Chapter 10 Summary

Chapter 10 is about families, a central social institution which has undergone many recent changes, including changes to family size, changes in the division of domestic and paid labour, and changes in the legal and sociological recognition of a variety of family forms, including same-sex partnerships.

Conflict theorists recognize that economic changes, from agricultural to industrial society, shifted the family from a relative self-sustaining unit to a smaller unit of consumption. These economic changes also produced a stronger division between the domestic sphere and the sphere of paid work, which became more gendered as well, enabling patriarchal authority over the household. More recent economic shifts have seen an increase in dual-earner households. Functionalists draw a parallel between society's interlocking functional institutions and the family's interdependent emotional and instrumental roles. Symbolic interactionists attend to how family can be represented and misrepresented for political purposes, and how family members interact on a micro-level. Feminist theorists look at the shifting status of women relative to the family, both with increased freedoms towards domestic arrangements but also continued gendered issues around the domestic division of labour and unpaid work.

Some of the trends with families are reflect sociocultural issues, seen in increased divorce rates, a delayed average age of marriage, smaller families with fewer children, and the deep harms Residential Schools inflicted on Indigenous family structures and functions.

Technology has altered families in several complicated ways. For example, 'labour-saving' appliances reduced labour required for a number of tasks, but also enabled high standards of cleanliness and further responsibilities. The Internet's has permeated everyday life, and parents grapple with regulating children's internet use and connecting with their children, when the Internet may be displacing traditional sources of socialization. Information communication technologies enable flexibility with when and where people work, but it can also lead to work and family conflict. Finally fertility technology reshapes the family as well as ideas of what families can be and how they are formed.