family – very brief revision notes. Four power point slides covering ‘the basics’. Use in conjunction with the more detailed class notes above. 

Feminist perspectives on the family  – detailed class notes covering liberal, Marxist and radical feminist perspectives on the role of the nuclear family in society. Liberal feminists have a march of progress view of family life’. The radical feminist view emphasises the ways in which the traditional nuclear family perpetuates patriarchy and the ‘dark side of family life’. Marxist Feminists emphasise how the traditional nuclear family performs functions for capitalism, at the expense of women.

The Liberal Feminist perspective on the family – detailed class notes and evaluations covering the liberal feminist view that there is nothing wrong with the nuclear family structure as such, and that gender equality in society more generally is more important. 

The Marxist Feminist perspective on the family – class notes covering Engel’s view on the relationship between private property and the emergence of the nuclear family. Also more contemporary Marxist views on how the nuclear family encourages high levels of consumption. 

The Radical Feminist perspective on the family – argue that the nuclear family is the fundamental institution which is the root of female oppression. The nuclear family should be resisted through political lesbianism, or women just staying single. 

The New Right View of the family  – the New Right have a traditional view of family life. They believe the stable, married, nuclear family is best for children and society. 

Evaluating the New Right view of the family – criticisms of some of the views from the Right Wing Think Tank CIVITAS. CIVITAS argues lone parents cause problems for their children and wider society

Postmodern perspectives on the family

The postmodern view of the family  –  Postmodernists emphasise the fact that the nuclear family has long been in decline. They believe there is no ‘main type’ of family any more in postmodern society. 

The Late Modern perspective on the family  – this technically means Anthony Giddens and Ulrich Beck, who IMO are described as LATE MODERNISTS. However, if you’re an A-level student, most text books and the AQA lump them in with postmodernists.

The Personal Life Perspective on the family  –  Personal Life thinkers believe we need to understand the family from the perspective of the individuals within the family. If an individual believes dogs and dead relatives are part of the family then we should accept this. Sociologists should analyse the impact of the family from the point of view of the people they are researching. 

Evaluate the view that the main aim of the family is to meet the needs of capitalism – a full essay with an essay plan using the PEEC essay planning method .

Marriage, Divorce and Cohabitation

There has been a long term decline in marriage and corresponding increase in divorce, but a more recent decrease in divorce too. Cohabitation is also increasing. For this section of the course you need to be able to evaluate the main social factors which explain these trends and apply sociological perspectives to examine the consequences.

Overview of what you need to know  –  a knowledge check list covering key concepts, research studies, sociologists, and some suggested short answer and essay style exam questions 

Trends in Marriage, Divorce and Cohabitation – the number of marriages per year has been declining since the early 1970s, the number of divorces per year increased rapidly following the 1969 Divorce Act, remained roughly level until the year 2000 and are now declining in line with declining marriage. Cohabitation has also increased since the 1970s. This post explores these trends in more depth .

Explaining the changing patterns of marriage  – class notes exploring the main reasons for the long term decline in marriage (among other trends) – such as increasing gender equality/ female liberation, the increasing cost of marriage, and the increase in individualism with the shift to a postmodern society. 

Explaining the long term increase in divorce – there has been a long term increase in divorce, but a recent decrease since the mid 200os. Sociologists have pointed to factors such as rise of Feminism and women’s liberation, the 1969 divorce act and postmodernisation to explain long term increase.

Why is the number of divorces decreasing ? Factors such as declining marriage and migration patters can explain the more recent decrease in the divorce rate.

The consequences of declining marriage and increasing divorce  – generally speaking the New Right see declining marriage and increasing divorce as potentially damaging to individuals and society, while Feminists are more positive. Post and Late Modernists see these trends as inevitable consequences of postmodernisation .

Evaluate sociological explanations for the long term increase in divorce rates – A 20 mark essay demonstrating how you would apply the above knowledge under exam conditions .

Outline and explain two reasons for the decline in marriage (10) – exemplar of a 10 mark ‘outline and explain (no item) question which could come up in AQA’s paper 2 (7192/1)

Trends in Family Structure – Family Diversity/ The Decline of the Nuclear Family?

This is an enormous sub-topic in the sociology of the family and includes exploring the causes and consequences of increasing ‘structural diversity’ such as the traditional nuclear family declining and being ‘replaced’ with more single parent families and so on; it also includes an examination of how families vary by ethnicity, social class and sexuality.

Trends in family and household diversity  – a brief summary of the trends in different household types, such as ‘nuclear family’ households, lone parent households, single person households and kidult households. This is really just a simplified overview of the trends.

Official Statistics on family and household diversity – trends 2016 update. You might also like this 2018 update . This post is a more in-depth look at trends in family diversity and focuses more on the strengths and limitations of different types of official statistics.

How have families become more diverse? – very brief visual revision notes – one summary PPT slide.

Conceptualizing family diversity – detailed class notes covering the ‘myth of the cereal pack family’, the Rapoport’s five types of family diversity, and post-modern conceptions of ‘radical diversity’. The idea is that there is no longer any such thing as a ‘normal’ family or ‘life-course.  

Explaining the increase in family diversity part 1/3  – detailed class notes covering changing patterns of marriage and divorce, postmodernisation and economic factors.

Explaining the increase in family diversity part 2/3  – detailed class notes covering Feminism, social policies and late modernism

Evaluating the view that the nuclear family is in decline part 3/3  – It is important to remember that even though the nuclear family is in decline, it is still the main type of family. Historically the nuclear family may not have been as ‘constant’ as you think!

Why do so many young adults live with their parents?  – detailed class notes looking at the increasing trend of 20-30 somethings living with their parents. This post explores the significance of economic factors in explaining this trend, and looks at different ‘types’ of live at home adults.

Sociological Perspective on Single Person Households – the increase in people living alone is a global trend. Increased wealth, improved communications, urbanisation and increased longevity are all correlated with this trend.

Family diversity by social class – how do marriage, divorce and birth rates vary by social class background?

Examining how family life varies by ethnicity in the UK  – class notes exploring how family structures, size and attitudes to marriage and divorce vary – comparing Asian, African-Caribbean and White households.

Outline and explain two ways in which changes to gender roles may have affected the diversity of family structures (10) – a brief flow chart suggesting how you might answer this 10 mark (without item) question. 

Evaluate the view that changing gender roles are the most significant factor in explaining the increase in family diversity (20) – a very brief essay plan 

Power and Equality within Domestic Roles 

This section of the families and households module looks at how equal men and women are in relationships.

Conceptualising gender equality in relationships – a summary of some of the different concepts sociologists have developed in order to explain different relationship types, with different levels of equality. This post looks at concepts such as the traditional nuclear family, the symmetrical family and the negotiated family.

How should we measure equality in relationships? – (forthcoming) class notes examining the strengths and limitations of different indicators of equality, or lack of it, including stats on housework, childcare, and domestic violence.

To what extent is the domestic division of labour equal?  – class notes summarizing some of the statistics on how much housework men and women do in domestic relationships. While there is a trend towards men doing more housework, it remains the case that women still do about twice as much as men.

Who looks after the children in relationships ? – equality between couples may be improving, but when couples have children and become ‘family households’ the statistics suggest it’s still overwhelmingly women who do the majority of childcare.

Good sources for researching domestic abuse – an overview of some of the more credible sources of information you could use to research this difficult topic.

The Radical Feminist Perspective on power and control in relationships – radical feminists argue that domestic violence remains one of the techniques men use to control women in relationships. This post evaluates how relevant this perspective is today.

How do Motherhood and Fatherhood affect Paid Work, Housework and Parenting ? Mothers are far more likely to shift to working part-time than fathers. Mothers also do more housework and childcare than fathers. So much for Liberal Feminism!

To what extent is childhood socially constructed ? – While children are clearly biologically different to adults, childhood is also socially constructed – that is social norms influence the boundaries and differences between adults and children.

The March of Progress View  of Childhood – the ‘common sense’ view is that childhood in Europe has generally improved in the last two centuries, this post explores this view focusing on changes in education, employment and welfare relating to children.

Toxic Childhood – Class notes summarising Sue Palmer’s now very famous concept, outlining some of the ways in which modern life and technology harm children.

Paranoid Parenting – a summary of Frank Furedi’s 2001 book in which he argues parents today project their own fears, insecurities and uncertainties onto their children and as a result restrict their freedom so much that it may harm children by preventing them opportunities to develop as independent individuals.

Are children too controlled? An examination of some of the ways parents and other adults control children today: by controlling their times, space and toys, for example.

Is childhood disappearing?  – Neil Postman argues that modern communications technologies have blurred the boundaries between adulthood and childhood, to the extent that childhood is disappearing. This post explores this perspective and evaluates it.

Assess the view that the family has become more child centred – a brief essay plan suggesting an intro, four points with linked evaluations and a conclusion for this essay, using the PEEC planning technique. 

Social Policy and the Family

Social policies are acts which the government puts in place in order to change some aspect of social life. Some social policies are aimed to directly influence family life, such as the 1969 Divorce Act, but many more general social policies will impact family life even though they have not been designed to affect family life, as was the case with Equal Pay Act of 1972.

Social policy and the family – An overview of social policies, most of which have been put in place to influence family life directly. The policies covered include the 1969 Divorce Act, the 2005 Civil Partnership Act, the 2013 Paternity Act, as well as a discussion of how welfare benefits have impacted family life.

Sociological Perspectives on Social Policy and The Family  – the two main perspectives you need to know about are the New Right, which generally supports the Traditional Nuclear Family and the contrasting Feminist Perspectives, especially Liberal and Radical Feminism.

How do social policies affect family life?  – (external link, video) You need be able to explain the impact of social policies on the types of family (especially on the nuclear family), on how they may have affected men and women differently, on equality within relationships, on marriage and divorce rates and on children.

Social Policy and Family Life Summary Grid – a brief grid summarising some of the ways in which policies may have impacted different aspects of family life.

Demography 

Explaining changes to the birth rate  – there has been a long term decline in the birth rate, world wide, largely attributed to rising living standards, improved rights for women, and the decline in the infant mortality rate.

Explaining the long term decline of the death rate  – life expectancy has been increasing, hence the death rate has been declining.

The consequences of an ageing population – summary of a Thinking Allowed Podcast from 2015 which focuses on the challenges of a future in which increasing numbers of people will be aged over 70.

The consequences of an ageing population  – mind map covering factors such the increasing dependency ratio and the increasing ‘strain’ on public services. NB it’s important to note that an ageing population isn’t necessarily going to be a huge problem, it depends on how we can adapt to it as a society .

Migration and its consequences for family life  – very detailed class notes focusing on mainly the long term and short term patterns in migration to Britain and the consequences of this for social and family life.

Globalisation and family life – an in depth post exploring how economic and cultural globalisation have affected family life in the UK .

How does globalisation affect family life – a very brief overview covering how globalisation has led to increased family diversity, and more spread-out family relationships among other things.

A Level Sociology Families and Households Revision Bundle

If you like this sort of thing, then you might like my A Level  Sociology Families and Households Revision Bundle which contains the following:

• 50 pages of revision notes covering all of the sub-topics within families and households
• mind maps in pdf and png format – 9 in total, covering perspectives on the family
• short answer exam practice questions and exemplar answers – 3 examples of the 10 mark, ‘outline and explain’ question.
•  9 essays/ essay plans spanning all the topics within the families and households topic.

The AQA’s families and households specification

The AQA’s specification criteria for this families and households topic are quite clumsy – in bold below… I’ve mapped out in italics how my own structure above covers the specification criteria below…

• the relationship of the family to the social structure and social change, with particular reference to the economy and to state policies – The perspectives and social policies .
• changing patterns of marriage, cohabitation, separation, divorce, childbearing and the life course, including the sociology of personal life, and the diversity of contemporary family and household structures – The perspectives, marriage and divorce and changing family structures/ diversity .
• gender roles, domestic labour and power relationships within the family in contemporary society – power and equality in relationships ~(maps directly) .
• the nature of childhood, and changes in the status of children in the family and society – childhood (maps directly) .
• demographic trends in the United Kingdom since 1900: birth rates, death rates, family size, life expectancy, ageing population, and migration and globalisation – demography and globalisation .

Please click here to return to the homepage – ReviseSociology.com

43 thoughts on “Families and Households”

Hi – I think everything you need is in here for 2020!

Hey! I am appearing in the year 2020. Are there contents missing? If yes, can you please update them. Your notes are GOLD.

Hi – it’s current spec…. 2015 onwards so it covers this year!

hi , is this the current spec for the 2019 a level course or is there anything missing?

If I can, what are you looking for specifically?

hi im appearing for a levels sociology 2019 and a lot of stuff is missing from here can you please help?

Thanks for letting me know, I will look into this!

A lot of pages aren’t working such as the late postmodernism page and childhood being a social construct

Hi… I wasn’t aware of any changes to the A level spec next year! Maybe there are for GCSE. But these are A level resources!

Hi there, this revision content is very useful but does it have the new content, like the aqa specification 2019?

Hi – I’ll repackage the resources this week to make this option available.

Hi – not ATM, but I will repackage the resources to make this combination available this week. Good suggestion!

Can we purchase only the essay plans and essay tips? If not, would you able to do a bundle of all the essay plans?

Is it possible to only buy the essay plans and tips?

Hi – if you dig around the site a little then you’ll find there are plenty of examples of exam questions and model answers!

omg i love you so much for this can you like put up exam questions as well !!

Thank you. Our assignment specified using names of sociologists instead of the individual perspectives. Thank you for your help

You could just apply the perspectives – e.g. contrast Giddens, Murray.

Could you help with specific sociologists for reconstituted families? Please? Got Allan and Crow but struggling to people rather than perspectives to offer opposing views.

No chance – too many possible questions. Do not play the prediction game… just learn everthing! Having said that, the perspectives are more than likely to come up or be useable somewhere!

hi is it possible if you can make predictions for families and households a level 2018?

Thank you, but I’m sure that’s also down to your hard work.

Well done on the A!

the AS doesn’t even count.

It’s based on the bullet points in the main specification

i have a quick question regarding a level sociology i wanted to ask are their clear links between the topics that are obvious that the exam board may link together or is completely unpredictable

bro you are honestly a god

Thank you, and you’re most welcome!

Sooooo useful!!! Thanks so much

Hi – good question, and as far as I’m aware, you don’t need to link to other topics in paper 2 to get into the top mark band, it’s more important to stay very focused on the particular questions, and analyse (the 10 markers) and analyse and evaluate thoroughly for the 20 mark essays. I say ‘as far as I’m aware’ – it doesn’t say you have to cross-link in either the mark scheme or the AQA specification.

Quick question: For the A level examinations (year 2) do students have to make cross topic refrences in the 20/30 markers? For instance; if a question asks ‘evaluate the marxists perspective on crime’, do I link to topics such as education and families and households throughout my response, even though the question focus purley on crime or is not neccessary to reach the top band? Thank you

Hi – thank for letting me know, now sorted.

Under ‘sociological theories’, the link for ‘social action theory: breif summary notes’ is broken.

Please do Belief!!!

It’s on the list of things to do, but not a priority as I haven’t taught it for a decade! Might start it next July.

Is there any chance you could make a section for the beleif topics for the A level course?

Glad to be of assistance, although I’m sure your own ability and effort played a role too!

I got an A in sociology AS because of you. Thank you so much!!!!

If in doubt…. chuck the perspectives at the question

Really useful, thank you. Time for last-minute cramming lol

This that OG help. Thanks man

Thank you so much, these we soooo useful.

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Sociology of Family

The actual sociology of family examines the household as an institution and a unit of socialization. This particular unit of socialization is identified through various sociological perspectives; particularly according to the relationship between this nuclear family and industrial capitalism, along with the different gender tasks and concepts regarding childhood which arose by it. Research methods inside sociology of the household can be divided to three main approaches, each with its own strengths and weaknesses.

Over All Health, Illness Condition of the Children Aged 6-24 Month

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10.2: Sociological Perspectives on the Family

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Learning Objective

• Summarize understandings of the family as presented by functional, conflict, and social interactionist theories.

Sociological views on today’s families and their problems generally fall into the functional, conflict, and social interactionist approaches introduced in Chapter 1 “Understanding Social Problems”. Let’s review these views, which are summarized in Table 10.1 “Theory Snapshot”.

Social Functions of the Family

Recall that the functional perspective emphasizes that social institutions perform several important functions to help preserve social stability and otherwise keep a society working. A functional understanding of the family thus stresses the ways in which the family as a social institution helps make society possible. As such, the family performs several important functions.

First, the family is the primary unit for socializing children . No society is possible without adequate socialization of its young. In most societies, the family is the major unit in which socialization happens. Parents, siblings, and, if the family is extended rather than nuclear, other relatives all help socialize children from the time they are born.

One of the most important functions of the family is the socialization of children. In most societies the family is the major unit through which socialization occurs.

Colleen Kelly – Kids Playing Monopoly Chicago – CC BY 2.0.

Second, the family is ideally a major source of practical and emotional support for its members. It provides them food, clothing, shelter, and other essentials, and it also provides them love, comfort, and help in times of emotional distress, and other types of support.

Third, the family helps regulate sexual activity and sexual reproduction . All societies have norms governing with whom and how often a person should have sex. The family is the major unit for teaching these norms and the major unit through which sexual reproduction occurs. One reason for this is to ensure that infants have adequate emotional and practical care when they are born.

Fourth, the family provides its members with a social identity . Children are born into their parents’ social class, race and ethnicity, religion, and so forth. Some children have advantages throughout life because of the social identity they acquire from their parents, while others face many obstacles because the social class or race/ethnicity into which they are born is at the bottom of the social hierarchy.

Beyond discussing the family’s functions, the functional perspective on the family maintains that sudden or far-reaching changes in conventional family structure and processes threaten the family’s stability and thus that of society. For example, most sociology and marriage-and-family textbooks during the 1950s maintained that the male breadwinner–female homemaker nuclear family was the best arrangement for children, as it provided for a family’s economic and child-rearing needs. Any shift in this arrangement, they warned, would harm children and, by extension, the family as a social institution and even society itself. Textbooks no longer contain this warning, but many conservative observers continue to worry about the impact on children of working mothers and one-parent families. We return to their concerns shortly.

The Family and Conflict

Conflict theorists agree that the family serves the important functions just listed, but they also point to problems within the family that the functional perspective minimizes or overlooks altogether.

First, the family as a social institution contributes to social inequality. Because families pass along their wealth to their children, and because families differ greatly in the amount of wealth they have, the family helps reinforce existing inequality. As it developed through the centuries, and especially during industrialization, the family also became more and more of a patriarchal unit (since men made money working in factories while women stayed home), helping to reinforce men’s status at the top of the social hierarchy.

Second, the family can also be a source of conflict for its own members. Although the functional perspective assumes the family provides its members emotional comfort and support, many families do just the opposite and are far from the harmonious, happy groups depicted in the 1950s television shows. Instead, they argue, shout, and use emotional cruelty and physical violence. We return to family violence later in this chapter.

The conflict perspective emphasizes that many of the problems we see in today’s families stem from economic inequality and from patriarchy. The problems that many families experience reflect the fact that they live in poverty or near poverty. Money does not always bring happiness, but a dire lack of money produces stress and other difficulties that impair a family’s functioning and relationships. The Note 10.9 “Applying Social Research” box discusses other ways in which social class influences the family.

Conflict within a family also stems from patriarchy. Husbands usually earn more money than wives, and many men continue to feel that they are the head of their families. When women resist this old-fashioned notion, spousal conflict occurs.

Applying Social Research

Social Class and the Family

A growing amount of social science research documents social class differences in how well a family functions: the quality of its relationships and the cognitive, psychological, and social development of its children. This focus reflects the fact that what happens during the first months and years of life may have profound effects on how well a newborn prospers during childhood, adolescence, and beyond. To the extent this is true, the social class differences that have been found have troublesome implications.

According to sociologist Frank E. Furstenberg Jr., “steep differences exist across social classes” in mothers’ prenatal experiences, such as the quality of their diet and health care, as well as in the health care that their infants receive. As a result, he says, “children enter the world endowed unequally.” This inequality worsens after they are born for several reasons.

First, low-income families are much more likely to experience negative events , such as death, poor health, unemployment, divorce, and criminal victimization. When these negative events do occur, says Furstenberg, “social class affects a family’s ability to cushion their blow…Life is simply harder and more brutish at the bottom.” These negative events produce great amounts of stress; as Chapter 2 discussed, this stress in turn causes children to experience various developmental problems.

Second, low-income parents are much less likely to read and speak regularly to their infants and young children, who thus are slower to develop cognitive and reading skills; this problem in turn impairs their school performance when they enter elementary school.

Third, low-income parents are also less able to expose their children to cultural experiences (e.g., museum visits) outside the home, to develop their talents in the arts and other areas, and to otherwise be involved in the many nonschool activities that are important for a child’s development. In contrast, wealthier parents keep their children very busy in these activities in a pattern that sociologist Annette Lareau calls concerted cultivation . These children’s involvement in these activities provides them various life skills that help enhance their performance in school and later in the workplace.

Fourth, low-income children grow up in low-income neighborhoods, which often have inadequate schools and many other problems, including toxins such as lead paint, that impair a child’s development. In contrast, says Furstenberg, children from wealthier families “are very likely to attend better schools and live in better neighborhoods. It is as if the playing field for families is tilted in ways that are barely visible to the naked eye.”

Fifth, low-income families are less able to afford to send a child to college, and they are more likely to lack the social contacts that wealthier parents can use to help their child get a good job after college.

For all these reasons, social class profoundly shapes how children fare from conception through early adulthood and beyond. Because this body of research documents many negative consequences of living in a low-income family, it reinforces the need for wide-ranging efforts to help such families.

Sources: Bandy, Andrews, & Moore, 2012; Furstenberg, 2010; Lareau, 2010Bandy, T., Andrews, K.M., & Moore, K.A. (2012). Disadvantaged families and child outcomes: The importance of emotional support for mothers . Washington, DC: Child Trends; Furstenberg, F. E., Jr. (2010). Diverging development: The not-so-invisible hand of social class in the United States. In B. J. Risman (Ed.), Families as they really are (pp. 276–294). New York, NY: W. W. Norton; Lareau, A. (2010). Unequal childhoods: Inequalities in the rhythms of daily life. In B. J. Risman (Ed.), Families as they really are (pp. 295–298). New York: W. W. Norton.

Families and Social Interaction

Social interactionist perspectives on the family examine how family members and intimate couples interact on a daily basis and arrive at shared understandings of their situations. Studies grounded in social interactionism give us a keen understanding of how and why families operate the way they do.

Some studies, for example, focus on how husbands and wives communicate and the degree to which they communicate successfully (Tannen, 2001).Tannen, D. (2001). You just don’t understand: Women and men in conversation . New York, NY: Quill. A classic study by Mirra Komarovsky (1964)Komarovsky, M. (1964). Blue-collar marriage . New York, NY: Random House. found that wives in blue-collar marriages liked to talk with their husbands about problems they were having, while husbands tended to be quiet when problems occurred. Such gender differences are less common in middle-class families, where men are better educated and more emotionally expressive than their working-class counterparts, but gender differences in communication still exist in these families. Another classic study by Lillian Rubin (1976)Rubin, L. B. (1976). Worlds of pain: Life in the working-class family . New York, NY: Basic Books. found that wives in middle-class families say that ideal husbands are ones who communicate well and share their feelings, while wives in working-class families are more apt to say that ideal husbands are ones who do not drink too much and who go to work every day.

According to the symbolic interactionist perspective, family problems often stem from the different understandings, perceptions, and expectations that spouses have of their marriage and of their family. When these differences become too extreme and the spouses cannot reconcile their disagreements, spousal conflict and possibly divorce may occur (Kaufman & Taniguchi, 2006).Kaufman, G., & Taniguchi, H. (2006). Gender and marital happiness in later life. Journal of Family Issues, 27 (6), 735–757.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• The family ideally serves several functions for society. It socializes children, provides practical and emotional support for its members, regulates sexual reproduction, and provides its members with a social identity.
• Reflecting conflict theory’s emphases, the family may also produce several problems. In particular, it may contribute for several reasons to social inequality, and it may subject its members to violence, arguments, and other forms of conflict.
• Social interactionist understandings of the family emphasize how family members interact on a daily basis. In this regard, several studies find that husbands and wives communicate differently in certain ways that sometimes impede effective communication.

FOR YOUR REVIEW

• As you think how best to understand the family, do you favor the views and assumptions of functional theory, conflict theory, or social interactionist theory? Explain your answer.
• Do you think the family continues to serve the function of regulating sexual behavior and sexual reproduction? Why or why not?

Module 10: Marriage and Family

Assignment: families in media.

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The Moscow Social Space: Features and Structure

• URBAN DEVELOPMENT
• Published: 26 December 2019
• Volume 9 , pages 383–395, ( 2019 )

Cite this article

• O. I. Vendina 1 ,
• A. N. Panin 2 &
• V. S. Tikunov 2  

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The article presents the results of a study on analyzing intracity differences in Moscow. The concept of “social space” as a dual reality is used as the theoretical framework of the work, derived simultaneously from social relations and properties of an urban area. In the study, heterogeneous quantitative indicators were used for each of Moscow’s 125 districts. Sources of information are a census; current socioeconomic, demographic, migration, and electoral statistics; real estate data; surveys of residents in districts of the city. Based on these, the indices of the ethnic mosaic, demographic shifts, development of the urban amenities, people’s moods, and the reputation of place are calculated; districts are categorized by typology, taking into account factors of location and territorial proximity; maps are compiled, reflecting different dimensions of the city’s social space. Comparative analysis showed that the rather egalitarian social space of Soviet Moscow in past years has become more fragmented and polarized: the boundaries of differences have become more marked. The increase in unevenness has led to tangible divisions in improvement of the urban environment, saturation of the urban well-being of some districts, and the impoverishment of others. The authors conclude that, in order to reduce the risks of urban segregation, it is necessary to strengthen the coherence of the urban space and social environments, and to bring the level of diversity of the urban environment in line with that of the population of Moscow districts. Such policies and activity are most required where rapid growth of ethnocultural diversity occurs against a lack of development, relative transport isolation of districts, and social exclusion.

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The study was carried out at the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration with the financial support of the Russian Science Foundation (project no. 15-18-00064 “New Approaches and Methods for Regulating Ethno-Political Relations in Russia’s Largest Urban Agglomerations”). Analytical part of the research was fulfilled within the framework of the state-ordered research theme of the Institute of Geography RAS, no. 0148-2019-0008 (“Problems and Prospects of the Russia’s Territorial Development in Terms of its Unevenness and Global Instability”).

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Vendina, O.I., Panin, A.N. & Tikunov, V.S. The Moscow Social Space: Features and Structure. Reg. Res. Russ. 9 , 383–395 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1134/S2079970519040117

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Accepted : 11 July 2019

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Issue Date : October 2019

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1134/S2079970519040117

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Moscow by Adrienne M. Harris LAST MODIFIED: 28 July 2021 DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780190922481-0047

According to the 2010 census, Moscow’s 11.5 million inhabitants make it the largest city in Europe. The city has the distinction of having gained capital status in the 16th century, losing it in the early 18th century, and regaining it after the Bolshevik Revolution in the early 20th century. In the 10th century, Eastern Slavs colonized the area; Moscow first appeared in written chronicles in 1147, when Prince Iurii Dolgorukii established the city on a forested bluff overlooking the confluence of the Moscow and Neglinnaia rivers. Although Mongols destroyed Moscow in 1237, during the period of Mongol hegemony known as the “Tatar Yoke” (1237–1480), Moscow flourished and the city replaced Kiev as the capital of East Slavdom, the state of Muscovy born in 1547. The cluster of cupolas in the Kremlin attest to Moscow’s role as a seat of ecclesiastical power: after the Ottomans captured Constantinople in 1453, Moscow gained new cultural significance as the self-proclaimed center of “true Christianity.” In 1712, Peter the Great transferred power to St. Petersburg and Moscow was demoted to a regional capital. During the imperial period, Moscow became an important industrial center that attracted migrants who would continually overwhelm city resources. The destruction resulting from Napoleon’s invasion in 1812 led to reconstruction. After the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, the city emerged as the capital of the USSR and the global communist movement and, after the Second World War, as the capital of the socialist “second world.” One finds ample scholarship about Moscow during the Soviet period, as it served as an example for the rest of this “second world.” Publications have focused on attempts to alleviate housing shortages and sanitation problems; on the development of public transportation, most notably the Moscow metropolitan—the subway, which remains an architectural monument; on migration; and, considering the Soviet experience, on labor history and social movements—especially as Soviet planners aimed to create new and innovative solutions for the “new Soviet man and woman.” The scholarship reflects the fact that problems that challenged planners in the past continue into the present. One should be aware of the ideological nature of Soviet books, especially those published during the Stalin period when scholars were required to approach their work from a Marxist perspective in line with Soviet ideology. Additionally, sources about contemporary Moscow published two decades ago will be more out of date than a similarly-aged source on a city that did not experience a cataclysmic event such as the 1991 dissolution of the USSR.

Although not solely about Moscow, Riasanovsky and Steinberg 2018 provides the best overview of Moscow history. Perhaps only the historians of the Russian Academy of Sciences have attempted to capture the entire history of Moscow from its founding in the 12th century in one endeavor, publishing a massive six-volume (1952–1959), seven-book edition covering Moscow until the invasion of Nazi Germany in 1941 in the form of Istoriia Moskvy v shesti tomakh . In addition to being out of date, historians commenced this project at one of the most-ideologically rigid Soviet periods—the postwar Stalin years. Nothing comparable exists in English. Colton 1995 remains the most comprehensive one-volume general overview dedicated to Moscow, although most of the book concerns the 20th century. While the title indicates that the book is largely concerned with governance and Colton is a political scientist, the book also covers Moscow history and urban planning, in addition to local governance in depth. For a comparative study covering late-19th to early-20th-century history, see Ruble 2001 . Murrell 2003 provides an accessible, one-volume illustrated history with a focus on architecture for students and travelers. The encyclopedia entry Harris 2019 serves as a short urban and cultural history of the city and concludes with a list of works (literature, cinema, and songs) that depict the city. Although outdated, Corona 2001 introduces the city to a juvenile audience. “Uznai Moskvu” (“ Discover Moscow ”) offers both searchable textual and visual, historical and contemporary information on the city. Leading American, Canadian, and British historians manage the Russian History Blog on which one can find multiple posts about Moscow. The English-language Moscow Times newspaper provides up-to-date information on Moscow events.

Akademiia nauk SSSR: Institut istorii. Istoriia Moskvy v shesti tomakh . 6 vols. Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Akademii Nauk SSSR, 1952–1959.

This massive six-volume (seven book) set produced by historians at the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, Institute of History, covers the history of Moscow from the 12th century through June 1941 from a Marxist perspective: Vol. 1: 12th-17th centuries; Vol. 2. 18th century; Vol. 3. 1800–1856; Vol. 4: 1860s-1880s; Vol. 5. 1890s-1916; Vol. 6. 1917–1941. It includes map, illustrations, and colored plates.

Colton, Timothy J. Moscow: Governing the Socialist Metropolis . Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1995.

DOI: 10.4159/harvard.9780674283725

After introducing Moscow’s history prior to the October 1917 revolution, this comprehensive volume details its urban development intertwined with its role as the capital of not just the Soviet Union, but the socialist second world in general. Colton discusses both the city’s development under Soviet general secretaries as well as housing, migration, and planning, and covers local governance in the city across different regimes. The final two chapters cover the capital and its institutions during perestroika and the post-Soviet period.

Corona, Laurel. Life in Moscow . The Way People Live series. San Diego, CA: Lucent Books, 2001.

Illustrated with black-and-white photographs of everyday life and Moscow landmarks, this book is an appropriate introduction to Moscow for a juvenile audience. It covers transportation, socioeconomic status, home life, education, careers, crime and law enforcement, and entertainment.

Discover Moscow .

“Uznai Moskvu” or “Discover Moscow,” a searchable online Russian and English-language guide to Moscow, provides information on houses, routes, museums, monuments, and other places. The site includes maps, photographs—both historical and contemporary, and historical information on notable sites.

Harris, Adrienne. “Moscow.” In The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Urban and Regional Studies . Edited by Anthony M. Orum, 1264–1271. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell, 2019.

A concise introduction appropriate for undergraduates. Although the article is focused primarily on history, it concludes with a short list of literature and films set in Moscow.

The Moscow Times .

This English-language newspaper, having only recently moved to an all-digital format, began circulation in 1992 for an audience of primarily expats living in Moscow. It stopped publishing in print in 2017 and turned to an entirely digital format.

Murrell, Kathleen Berton. Moscow: An Illustrated History . New York: Hippocrene Books, 2003.

This accessible history covers the history of Moscow from its settlement by Slavic tribes through the first post-Soviet decade. It includes a map, chronology, and black-and-white illustrations.

Riasanovsky, Nicholas V., and Mark D Steinberg. A History of Russia . 9th ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018.

Although this authoritative history covers Russian history in general, there are several chapters dedicated solely to Moscow and the Muscovite state that provide the reader an excellent overview of Moscow history.

Ruble, Blair A. Second Metropolis: Pragmatic Pluralism in Gilded Age Chicago, Silver Age Moscow, and Meiji Osaka . Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2001.

In this excellent comparative study, the author compares Moscow, Chicago, and Osaka during a period (1870–1920) in which all three experienced robust industrial development, rapid population growth, and increases in both diversity and fragmentation. Three chapters cover Moscow’s development as an industrial center, the relatively successful education of Moscow workers, and the city’s housing ills. Ruble challenges Russian exceptionalism by highlighting similarities to other cities.

Russian History Blog .

Leading Western scholars manage the English-language Russian History Blog on which one finds multiple posts related to Moscow.

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Cecilia Bobrovskaya Twenty Years in Underground Russia: Memoirs of a Rank-and-File Bolshevik

VIII. Moscow

FROM Baku I went to recuperate a little at the estate in Zhiroslavka near Kostroma which I have already mentioned, whose mistress, Elizaveta Kolodeznikova, considered it her mission in life to provide a haven for all tired and homeless Party workers. About midsummer 1905, after I had had a short rest, I left for Moscow. According to the decision of the Moscow Committee I was to start work as district organizer. I was to take up my new duties after the city conference, at which I hoped to gain a better knowledge of Moscow Party work. The conference was to be held on a Sunday in the woods near Obiralovka on the Nizhnenovgorod line.

When our group of comrades alighted at the suburban terminus of Obiralovka, the station was crowded with gendarmes, detectives, spies, and other police department officials. The "splendour" of the scene petrified us for a moment. Then we began to pretend that we were all strangers to each other. But the police only laughed at us. One of the delegates to our conference had betrayed us, so that the police knew everything to a detail. Notwithstanding all the information they had, however, they arrested only fifteen comrades. The others, who had come by an earlier train, managed to escape the trap laid for us at the station. I was arrested with several workers employed at the Guzhon Works in Moscow. I particularly recollect one dark-haired young worker with squinting eyes, who kept us merry all the way from Obiralovka to Moscow whither the police were taking us. At every stop the holiday crowd tried to get into our car. The police zealously attempted to drive the crowd away, while the dark-haired Guzhon worker cried to the newcomers:

"Ladies and gentlemen, it is strictly forbidden to come into this carriage. The ambassadors from Portsmouth are here!" (This happened at the time of the peace negotiations with Japan.)

At the police headquarters we were closely crossexamined. But I could not say anything for myself. I had just recently arrived in Moscow and had had no time to obtain a passport. I lived without being registered, at the home of my husband's mother, Sophia Bobrovskaya, and avoided the janitor. This apartment was very convenient for secret work because the house had two exits, one of which was particularly useful because it led into a yard in which there was a postoffice. If anything happened one could always pretend to be going to the postoffice. These features were taken into consideration when Sophia and her younger daughter, Nina, rented the apartment. It often happened that mother and daughter, not having had time to consult each other, both offered the apartment for meeting purposes on the same day. Once, for example, a secret meeting of soldiers--representatives of the army--was held in one room, which Sophia had lent for the purpose, while in another room the girl cashiers of the Chichkin dairies met to discuss the forthcoming strike of the employees of that firm. Nina had consented to let them have the room without consulting her mother. The house was always used as a temporary hiding place for illegal literature and weapons. Furthermore, workers frequently made appointments at the house without telling the Bobrovskys beforehand because they knew that the latter would acquiesce.

Hence, when I was arrested I could not possibly give the Bobrovsky address. The only thing I could do was to refuse point blank to give any information about myself. I was immediately charged under Article 102 of the Criminal Code and sent to the Watch Tower in the Butirsky prison. Before me was the prospect of a quiet life (as a rest from my roving one) for a lengthy period, and I planned to take advantage of this to improve my theoretical knowledge. My deficiencies in this respect hindered me in my Party work. But this dream was not realized, owing to the breathless events that occurred on the other side of the prison bars. These events freed me from the Watch Tower--a freedom gained under strikingly happy circumstances. Each day the rumours which reached us in the Watch Tower as to the growing revolutionary spirit among the broad proletarian masses were more and more confirmed, particularly after we heard the singing of revolutionary songs in the main yard (the Watch Tower looked out into the hospital yard). They were sung by the arrested Philipov bakers. The crowds of workers in the neighbouring yard which we could see from our tower, and the snatches of speeches that were carried to us also helped confirm the fact. Besides these joyously disturbing signs, during the first days of October a group of Poles were imprisoned in the Watch Tower (because there was no room in the deportation prison) in the next flight above my cell. I learned from these comrades that they had been exiled from Warsaw to the Vyatka province and had been on their way there, but, owing to the strikes on the railroads, they had had to stop for an indefinite time in Moscow. Any day now, they predicted, Russia would be in the threes of a general strike; then we would not be in prison very much longer.

The Poles were in very high spirits and from the moment they arrived, our isolated yard in the Watch Tower changed as if by magic. For example, a few days before October 17 a very curious thing happened. It had snowed the previous night, and one of the Poles who was a sculptor made an excellent snow figure of Nicholas II. When the figure began to melt, another of the Poles approached my window and said audibly:

"Look, comrade, the autocracy is melting, let's give a cheer!"

The guard in the yard informed the governor of this. The assistant governor came, spoke briefly to the Poles and to me, then, apparently feeling the insecurity of the autocracy, limited himself to a mild lecture about our "disgraceful conduct" and returned to the office scratching his head. But not all the warders were so pessimistically inclined. The governor of the Butirsky prison still held aloft the banner of autocracy. My husband had been exiled to Siberia and I expected that he would stop at the Butirsky prison on his way there from the Caucasus. I asked the governor to permit me to see my husband if he came. The governor replied haughtily: "Prisoners are forbidden to talk to each other." A week later, after this haughty refusal, I met my husband in Moscow--both of us were free. He had been released on the road by the rebellious Rostov workers.

The last few days before October 17, the cream of the Moscow proletariat gathered about our Butirsky prison. There was not a workshop nor a trade that was not represented there. Prison life became unusually intense. The senior prison officials went about looking cross and gloomy. The middle ranks looked frightened and apologetic while the lower officials, warders and the rest went about gloatingly. They would forget to lock our cells (the corridors, of course, were locked), and we became so bold, that we not only carried on conversation with the Poles, but two of them even came to my cell for a few minutes. The prison officials visited us several times a day. Representatives of the public prosecutor often came to ask if we had "any complaints to make". At night our guardians had no rest. Lights flickered in the yard and in the corridors all night. It was apparent that they were profoundly disturbed. This filled us with fierce joy and, we were curious to know how it would all end. I was not very clear as to what was happening outside and things were still very vague to me even when a vast revolutionary Moscow crowd moved toward the Butirsky prison and demanded our release. The day before rumours had reached us that a royal manifesto would be issued granting us freedom. But we were indignant at the very suggestion of such a mark of the tsar's favour and would hear nothing of it.

On the morning of October 18 everything in the prison seemed as usual. Keys rattled in the corridor. The "hot water" was brought at the usual hour, but I could not think of drinking it--there was no time for such trifles. I made my morning survey from the window sill--endangering my ribs, because the sill was very high above the ground and there was nothing to grasp but the bars--and looked out into the yard; but I scarcely recognized it. It had changed into a military camp. Machine-guns, cannon and other death dealing instruments filled the yard. Gallant officers, ready for battle, shouted orders. They all looked as though they expected the enemy at any minute. It was not difficult to conjecture what enemy. Anyway, I was not kept guessing long, for very soon I saw a huge crowd moving down Dolgorukovskaya and Lesnaya streets towards our prison. But what agitated me most was the sea of red banners. A red banner meant a great deal to an underground professional. At that moment the sight of so many red banners seemed strange to me.

The exulting revolutionary crowd approached so near that I could actually see expressions on individual faces. In front of the crowd, threading his way toward my window, was my friend Makar. He was saying something to me that I could not quite understand. He was saying that he was afraid I might be kept in prison till the evening because no telegrams had yet been received from the Minister Witte, or something to that effect. His tone implied that it was the hardest thing in the world for me to have to stay in prison until the evening--I, who had been planning a bare week ago to stay in prison for more than a year!

The most inexplicable and surprising thing about Makar and all the others was their utter disregard for any consequences their conduct might entail--a disregard that was not the least shaken by my mentioning the cannon and machine-guns which awaited them on the other side of the prison. They simply laughed in reply, exclaiming, "They won't dare!"

When the crowd demanded the release of all political prisoners, the first to be freed were the Philipov strikers. These had been thrown into the prison in whole groups. A barrel was placed at the gates of the prison to serve as a platform for speakers. One of the released bakers mounted this barrel and delivered the following "speech": "Comrades, I am a Philipov baker! That is all I have to say!" This avowal was greeted with tremendous enthusiasm. After the baker, a few railroad workers spoke. No one tried to understand what they were saying. The speeches were not important in themselves--it was the circumstances in which they were delivered that were important.

I must admit that at that triumphant moment I was afraid of being released. I was afraid that I should have to make a speech from that barrel in my thin high-pitched voice. But the god of revolution preserved me--a voiceless underground worker--from this ordeal. I was released in the evening, when the crowd had dispersed, without being forced to deliver an agitational speech--a thing I never could, nor can do. I was permitted to leave the prison quietly. Although we had been freed by the revolutionary masses, we still had to pass through all the prison formalities at the prison office. That office had an unusual appearance. It was filled with tables at which officials sat who, apparently, had been hastily appointed. They rapidly checked us off the prisoners' list. The released comrades introduced themselves to each other, congratulated one another, laughed, and tied red ribbons on their arms. At the office I had a short but very characteristic talk with the prison officials. It seemed somewhat strange to go out of prison with a valise. The first thing I wanted to do in leaving the prison was to rush to a meeting, to be out in the street; a valise would only be a hindrance. So I asked permission to leave it in the office. The warder looked at me in surprise at my request and said: "Do you still have faith in us? To which I answered, "Of course, for most probably I will have to return to you very soon".

To tell the truth, I was not at all certain that this freedom would last very long. When I found myself at the University that evening, I became still more confused by the atmosphere. Going through the University corridors. I met many comrades, but none of them could explain to me what waS actually taking place. At last I saw Martin Lyadov (Mandelstamm), a member of the Moscow Committee. I showered questions upon him about the Moscow Committee and what I was to do with myself, but he merely answered:

"Tomorrow we are burying Bauman. You must come to the funeral; go to a meeting now and make a speech. All the comrades who were released today are doing that."

The news of our Comrade Bauman's death communicated to me in such a calm tone, was a great blow to me. I recalled his cheerful disposition in Geneva and was deeply distressed at the thought hat this brave, energetic revolutionary was no longer among the living. I met Zemlyachka, another member of the Moscow Committee, and began to question her. She also replied, "Tomorrow is Bauman's funeral," and then pushed me into a meeting saying, "You go and speak after that comrade. You're just out of prison, you know," whereupon she hurried off.

"That's a fine way for the Moscow Committee to get me to understand the situation," I thought, to myself. "To speak at a big meeting without the faintest gift of oratory and with my head still in a muddle." I pondered a while and decided not to become an "object of the celebrations," but instead to mingle with the crowd.

Next day, however, during Bauman's funeral, which was far more stirring and demonstrative than I had expected, I realized that Lyadov and Zemlyachka had been right. The organization of this funeral was a big Party task with which the Moscow Committee of our Party had coped admirably. I also understood that ones own individual sorrow at the loss of even such a dear comrade as Nikolai Bauman had to give precedence to the historical significance of the funeral.

I was unable to begin my work in the Moscow district for some time after the funeral. I was dreadfully unstrung by all that had happened and became ill and suffered from insomnia. In the moments of forgetfulness I still seemed to be walking from the Technical School to the Vagankovsky Cemetery with that solid mass of workers united by a single revolutionary aim. I could still see the coffin under its velvet pall sway on the shoulders of the men who carried it and the words of the funeral march still rang in my ears:

"Dying like soldiers, fighting for labour so did you fall ..."

My illness prevented me from working for three weeks--a very long time for that period.

On November 8, 1905, Lenin wrote in the paper Novaya Zhizn:

"The state that Russia is in at present is often expressed with the word 'anarchy'. This wrong and false term in reality expresses the fact that there is no established order in the country. The war of the new, free Russia against the old serf-autocratic Russia is being waged along the whole line; the autocracy is no longer capable of conquering the revolution, but the revolution is not yet capable of conquering tsarism. The old order is shattered, but it is not yet destroyed, and the new, free order is existing unrecognized, half hiding, often persecuted on all sides by the henchmen of the autocratic system."

Towards the end of November the scales definitely swung in favour of the revolution; deep in one's heart one felt that the great struggle between the working class and the tsarist autocracy would at any moment break out in open armed conflict on the Moscow streets.

In all save the most backward districts the atmosphere reached white heat. Proletarian Moscow was impregnated with the spirit of revolt.

Our Bolshevik organizations carried on feverish preparatory work, mustering the working masses, agitating the troops, and getting the workers' armed units which had been organizing since October into military shape.

The leading figure on the Moscow Committee at that time was Comrade Shantser, or "Marat," as we called him, but all the information I have is the meagre data found in the documents of the Moscow Secret Police obtained by Comrade Minitsky for a biographical dictionary of Moscow Committee members who had fallen in the revolution. From this data we learn that Comrade Shantser was born in 1867, that his father was a German and his mother a Frenchwoman, who had become Russian citizens and had settled in Odessa. He began doing cultural work among the workers while he was still a gymnasium student and, after finishing school, was arrested in 1887 for participating in the organization of a workers' library in Nikolayev. In 1895 he was arrested again, this time for conducting propaganda in workers' circles in Odessa and for making collections for political prisoners. Later, when he was a junior barrister, in Moscow, he maintained constant touch with workers who used to come to his home and among whom he distributed illegal literature. In September 1901 he was arrested at the home of Comrade Nikiforov, another old comrade now dead, for taking part in the preparations for a demonstration in Moscow; and he was exiled to Fast Siberia for three years where he was kept under the strict surveillance of the police. From there he returned to Moscow in November 1902 and worked with even greater energy in the Party, playing a leading role in the Moscow organization whose leader he was in the November-December days of 1905.

During the uprising he was arrested for the fourth and last time at his home where a meeting of the Federative Committee--a body organized to co-ordinate the activities of all the revolutionary organizations and on which Comrade Shantser represented the Bolsheviks--was to have been held. Since all evidence about this case was lost during the days of the rebellion, he got off with administrative exile to the Turukhansk region.

Here he suffered a nervous breakdown but, ill as he was, he nevertheless managed to escape abroad where the nervous disease developed into an incurable mental disorder. Due to his hopeless condition Shantsers wife, Natalia, managed to get permission to return to Russia with her sick husband in 1910. But the tsarist officials loved to spite their disarmed foes. When he returned to his native land, this hopelessly sick and emaciated comrade was not allowed to be placed in a private hospital, but was sent to the central police lunatic asylum. Comrade Shantser, whose memory should be preserved by the Moscow workers, died on January 29, 1911.

I personally worked as the organizer of the Lefortovo district where I met many comrades, some of whom, like myself, had been sent by the Moscow Committee, while others were local workers--representatives from the mills and factories.

The Moscow Committee regarded the Lefortovo district as one of the backward ones. And in truth, as the December days drew nearer, one could witness in Lefortovo more than in any other district the heartbreaking sight of individual workers, and even whole groups of them, with bundles on their backs--turning their faces towards the village--and their backs upon the revolution.

To make the Lefortovo workers fall into step with the more militant districts (Presnya, Zamoskvorechye) we had to carry on intensive agitational work. We organized meetings from morn till night at the Vedensky People's Palace to which the workers came in crowds. Before we could clear the hall of one group, another group would pour in, while crowds of workers would be waiting their turn on the Vedensky Square.

We organizers found it very difficult to provide agitators for all these meetings. In 1905 the Party in general, and the Moscow organization in particular, had an extremely limited number of agitators at their disposal. Not every underground Party worker who was accustomed to speaking at small workers' meetings held in the woods or on a boat, or in some out of way barn, could get up before a mass meeting of several thousand and speak from a high platform in a brilliantly lit hall.

We had to resort to all sorts of ruses to get an extra agitator from the centre. Thus, for example, early in the morning I would go to Fidler's house, the headquarters of the Central Board of Agitators of the Moscow Committee led by Comrade Stanislav. There I would catch one of the agitators and earnestly plead that today was the decisive day, that the Lefortovo district was not stable, that if we managed to carry off one or two successful meetings the Lefortovites would be roused, etc.

Having played upon the feelings of my agitator in this fashion, I would obtain his promise to come to Lefortovo, knowing all the while that he could only go where the centre sent him, and not where each district organizer wanted him to go. But such is the mentality of a district worker that it always seems to him that his district is more important than any other. These difficulties were eased somewhat in the days that followed, when, besides the official agitators, speakers appeared from among the masses themselves. At our meetings in the Vedensky People's Palace, workers would get up from the audience to address the meeting. I remember a worker from the Rontaller factory who once came over to me and said timidly that he would like to speak. He wound up his long and fairly able speech with the following words: "We button makers are a big power. If we choose we can leave all Moscow without a button."

A middle-aged working woman agitator in the audience spoke about the low wages paid to women, and to illustrate the point she said: "When I, a woman, am hungry and go to buy a cucumber, do I pay half a kopek, or do they charge me a kopek the same as they charge a man?" Her speech created a tremendous impression upon the audience. It was a rare thing for a woman worker, and an old one at that, to get up on a platform and speak before a big audience.

Our Party headquarters were located in the Vedensky People's Palace and we members of the District Committee were in the office day and night: from early morning till late at night we received delegations from factories and mills who came to us with all kinds of problems.

I vividly recall a group of workers from the Dufurmantel factory, five of them, led by a middle-aged, red-bearded worker. They were sent by the illiterate workers who had organized themselves and demanded that we immediately teach them to read and to write. "It's a crime not to be able to read at such times," they declared to us. This "illiterate" delegation made a deep impression upon us. We explained to them that we could not possibly teach them to read and write in so short a time as they desired, but that we would organize a school for this purpose without delay. And indeed we organized such a school for the workers in our district, using the nearest public school for this purpose and mobilizing teachers--our own people--to help. Despite the disturbed time, regardless of the fact that towards the end of November we had reached the verge of an armed uprising, our Party organization continued, as it had done in times of peace, to organize schools, lectures, clubs, in short, all sorts of cultural work. This work was carried on "under fire," so to speak, and was often intermingled with purely military work.

For example, during the barricade fighting in the Zamoskvorechye District, furniture which was being delivered to the club was seized and used for building barricades. The club organizers began to protest against the misuse of club property, but later, realizing the urgent necessity, they not only helped to pile up the furniture on the barricade but even removed the gate of the house where the club was situated and piled that on also.

Our Lefortovo unit of armed workers, with Comrade Rublevkin at its head, was a small, poorly equipped, but extremely militant group, which together with the District Committee members was very keen on getting the backward Lefortovo district to catch up with the other districts. Later, during the uprising, when fighting was taking place in the centre in the Presnya District, and in Zamoskvoretsky District, and when we Lefortovites were still holding meetings, our armed workers went off to help the other districts.

Towards the end of November the first Moscow Soviet of Workers' Deputies, uniting 134 industries with about 100,000 workers, was organized. On December 14 this Soviet passed a resolution to the effect that: "Moscow workers must hold themselves ready at any moment for a general political strike and for an armed uprising."

In accordance with the decision of the Soviet on the morning of the fifth, meetings were held in all the factories and mills where the question of the strike and the uprising were discussed and put to a vote; and in the evening of the same day the Lefortovites went to the Bolshevik Moscow City Conference where the question was to be decided.

At this time even the Lefortovo district had become aroused and the referendum we took in all the factories on the question of the strike and uprising gave positive results. But we all realized that when the forces were counted up at the Conference, the Lefortovo district would be found to be the weakest. This knowledge filled our hearts with bitterness.

Those who were present at the conference on the night of December 5, 1905, will remember what a militant spirit reigned there, with what eagerness the factory delegates were listened to, and how they all in one voice declared that the workers were ready to revolt. The deep conviction of the inevitability of the uprising was not shaken even when the military organizer, Comrade Andrey, in his report on the conditions of the Moscow garrison announced that though the soldiers would not go against us, he was not certain that they would go with us. A few comrades urged restraint on the grounds that the workers were almost unarmed, but all their arguments were unavailing, for everybody was convinced that the uprising was inevitable.

On December 7, the first issue of the Izvestia of the Moscow Soviet of Workers' Deputies was published containing a manifesto signed by all the revolutionary organizations in Moscow calling for "a general political strike on Thursday, December 7, at It o'clock noon" and for every effort to be made to "convert it into an armed uprising".

The Moscow Committee of our Party elected an Executive Committee which was entrusted with all authority; the rest of the committee members had to go back to work in their districts. From the very first days of the uprising reliable means of communication were established between the centre and the districts through the medium of comrades who were called couriers. At first the couriers were able to penetrate into the districts despite the difficulties, but later on they were unable to do so. Thus all communication between the centre and the districts was cut off and the latter were left to their own devices. At Presnya, fighting was going on under the leadership of Comrade Sedoy (Litvin), the Zamoskvoretsky District lived its own revolutionary life....

Our first Lefortovo courier was an old comrade, Alexander Blagonravov, who later worked in the Vladimir organization and died of typhus in 1919. I can clearly recall Blagonravov with his sad smile reporting about the affairs in other districts and delivering the instructions of the centre for the coming day. The proletariat must not forget its couriers who selflessly devoted their lives to maintaining communication between the various sections of the city during the memorable days of struggle.

But soon even Comrade Blagonravov was unable to reach us, and our district was completely isolated. We, however, continued to hold meetings and to organize demonstrations. Once we marched by the Spassky barracks from which some disarmed and imprisoned soldiers cheered us. Our armed workers' units had several clashes with the Black Hundreds who were numerous in Lefortovo, but the latter were not remarkable for their bravery even though they were armed as well as, if not better, than the police.

One morning, while the insurrection was still in progress, we were waiting for the workers to come to a meeting in the People's Palace. There were only about five or six of us District Committee members in the hall. Suddenly we saw a crowd of the Black Hundreds approaching and it looked as if we were going to be lynched. Fortunately, one of our comrades had a revolver. He fired one shot over the heads of the mob and this was enough to set the whole gang running.

We began to feel that we were really taking part in the insurrection only when barricades were put up in our district, but this was very belated, when the beginning of the end had set in the rest of the city.

That day, we commenced the usual round of meetings, but we all felt that there was nothing more to be said. I remember that I was particularly irritated by the "rational" appeals of the Menshevik Semyon who continued to shout, "comrades, build up the trade unions!" The answer to this trivial appeal came from someone in the audience. It was an appeal to us all to go out into the streets and build barricades. The whole audience responded to a man and the whole mass hurried out into the street. On the square it was joined by those who had been awaiting their turn to come into the hall, and all of us moved in close ranks to the Pokrovskaya Zastava where we overturned the tram cars that were standing as they had been left in the street when the general strike was declared. We erected a huge barricade--our own Lefortovo barricade. Our armed workers' units remained to guard it, although no one threatened to attack it that night, while the rest of the workers dispersed to their homes.

That evening, a comrade from the committee, who went by the name of Alexey, and I planned to make our way to the city without fail; it was a long time since our courier had visited us and we were completely cut off from the centre. We did not know what was happening there and had no means of keeping the centre informed of events in our district-we wanted to boast about our tardy barricade. Such a trip at night was risky, it being particularly dangerous to pass the posts of the so-called Committees of Residents set up by the Black Hundreds ostensibly for the purpose of protecting property, but in reality to catch, insult and beat up every passerby who had the least resemblance to a revolutionary.

We passed several streets in comparative safety, although we frequently got entangled in the telegraph wires which had been torn down and were scattered everywhere. Not far from Basmannaya we encountered a group of civilians who stopped us. They declared themselves members of the Residents' Committee, and demanded to know who we were and where we were going. I invented a story on the spur of the moment about my husband and myself trying to go from Cherkozovo into the city to Zhivoderka to visit our daughter-in-law who was seriously ill and needed immediate help. Because of the wires and the darkness we could not find our way to Krasnye Vorota. Alexey, "my husband," beside me also muttered something about a daughter-in-law and Zhivoderka. They believed us. It was our outward appearance that saved us. I was dressed like an old woman in a wide blouse and with a shawl over my head, while Alexey was also very poorly clad.

The Black Hundreds had so little suspicion of who we were that they even warned us not to fall into the hands of the workers' units who would be sure to shoot us at the first sight. We proceeded on our journey until we had almost reached Krasnye Vorota, where we saw a group of soldiers sitting around a bonfire and were obliged to turn aside and step into the Olkhov school where we were sure to find our own people.

The school resembled a dosshouse that night--on all the desks, tables, chairs and floors sprawled comrades who had been unable to get home and were obliged to remain at the school. We too decided that it would be wiser to stop at the school. I cannot refrain from mentioning a little incident in that night's adventure. One of the teachers, whom I had never seen before, called me into the kitchen, took a pot of broth from the stove, placed me on a stool, and, without even asking my name, declared: "You have eaten nothing all day; eat this broth!" And indeed, I had had absolutely no time for eating or drinking and was feeling very weak until the broth revived me.

Early next morning the bonfire at Krasnye Vorota burned out, the soldiers were withdrawn, probably for some strategic purposes, and we began cautiously to creep out one by one from our school dosshouse. I wanted to change my clothes and wash myself before going into the city. I went to my sister Rose who lived nearby on Kalanchovsky Street, but whose house I had been unable to reach the night before. She had rented a room among our own people, at the home of the worker Polumordvinov. When I reached her room I found her table, bed and bookshelves loaded with weapons. These had been taken from Torbek, the gunsmith, whose shop our unit had raided. A group of our men were lovingly handling these revolvers, parts of guns, sabres and cartridges and they were so merry that despite my weariness, I was cheered by the mere sight of them.

On the other hand, when at last I got to the Moscow committee, the mood prevailing was anything but cheerful. I learned that our affairs were in a very precarious condition, that St. Petersburg, exhausted by the November strike, was not in a position to support us. I also learned that the promises of the railroad union leaders had proved to be empty phrases, that the Nikolayev railway was in the hands of the government, that hostile troops from Tver and the Semyonovsky regiment from St. Petersburg had either already arrived or were on their way, I cannot recall which.

I hated to return to my district with such news--a district which had only just risen to the level of insurrection and whose active workers had been exulting over their "own" barricade the evening before. I decided to spend the night at my sister's as I needed a good night's rest; but I was not destined to get any sleep. When I returned to her apartment, the weapons were no longer there, the workers having cleared them away during the day. But the police had now got wind of the fact that the weapons seized at Torbek's had been taken to this apartment. So we were subjected to a raid which was carried off with great pomp--a squad of armed policemen with a police officer at their head broke into the room. The police were obviously afraid, thinking that we were armed to the teeth. They were extremely nervous and threatened to shoot us on the spot if we did not surrender our weapons. They bullied my sister and me because we were women, but they were unmistakably afraid of the worker, Glotov, who rented the corner of the room near the stove, especially when they stumbled over a pile of coal in his dark corner. With extreme caution the officer flashed his searchlight on Glotov's "dwelling place." To the officer's tremulous "What's there?" Comrade Glotov rolled out sonorously: "This is the study of his proletarian highness!"

Finding no weapons, the police left the place without arresting any of us, even though we were all in some way connected with the insurrection.

When on the morrow I reached our district headquarters--the People's Palace--I found Alexey had been there since the previous night. He had already communicated the bad news to the other comrades; but they were surprisingly little depressed by it. Indeed, it was difficult, after yesterday's enthusiasm, to take that sharp psychological jump and become immediately conscious of the fact that our struggle was weakening, that a temporary defeat was inevitable. But we, the backward Lefortovites, were not long comforted by our illusions. The defeat of the uprising approached, and when our last stronghold fell, when our heroic Presnya--the pride of the Moscow uprising of 1905--was wrecked and burned by the Semyonovsky regiment, the Soviet of Workers' Deputies had to declare an end to the strike and uprising, and temporarily haul down the scarlet banner which, after twelve more years of stubborn struggle, was again unfurled to blaze victoriously over Red Moscow in 1917.

When the revolt had been crushed, an orgy of the Black Hundred reaction broke loose, the Moscow prisons and police headquarters were overcrowded with arrested revolutionaries. Hideous rumours were abroad that the police headquarters had been turned into torture chambers by the brutalized victors and that our comrades were being subjected to unheard of torments; and along the Moscow suburban railroads the brutal gangs of the tsarist hangman, Riman, ran riot. The spirits of the workers in the district were extremely low, and it was under these unfavourable circumstances that the Moscow comrades who had survived the defeat were obliged to renew their Party work. Once more began the painful process of returning underground. At the first meeting of the Moscow Committee held in the early days of January 1906, it was decided to send the more "notorious" comrades to other cities, while the less prominent ones were to be transferred from one district to another. Thus it happened that I was sent from the Lefortovo District to the Zamoskvoretsky District where I had many comrades even before the uprising, both among the professionals and the factory workers.

During my first days in the Zamoskvoretsky District I set myself a very concrete though modest organizational task, namely, to re-establish at least in the larger factories our former illegal factory committees. But this proved to be an incredibly difficult task. I still remember the endless visits to individual workers' homes, the arrangement of a few small meetings with the representatives of the various factories, meetings which hardly ever took place, either because our meeting place was being watched, or because the landlady who had promised us the use of her room had funked it and refused to let us in when we arrived, or because only one or two of half a dozen who were expected, arrived. It is difficult to imagine anything more trying than the knowledge that the work was constantly slipping out of our hands, that the eyes of our comrades which had burned with such revolutionary courage, with such faith in the imminent victory of their cause not so very long ago, were now utterly weary and hopeless.

However, not all our efforts were in vain. The Moscow Bolshevik organization continued to work intensively, adapting itself to the new methods of struggle even though it often had to deal with extremely dejected and morbid moods among the district comrades. I recall several of the more poignant moments which I personally had to undergo, as characteristic of these moods.

I went to visit the family of a worker in the Danilov factory, with whom I had been formerly acquainted, hoping to renew connections with the Danilov factory through them. Both husband and wife greeted me joyously and promised to assist me, but as the attempts to resuscitate the organization grew more and more futile, the worker (I cannot remember his name) became gloomier and less frank with me. Once I arrived at dinner time when their little ten-year old daughter was bustling about prettily and setting the table for her parents who were due any minute. She placed four wooden spoons on the table--one for "auntie". When my hosts returned from the factory, both the mother and the daughter insisted that I stay for dinner.

We sat around the table eating cabbage soup out of a common bowl, fishing up bits of meat from the bottom of the dish with our spoons and conversing peacefully at first about the necessity of starting Party work in the district. But towards the end of the meal, the worker became agitated, suddenly banged on the table with his clenched fist and, raising his voice, exclaimed:

"Why in the world do you come here to disturb us? I am tired, do you understand--tired, and I can't do any more!"

The little girl became frightened and started to cry. Her mother begged me not to take offence, while I in the most unexpected and ignominious fashion burst into tears and left the place.

Some time later a similar incident occurred in the tiny room, or rather the cubicle, of a young worker who was employed in the Jako factory. He had displayed a splendid fighting spirit before the uprising, had participated in many battles during the barricade days and, did not appear to be particularly depressed after the defeat. I called on him towards the end of February, or in the early days of March, I don't quite remember which. It was about ten o'clock in the evening, I believe. The apartment was used as a sort of lodging house, the lodgers living in tiny cubicles. The stairs were indescribably filthy and from the rooms emerged a veritable Sodom of drunken voices, smoke and stench. But the cubicle to which I went was very neatly kept, almost pretentiously--the bed was covered with a pink cotton blanket, the walls were decorated with pictures and embroidered towels, and there was a canary in a cage suspended from the ceiling. Near the bed hung a guitar tied with a pink bow. I surprised my acquaintance while he sat on a bench holding a pocket mirror to his face; on the table before him stood a jar of cream for sunburn and freckles with which he was diligently smearing his face. He did not cease his occupation as I entered, but motioning me to a seat, continued to rub his cheeks with greater vigour than ever, casually remarking, "My respects, Olga Petrovna, what news have you? I bet you're here about what I have already long forgotten because I've lost all my faith in it". When I suggested that he stop playing the fool, wipe his face, and talk sensibly, the fellow answered: "You shouldn't talk that way about the cream because it's wonderful for getting rid of freckles. It is called 'metamorphosis' and costs a ruble and a half. I strongly recommend it to you, Olga Petrovna, for you, too, have a lot of freckles. Now's the time to think about yourself a little. You're still harping on old days that will never return; and if they do, we won't be there to see them." I wonder whether this comrade lived to see the great October Revolution and, if he did, whether he recalled the words he uttered in 1906?

The metamorphosis of this Jako worker, who so recently had been a brave comrade in our ranks, had a most depressing effect on me. I left his room at about eleven o'clock with such a crushed feeling that it mattered little to me where I went. There were moments when I felt that there was no place for me to go and I wandered aimlessly about the streets in the Zamoskvoretsky District.

These difficulties were not merely characteristic of Moscow. The disillusionment not only spread among the working masses, but was communicated to many of our individual active comrades, both workers and intellectuals.

As for the Mensheviks, who during the heroic October-December days of 1905 were forced to go against their Menshevism and temporarily join us, the defeat immediately restored them to their natural shape and gave them many opportunities to expiate their short-lived iniquity by bitter criticism of our revolutionary Bolshevik tactics.

At the beginning of 1906 the conditions in the Party organization were complicated. The split in the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party, which took definite shape at the Third Bolshevik Congress in May 1905 and the Conference of the Mensheviks, that was held concurrentiy with the latter, did not hinder but helped the formation of a united proletarian front during the heroic last months of 1905. To co-ordinate activities, the Mensheviks were forced to join the Federative Committees.

What was happening in the districts was beginning to take place in the centre. Preparations for a Unity Congress of the Party were being made, but these preparations coincided with the defeat of the uprising and with the weariness of the proletariat who had been pressing for a united front before the uprising. Thus, a twofold process could be observed at the beginning of 1906--preparations for a Unity Congress were continued by inertia, while at the same time new disagreements with the Mensheviks on the cardinal questions of party tactics were constantly cropping up and becoming more sharply defined (estimation of the uprising, attitude towards the State Duma, etc).

In March we Muscovites were eagerly awaiting the arrival of Lenin who was to acquaint us with the resolutions he had drafted for the forthcoming Unity Congress of the Party, which was to be held in April.

Besides the natural interest in Lenin's report, the prospect of meeting Lenin in Moscow, on Russian soil, was particularly alluring. Imagine my distress when, a few days before his arrival, while walking about in the sleet and mud, I caught a severe cold, and was not in a condition to go to the meeting of the Moscow active workers at which Lenin was to speak. I was lying in bed grieving over my disappointment when a comrade burst into the room and told me for reasons of secrecy the meeting had to be transferred to other premises and that Lenin had expressed a desire to see me during the enforced intermission.

My joy knew no bounds when in half an hour Ilyich himself appeared, filling the room with his jests and laughter and with that comradely simplicity so characteristic of him when talking with the most insignificant Party workers if he felt that the latter were connected with the actual life of the Party.

The joy I felt that Lenin was sitting in my room prevented me from studying his mood, the more so that as I was ill he spoke to me only about pleasant trifles. But I clearly recall that he was very cheerful "as if nothing had happened," although what had happened was nothing more nor less than the defeat of the 1905 uprising!

Table of Contents: Twenty Years in Underground Russia

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The Dogs Helping the Covenant Children Find Their Way Back

To heal after a mass shooting, the Covenant School families have turned to therapy, faith, one another — and a lot of dogs.

Monroe Joyce, 10, runs with one of two dachshunds taken in by her family. She is one of several children who now have a dog after surviving the Covenant School shooting. Credit...

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By Emily Cochrane

Photographs by Erin Schaff

Emily Cochrane and Erin Schaff spoke with more than a dozen Covenant School parents, students, staff and their dogs.

• Published March 24, 2024 Updated March 28, 2024

Two of April Manning’s children, Mac and Lilah, had just survived the mass shooting at the Covenant School in Nashville. They needed stability and time to grieve.

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So she did everything she could to keep the family dog, Owen, their sweet but ailing 15-year-old golden retriever, with them for as long as possible. She pushed back his final trip to the vet, keeping him comfortable as he slowly moved around the house.

Getting another dog was the furthest thing from her mind. But a few weeks after the shooting, her children sat her down for an important presentation.

Prepared with a script and a PowerPoint — “Why We Should Get (Another) Dog” — they rattled through research showing the mental health benefits of having one. It could limit their chances of developing PTSD and help them feel safe. Playing together would get them outside and boost their happiness.

Ms. Manning and her husband considered. Maybe a second dog was possible.

First came Chip, a Cavalier King Charles spaniel. Then, after Owen succumbed to old age, came Birdie, a miniature poodle and Bernese Mountain dog mix. And in taking them in, the Mannings were far from alone.

In the year since Tennessee’s worst school shooting, in which three third-graders and three staff members were killed by a former student, more than 40 dogs have been taken in by families at Covenant, a small Christian school of about 120 families.

“I really only expected them to help in a cuddly kind of way, like just to snuggle the kids when they’re upset ,” Ms. Manning said. “But I wasn’t really expecting all the other benefits from them.”

To spend time with the Covenant families is to understand how they have relied on one another, traditional psychological treatments and mental health counseling, and their Christian faith to hold them together.

But it is also to see how often what they needed — a distraction, a protector, a friend who could listen, something untouched by darkness — came from a dog.

An Immediate Response

Dogs greeted the surviving children at Sandy Hook Elementary School as they returned to a refurbished middle school in 2013. A dozen golden retrievers were on hand in Orlando to provide comfort after the deadly attack at a L.G.B.T.Q. nightclub in 2016. The therapy dogs who tended to the surviving students in Parkland, Fla., made the school yearbook .

“Over this period of sort of, 35,000 years, dogs have become incredibly adept at socializing with humans, so they’re sensitive to our emotional state,” said Dr. Nancy Gee, who oversees the Center for Human-Animal Interaction at Virginia Commonwealth University.

Even brief, minute-long interactions with dogs and other animals can reduce cortisol, the body’s stress hormone, research by Dr. Gee and others has shown, providing a possible lifeline for veterans struggling with PTSD and others recovering from trauma.

And on the day of the Covenant shooting, dogs were immediately there to help. Covey, the headmaster’s dog, was at a nearby firehouse, where dozens of staff members and students were evacuated. Squid, a retriever mix, was at the children’s hospital at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, helping to comfort the staff if needed.

When the students who survived were put on a school bus to be reunited with their anguished parents, Sgt. Bo, a police dog, was sitting at their side.

Officer Faye Okert, the dog’s handler with the Metro Nashville Police, handed out a baseball card of dog facts to distract and comfort the children.

“The focus was on him,” said Officer Okert. “You had smiles after what they had been through.”

After families reunited, counselors offered clear advice: To help your child, get a dog. Or borrow a neighbor’s.

That led several parents to connect with Comfort Connections, a nonprofit comfort dog organization. Jeanene Hupy, the group’s founder, had seen firsthand how therapy dogs had helped the Sandy Hook students and started her own organization once she moved to Nashville.

The group, which oversees a menagerie of golden retrievers, a gentle pit bull and a massive English mastiff, began its work by visiting individual homes in the days after the shooting. Then, when students returned to class weeks later, the dogs were once again there.

They were something to look forward to, in the moments when walking through the school doors felt overwhelming. And when there were painful reminders — a water bottle clattering to the floor, an unsettling history lesson on war or the absence of a friend — a child could slip away and cuddle a dog.

As Ms. Hupy put it, something special happens “when you bring in something that loves you more than it loves itself, which is these guys.”

A Reassuring Presence

First it was a joke, then a reality: Everyone was getting a dog.

Fueled by community donations and her own money, Ms. Hupy began connecting several parents and puppies. Even for families who could easily afford a new dog, Ms. Hupy and her trainers dramatically eased the logistical hurdles by finding and training puppies that seemed perfect fits to each family.

The Anderson girls shrieked and cried with joy when they learned they were getting a dog, and have now taught Leo how to flaunt sunglasses and do tricks. The Hobbs children constantly scoop up Lady Diana Spencer, often fashionably dressed in a string of pearls or sweaters.

The dogs are also there in the harder moments, too, like when an ambulance or police car drives by blaring its siren or when the memorial ribbons in their neighborhood remind them of what was lost.

“Sometimes it’s just nice to have a giant soft pillow that doesn’t need to talk to you and just cuddle it,” said Evangeline Anderson, now 11.

And if the dogs chew on a shoe or make a mess on a rug, Ms. Manning said, it is a lesson in how to deal with conflicting emotions.

“We still love them and we’re so glad we have them — both things can be true,” she said. “Just like we can be really nervous about going back to school and still also be excited to do it.”

And maybe, the parents realized, it was not just for the children.

Rachel and Ben Gatlin were driving back from vacation on the day of the shooting. That has meant grappling with the heaviness of survival and knowing that Mr. Gatlin, a history teacher who carried a pistol on his ankle for personal protection, could have run toward the shooter that day.

And while their new dog, Buddy, has adapted to the bossiness of their young children and has developed a penchant for sock consumption, he has also kept the adults’ thoughts focused in the moment. Tending to his needs has served as a reminder of their own.

“When you see it working, you’re in total comfort,” Ms. Gatlin said.

Even the school’s chaplain, Matthew Sullivan, found that the stories of new puppies being shared each day in chapel were “wearing me down in a good way.”

“I kind of wanted to enter into the experience of all these families firsthand,” he said.

Now Hank, a slightly anxious, floppy-eared Scooby-Doo doppelgänger, has been adopted into his home, which had been a little empty without his grown children.

The Alternatives

Not everyone got a dog.

For the McLeans, the solution was two rabbits.

“It’s an incredible distraction to their reality,” Abby McLean said of her children, cupping her hands to mimic cradling a rabbit on her shoulder. “I find myself occasionally doing it as well.”

Another family added Ginny, a tortoise with a possible seven-decade life span, to the mix of animals already in their house.

“For having lost people early in life — there was something that equated to me in that, that there was a longevity to it, to a tortoise,” said Phil Shay, who picked out the tortoise with his 12-year-old daughter, Ever.

Still, the dogs far outnumber the other pets. And every day they can make a little difference.

The first night that George, Jude and Amos Bolton had tried to sleep alone without their parents after the shooting, the slightest grumble from the ice machine or the dryer had been too much. Their mother, Rachel, who had maintained that she liked dogs, just not in her house, soon agreed to take in Hudson, a miniature Goldendoodle puppy with doe-like eyes and wild curls.

“We didn’t realize the dogs could create comfort for people,” Jude, now 10, said, his hands ruffling Hudson’s ears. And when Hudson came home, he added, “he’s just been comforting us ever since.”

It is now easier to sleep through the night, safe with the knowledge that Hudson is there.

“All my friends joke, they’re like, ‘I can’t believe you’re a dog person now,’” Ms. Bolton said. But this dog, she added, “has healed this family.”

Read by Emily Cochrane

Audio produced by Patricia Sulbarán .

Emily Cochrane is a national reporter for The Times covering the American South, based in Nashville. More about Emily Cochrane

Erin Schaff is a photojournalist for The Times, covering stories across the country. More about Erin Schaff

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