Overview
Families have changed greatly since industrialisation. Marriage and fertility rates have fallen, while divorce, later marriage, non-marriage, single-person households, single-parent families and stepfamilies have increased. Two positions have clashed over these changes: the family decline view, which sees a family in crisis, and the family progress (family diversity) view, which sees families developing new forms. Looking at the same statistics, they offer different interpretations and policy prescriptions.
The family decline view
The decline view is tied to treating the nuclear family with a male breadwinner and a female homemaker as the normal family. Parsons and Bales's functionalism (1955) argued that this gendered nuclear family best performs the functions of socialising children and stabilising adult personalities.
- David Popenoe argued in 1993 that between 1960 and 1990 the American family weakened as an institution because of individualism and became less able to carry out core functions such as raising children.
- Supporters cite research linking divorce and single parenthood to child poverty, lower school achievement and emotional problems, and point to the social costs of low fertility and gaps in elder care.
- Their remedies include policies that support marriage and two-parent families, education in family values and stricter divorce procedures.
The family progress view
The progress view holds that there is no single normal family form and that change reflects individuals, especially women, escaping patriarchal constraints.
- Judith Stacey, replying to Popenoe, argued that what had declined was not the family as such but one particular, patriarchal modern family form, and that ending discrimination against diverse families mattered more.
- Stephanie Coontz, in The Way We Never Were (1992), showed that the idealised American family of the 1950s was a historically exceptional and short-lived pattern, and that nostalgia misrepresents the past.
- Anthony Giddens, in The Transformation of Intimacy (1992), described a shift toward the "pure relationship", based on emotional satisfaction and equality rather than obligation, and interpreted it as a democratisation of intimate life.
Points of contention
- Divorce: the decline view sees family breakdown and harm to children; the progress view sees greater freedom to leave unhappy relationships.
- Women's employment: the decline view worries about gaps in childcare; the progress view sees economic independence and gender equality.
- Policy: the decline view seeks to restore the traditional family; the progress view stresses non-discriminatory support for single-parent, unmarried and cohabiting families and wider socialisation of care.
The debate in Korea
In Korea, after the Constitutional Court ruled in February 2005 that the hoju (family head) system was incompatible with the Constitution, the Civil Act was amended on 31 March 2005 to abolish it, and a new family relationship registration system took effect on 1 January 2008. The Framework Act on Healthy Families, enacted in 2004, was criticised because the term "healthy family" implied that only families based on marriage and blood were normal and stigmatised others as "unhealthy", making it a textbook case of the debate. Responses to low fertility also divide between supporting the traditional family and embracing diverse families.
Assessment
Each view captures part of the picture. Family change can produce real problems such as child poverty and care gaps, but their causes often lie less in family form than in inadequate social support and discrimination. Many scholars now treat the family as a network of relationships that changes across the life course and focus on functioning and relationship quality within the family system rather than on one fixed form.
References
- Parsons, T., & Bales, R. F. (1955). Family, Socialization and Interaction Process. Glencoe, IL: Free Press.
- Coontz, S. (1992). The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap. New York: Basic Books.
- Giddens, A. (1992). The Transformation of Intimacy: Sexuality, Love and Eroticism in Modern Societies. Cambridge: Polity Press.
- Popenoe, D. (1993). American family decline, 1960–1990: A review and appraisal. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 55(3), 527–542.
- Stacey, J. (1993). Good riddance to "the family": A response to David Popenoe. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 55(3), 545–547.