Modern Family History

The Pre-Modern Family

The essay begins with a thorough description of family before analyzing the assertions of the existence of two key changes in the family, “the pre-modern to modern and modern to late modern.” Sociologists generally believe that a family is any close-knit domestic group of people who are related to one another through marriage, sexual relations, or blood links. Another definition of family was put forward by The United States Census Bureau which defines family as “a fairly permanent group of two or more people who are related by adoption, marriage, and blood and live in the same apartment (house) or roof” (Bartholomew 2007, p. 631). Further, family refers to an arrangement thriving on social agreements of marriage and involves recognition of duties rights of parenthood according to Anastasiu (2012, p.1). Besides, (Clark and Alter 2010, p. 1700) definition of family has remained of great interest among several succeeding sociologists. Murdock defines family as a social group with three essential characteristics, reproduction, Industrial Corporation and single residence. The above definitions set assessment base for the claims of a shift in the family. Therefore, this essay focus on the characteristics that define a family into pre-modern, modern and late modern.

Pre-Modern Family

The claim of the shift in family rest on the existence of three economic stage in the world history. To begin with, pre-modern family refers to families that existed before industrialization. That that these are families that thrived on ranching, fishing, forestry, mining, agriculture, extraction of natural resources and related activities. The pre-modern family refers to a family associated with traditionally-based societies. Over several millenniums of human beings, these kinds of families have been common. In those thousands of years, family and marriage were not an individual based decision neither was their privacy in matters of marriage and family as it exists today. The community had a powerful say when it comes to marriage and family. The formation of any new family through marriage faced oppression from a range of social, political and economic implications that were supreme to the desires of the couples marrying each other.

Up to early 17th Century

Chosen partnerships that dominate the present world never existed since marriage did not base on compassion and love even in the advanced societies of the pre-modern times (Western world). For most of the history of human existence, relational unions were the result of public and parental plans in which the consent of the spouses was a luxury or came second. The purposes behind such behaviors in the pre-modern societies were because marriage was a critical economic institution as opposed to the pursuit of happiness and satisfaction among the couples. New units of productions came out of unions, that is, the new producers were the children.

Relationship in Pre-Modern Families

In the pre-modern families, the relationship between parent and child was pegged to economic benefits according to Croix and Licandro (2013, p. 237): “While a residual affection between mother and child...has always existed in traditional society, the mother had been prepared to place many considerations (most of them related to the desperate struggle for existence) above the infant’s welfare.” The then mothers could send their children to new places at a tender age to remain free to work. The reasons as point out by the researchers, labor was in high demand, and therefore no care of children was quickly replaced with labor. Survival during these periods required every available hand to participate in agriculture or any other economic activity for the family to have food. What shows up as apathy to the predicament of their kids’ lowered-chance system for boosting the possibility of survival Comparative calculative choices described the relationship between the wife and husband too. Spouses stayed both the by right and accepted leader of the family unit, placing wives in a circumstance not unique to other family resources.

Characteristics of Pre-Modern Family

Moreover, the pre-modern family was founded on pre-modern societies which thrived on craftsmanship. Most of these families were formed around a nomadic pattern of living and loosely structured. However, the most distinctive characteristic of the pre-modern family and societies as a whole is their dependences on enduring and robust extended system of family. The family mostly consisted of grandchildren, parents, and grandparents. The family served as both the primary source of social services (child care, education, and health) and as the fundamental economic unit. The pre-modern family depended on the community for support in emergency situations, and the family members were obligated to the provision of social support. The pre-modern family had no social security system or retirement plan, disability plans and medical plans. However, it was the responsibility of the members of the family to take care of the aging parents and relatives in need of medical assistance.

Modern Family

The modern family is a positive side-effect of Western industrialization. As the machine was being devised and constructed thus empowering large-scale manufacturing, there was an expanding requirement for centralization of both workforces (to operate the machines) and capital (to purchase the tools). The result was the dismantling of the pre-modern extended family. The youngsters from these families were drawn by the possibility material and money belonging to the newly created urban centers. Significantly more prominent significance was the production of another type of group called the suburb (Golombok 2015). Frequently recognized as “the sultans of sprawl,” Robert Moses, James Rouse and William Levitt pioneered the large-scale real estate at the end of World War II (Levittown, New York) which consisted of urban centers employing suburb dwellers, expressways connecting suburbs and commercial shopping centers.

Economic Shifts in Modern Family

The new modern laborers found another product: cash. They soon substituted compensation for the creation (or bargaining) of their nourishment or products. With the move to a money-based economy came the vast extension of commercial establishments. While banks exist in Pre-modern social orders (fundamentally to serve the high society), they assume a substantially more significant part in current social laws, serving not just as a sheltered archive for spared cash, yet also as a wellspring of unmerited money (Golombok 2015). The modern family specialist soon found that banks would empower them to burn through money that they had not yet earned and to take out long haul advances to make significant purchases (particularly homes). Current social orders positively progress toward becoming groups of obligation and cash turns into the most esteemed substance in these social laws.

Rise of Public Institutions

Workers in the industries additionally substitute work in the modern society for their Pre-modern dependence on the extended family. The association turns into their new wellspring of security, and they look to their workplace for companionship and a feeling of reason and group. Progressively, the modern laborer additionally started to seek the legislature for central social administrations: training, wellbeing, and retirement. In this manner, the contemporary society did not just increase the size of private industrial organizations, but also in the scope and extent of public institutions (Crawford 2015). Government-funded instruction, social welfare and restorative administrations for the elderly turned into the givens of present-day social orders. Natives never again looked basically to their family or their congregation or other altruistic associations for help. Or maybe, the government turned into the new underwriter of wellbeing and joy. The government soon likewise entered the significantly more dubious fields of hierarchical operations (work law and governmental policy regarding minorities in society), family life (insurance of kids against mishandling) and unique, profound quality (the privilege for ladies to prematurely end an unborn youngster).

Rise of Commercial Revolution

With large-scale manufacturing came a move in attention from quantity to quality. Industrialization moved the concentration of financial matters to efficiency. Ventures (and the laborers in these enterprises) were viewed as useful if they were exceedingly profitable. Emphasis on sales and marketing came as a result of high levels of productivity. The industries realized that to recover the considerable sum spent on the purchase of machines large sales volumes were needed to increase the profitability of the enterprises (Anderson 2014, p. 14). Devices improved productivity tremendously thus resulting in a costly surplus of goods. Therefore, the modern generation together with suburb dwellers created the franchise fast food industry, and the departmental stores. Hence, the contemporary industrialization turned into a Commercial Revolution. All these changes presented a new family structure referred to as the modern family.

Post-Modern Family

Wright Mills depicted the post-modernity as a time in which the economy would shift from strong industry to union less administrative, benefit, and innovative modern parts (Hirt 2012). He anticipated the rise of multinational corporations (companies), inconvenience in the welfare of the society’s framework, and a decrease in humankind opportunity and decision. In the same period, he thought about how the human family would react to and change following the anticipated history of the world. Further, different Postmodernists contend that the world is no longer unsurprising. Society entered another disorderly postmodern stage where there is no overwhelming sort of family and there is more freedom of choice (Kyung-Sup 2010, p. 445). That gives the flexibility to make family connections which are more reasonable for specific people. However, freedom of decision makes the relationships insecure.

Shifting Relationships in Post-Modern Families

There were different points of view created by the family. Anthony’s Giddence study on equity and choice, the reasons that it was a transformation in the relationships between females and males, marriage and family that resulted in shifts in the family structure (Calhoun 2010, p.598). The primary goals of the changes observed in the family are attributed to the availabilities of contraception for both men and women which reduces the chances of unplanned reproduction. Additionally, a change in the contraception of ladies who proceeded with their training and began to work is an aftereffect of woman’s rights (Hirt 2012). Those progressions influenced types of family, as then they can pick the relationship they need in spite of the law and conventions. Giddens contends that ’unadulterated kind of relationships’ had meant that couples remained together as long as they need.

Risk Society and the Post-Modern Family

Moreover, Ulrich Beck’s (1992) hypothesis is nearly connected with Giddens’ view. As indicated by Beck, individuals now live in a ’risk society’ where norms and traditions are less critical, since the society several choices which end up in risk. The present community varies from the conventional one in the functioning and expectations. Individuals have not had as many options of how to experience their lives. They had specialized roles like men providers and ladies homemakers. The imbalance of customary patriarchal society vanished in most regions (specifically western countries).

Conclusion

In conclusion, out of the literature available on the history of the family, there has existed significant changes in the composition and structures of families over time. Thus, generalization concerning families seems almost impossible as postulated by several sociologists. The claim for the existence of two shifts in the family base on the continuous changes in the characteristics of families over centuries. The sociologists, therefore, manage to divide the various eras with the different types of family based on world developmental eras. That is the pre-industrialization, industrialization, and post-industrialization. The periods represent pre-modern, modern and late modern families.

References

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Anderson, D.M., 2014. Introduction. In Leveraging (pp. 3-34). Springer International Publishing.

Bartholomew, K.W., 2007. Definition of Family in Missouri Local Zoning Ordinances: An Analysis of the Justifications for Restrictive Definitions. . Louis ULJ, 52, p.631.

Calhoun, C., 2010. Beck, Asia and second modernity. The British journal of sociology, 61(3), pp.597-619.

Clark, G. and Alter, G., 2010. The demographic transition and human capital, 1700–1870. The Cambridge economic history of modern Europe, 2010, pp.1700-1870.

Crawford, P., 2015. Blood, bodies and families in early modern England. Routledge.

Croix, D.D.L. and Licandro, O., 2013. The child is father of the man: implications for the demographic transition. The Economic Journal, 123(567), pp.236-261.

Golombok, S., 2015. Modern families: parents and children in new family forms. Cambridge University Press.

Hirt, S., 2012. Iron curtains: Gates, suburbs and privatization of space in the post-socialist city (Vol. 27). John Wiley & Sons.

Kyung‐Sup, C., 2010. The second modern condition? Compressed modernity as internalized reflexive cosmopolitization. The British journal of sociology, 61(3), pp.444-464.