Feminist Theories of the Family

A family is a special kind of social group whose members are linked to each other through kinship relations created either through marriage or through blood ties. The characteristics and structures of family relationships differ according to time, place, and culture. Families may live together in one household as part of an extended network that includes a nuclear family (two adults living with their biological or adopted children), or live in one household as a conjugal unit. While some people in the contemporary West argue that families are under attack because of rising divorce rates, single parent households, and the impact of feminism, history suggests that families in earlier times experienced impermanence (especially through high mortality rates for people of all ages). Whatever the reason, concern for and about families (often, though not exclusively, from the political right) is very often concern about the idea of the family and the values that family life is assumed to engender. The family is, after all, the primary source of learning for future adults and, therefore, citizens. However, feminists have also expressed concern about the idea of the family because of the contribution of family structure and life to gender inequality. Feminist theorists have addressed these concerns by examining what Western society means by the idea of the family and what goes on in families, and by describing the diversity of family structures and their impact on values and social practices.

Keywords Conjugal Unit; Familialism; Kinship; Nuclear Family; Patriarchialism; Patriarchy; Role Differentiation; Sexual Division of Labor

Feminist Theories of the Family

Overview

A family is a special kind of social group whose members are linked to each other through kinship relations created either through marriage or through blood ties. The characteristics and structures of family relationships differ according to time, place, and culture. Families may live together in one household as part of an extended network that includes a nuclear family (two adults living with their biological or adopted children), or live in one household as a conjugal unit. While some people in the contemporary West argue that families are under attack because of rising divorce rates, single parent households, and the impact of feminism, history suggests that families in earlier times experienced impermanence (especially through high mortality rates for people of all ages). Whatever the reason, concern for and about families (often, though not exclusively, from the political right) is very often concern about the idea of the family and the values that family life is assumed to engender. The family is after all, the primary source of learning for future adults and, therefore, citizens. However, feminists have also expressed concern about the idea of the family because of the contribution of family structure and life to gender inequality. Feminist theorists have addressed these concerns by examining what Western society means by the idea of the family and what goes on in families, and by describing the diversity of family forms and their impact on values and social practices.

The Family as a Private Institution

English philosopher John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) was an early commentator on the impact of family life on women. He recognized that inequalities that were commonplace inside the family would likely be replicated outside the family. However, many contemporary social commentators and philosophers of family life have tended to view the family as a private institution, set apart from principles that govern other social institutions (such as justice or equality). Most likely, this view stems from the assumption that because families are associated with children and parenting, and therefore with reproduction, they are natural and therefore subject to the rules of nature and of biology. The family is typically viewed as a private institution, in the sense that it is somehow special—natural—and set apart from the principles that govern other aspects of social and public life.

Early sociological studies of the family, informed by anthropological studies, tended to emphasize the “naturalness” of the nuclear family—a unit consisting of heterosexual spouses and their children. Anthropologists argued that the nuclear family is a universal social grouping essential for everyday subsistence, historical survival, and social continuity (through reproduction). George Murdock (1949), for instance, viewed the family as a unit, sharing a common residence, working together to sustain each other economically, and raising children (biological or adopted).

Many founding sociological theorists accepted that women (and children) within families and households constitute property on the grounds of their biology, physiology, and inferior intellect. Max Weber for instance, notes in his discussion of patriarchalism, which is a limited type of domination within a particular organizational form, that women are dependent on men because of the latter's “normal superiority” (1978, p. 1007). Several nineteenth- and early twentieth-century theorists and philosophers held the view that it is, therefore, “natural” for men to exercise power over women.

Friedrich Engels (1975) commented more extensively on a woman's role within the family and argued that their oppression is a consequence of capitalism, class structure, and property ownership. Monogamy in particular is necessary, Engels argued, to ensure that the wealth accumulated by men is bequeathed to his biological children (1975), and concomitantly, the restriction of women to the domestic sphere is necessary to the capitalist system of production (Waters, 1994, p. 255). Thus, while Engels acknowledged that the role of women within families is subordinate, he argued that this position is a consequence of class structure, rather than the exercise of power by men over women.

These two examples of early sociological theory on women and their role within families have provided a springboard for feminist criticisms about the relative impact of patriarchy and capitalism on women's subordination. These criticisms have focused on the extent to which the idealized nuclear family reinforces women's economic dependence on men, conceals and perpetuates inequalities between its members, and reinforces a sexual division of labor.

Sexual Division of Labor

The idea of a sexual division of labor, in which men do one kind of work and women do another, is widespread, tacit, and powerful. Biological and physiological differences between men and women have been used to explain differences in their relative access to, for instance, certain kinds of jobs, political participation, wealth accumulation, and differences in the tasks that men and women perform in families. Indeed, classical theorists tended to assume that while men are the product of society, women are the product of nature (Durkheim, 1952), and this view influenced sociological explanations of the function of families and the roles of its members.

Parsons and Bales (1955) for instance, examined how role differentiation within families occurs in order to functionally support society as a social system. They argued that families are differentiated on two levels or dimensions (Waters, 1994). First, family members, such as parents and children, are differentiated from each other according to their relative power (parents hold positions of authority over children). Second, members are differentiated from each other according to the types of activity they undertake within the family. Parsons and Bales observed that all social groups participate in task-oriented (instrumental) and solidarity-oriented (expressive) activities and linked this latter form of differentiation to biological differences between men and women. Simply put, they argued that in industrialized societies, instrumental activities are undertaken by men, while women undertake expressive activities because biology—women's reproductive potential—ties women more closely to emotion and care.

Parsons' work influenced contemporary thinkers on the function of the family in modern society and about the relative roles of men and women within families. For instance, Christopher Lasch, a prolific writer and social critic, argued that the family is a “haven in a heartless world” (1995), a place of refuge based on ties of love and affection to which its instrumental members (men) can return to refuel after enduring the strain and stresses of participating in the public sphere. However, although physiological differences clearly exist between men and women, researchers have shown that the tasks that men and women perform in families differ considerably across cultures. Ann Oakley (1982) examined anthropological studies of tasks undertaken by men and women in 224 societies, and observed that in many societies, women undertook tasks such as collecting wood, hunting, mining, building, and were active in the military, while in some societies, parenting and childcare were not exclusively undertaken by women. She argued that cross-cultural differences in the tasks undertaken and roles performed by men and women within families suggest that while role differentiation within families is universal, the tasks that are associated with men and women are not. This observation suggests that despite the appeal of the family as a universal, biologically underpinned unit/ideal, in practice, the tasks that men and women undertake within families can vary across time and place. However, in Western societies, there has been a remarkably constant sexual division of labor that has reinforced the idea of separate spheres.

Further Insights

Separate Spheres: Public/Private

The spread of industrialization contributed to changes in the roles that men and women adopted within families and to the social values and ideas associated with them. Through, for instance, laws that reduced the number of hours that women and children could work for wages, the emergence of formal education and the emergence of a middle-class ideology of separate spheres, women were increasingly associated with the home and with raising children, while men were associated with labor, wage earning, and political participation (Abbott & Wallace, 1990). In addition, in the nineteenth century, women's capacity for bearing children increasingly became cause for excluding women from participation in public life. For instance, in England, married women could not own property in their own right until 1884, nor could they vote as individuals (without property restrictions) until 1928. In the US, women were excluded from entry to medical school until 1893 (Burrow & Burgess, 2001). These exclusions were based on a separation of the private sphere from the public sphere and the idea that women's place is associated with the former.

The private sphere is associated with emotionality, bonding, reproductive caring, and intuitive empathy, while the public sphere is associated with rational calculation, contract, productive work, and egalitarianism (Pateman, 1989). One consequence of the public/private separation is the way that men have been perceived as “breadwinners” while women have been seen as domestic “carers.” This perception has structural roots, as trade unionists at the beginning of the nineteenth century fought to improve their wages by arguing that they should be sufficient to support a wife and children. Subsequently, feminists have argued that the idea that men earn a family wage and are therefore seen as “breadwinners” informs economic and social policies. The family wage historically became the cornerstone of the sexual division of labor, as the income paid to men on the assumption that they are the only or major source of economic support for their wives and children, and consolidated the notion that women's primary responsibility is domestic (Hartmann, 1979).

Public Patriarchy

Feminists also have traced the impact of this private/public distinction on women's slow, patchy path to citizenship in Western societies. For instance, women in the UK and in the US became entitled to vote much later than men (Walby, 1990), and male trade unionists and employers blocked their access to certain occupations (Witz, date). Walby shows how the family is a primary site of male domination over women through male exploitation of women's labor within the family to support their subsistence, and how idealized notions about the family, and in particular, the idea of a male breadwinner supporting a family, has contributed to various state policies that have reinforced women's economic dependence on men. While women have made gains in employment and in access to higher wages, the welfare system has expanded the potential for women to become economic dependents of the state, which continues to view women as primarily mothers and carers. Walby refers to this dependence as public patriarchy and argues that women's subordination within the family is crucial to understanding their relative inequality within the public sphere.

Historically, in situations in which women were not supported through a breadwinner or family wage (widows, divorced women, women whose husbands were disabled), the state (in the US, Europe, and Canada) developed welfare policies such as child benefit, maternity leave, and social security (Lorber, 1994). These “safety-net” policies are based on a model of the family that is largely middle class (a homemaking wife and mother married to a husband employed in a white collar occupation) and has prevailed into the early twenty-first century. Grassroots women's organizations such as Moms Rising have argued that while welfare policies (and increasingly, employers) assume a family model, at the core of which is a breadwinning husband, the reality is far from this ideal. For instance, while health organizations have argued that paid family leave can lower infant mortality rates, the US is one of just a few countries that do not require employers to offer paid leave to new mothers (www.momsrising.org). Even if a woman does not take time off from paid work, motherhood may lower her earnings, which may also suggest that employers assume women with children are supported by men earning higher wages.

Viewpoints

Inequality within Families

As many feminists have pointed out (e.g. Barrett & McIntosh, 1982), family relationships are just as often based on fear and coercion as on love and affection, and women often bear an unequal burden within the family and have less access to material resources. Several studies over the last thirty years have found that household resources (e.g. not only money, but food, cars, and leisure access) are not necessarily shared equally among family members, and in particular, between men and women. Women tend to put their children and husbands or partners first, have less personal spending money (Pahl, 1990), and rarely make major household purchases (e.g. cars) without consulting their husbands and often let them have the final say.

While there has been some shift in the kinds of tasks undertaken by men and women in families, it has remained the case that unpaid domestic work, including childcare, is overwhelmingly done by women whether or not they have children (Lorber, 1994). This unequal burden has implications for women's health. For instance, studies in the US, Europe, and Canada consistently show that women's greater hours of unpaid work contribute to the experience of higher levels of (negative) stress than men and affects their well-being (MacDonald, Phipps, & Lethbridge, 2005).

Women, the Family & Paid Labor

While the domestic work that women do inside the family, including bearing and raising children, has been relatively invisible within accounts of economic production, it not only supports the ability of men to do paid work (Delphy, 1984) but also has implications for women's access to work outside the home. While some feminists argue that women's relative inequality in terms of earnings and access to certain (professional) occupations is a consequence of formal discrimination, others have argued that these differences arise because women are not free to choose “career” occupations or jobs that demand long hours. This may be especially true for women who have children, many of whom are unable to access quality daycare at a price they can afford. It may also be true for other women who continue to be expected to work a "second shift," (Hochschild, 1989) by taking control of most of the household responsibilities.

Therefore, it is clear that the choices women make within their families impact the social structures outside of the family (like occupational segregation) and have implications for not only the kinds of work they do outside the home but also their earnings. Women continue to earn less than what men earn for comparable work, and some feminists have argued (e.g. (Hakim, 2007) that given the prevalence of lower wages for women, it makes sense that women who provide their own childcare often leave or limit their time in the workforce. The family, therefore, benefits from and society is reproduced through women's labor, both in terms of the labor required to produce and raise children and in terms of reproducing male labor on a daily basis. The question that many feminists dwell on is whether the sexual division of labor is fuelled by capitalism or patriarchy.

Changing Families, Changing Women?

Although the nuclear family form is widespread in Western societies as an ideal that continues to inform public policy, employment practices, and people's experiences, many different family structures exist. In part, the emergence of different forms is a consequence of changes in patterns of marriage, increased tolerance of sexual preferences, and expanding cultural diversity. For instance, in the UK, people of Asian origin comprise around 3% of the population, and while there is a trend toward nuclear families among British-born Asians, Asian families tend to live in multigenerational households where domestic tasks are shared among members (although typically along gender lines). Moreover, while women and men may be differentiated within the family in terms of their relative access to power and resources, the family itself has been an important source of resistance for women against racism (Abbott & Wallace, 1990). Similarly, in the US, African American feminists have criticized white feminists for their ethnocentric view of the family as being dominated by men. In contrast, they argue that the family can be a refuge of self-determination for women and is better understood as a family community than as a patriarchal unit.

Conclusion

Feminist scholars have noted that the ideal of the family, as a two parent arrangement with biological children, pervades contemporary Western culture in ways that have implications for gender ideology and for women's experiences (Edgell & Docka, 2007). In particular, this ideal of the family lies at the core of debates around morality and attempts to promote familialism, an ideology that promotes stable, monogamous, heterosexual marriages that produce children and is based on parental authority.

However, the nuclear family is no longer the only available or socially acceptable family unit in Western societies, as definitions of the family have expanded to include single parents; mixed or blended families; step-families; families with opposite or same-sex parents and adoptive children; families in which children are cared for by grandparents, aunts and uncles, or foster parents; or families in which there are no children but rather adults of the opposite or same sex (Golding, 2006). According to the 2010 US Census, an estimated 593,324 same-sex couple households were living in the US (married or unmarried) in 2010, 115,000 of which reported having children under the age of 18 years (percentage estimates of same-sex couples with children range between 16% and 19%). Broken down by sex, 10% of male-male couples reported having children, and 22% of female-female couples reported having children. These couples became parents via different methods including public, private, or international adoption; artificial insemination; sperm donors; or by having offspring from previous heterosexual relationships. Some researchers (e.g. Švab, 2007) have commented that new developments in family life and structure have the potential to redefine what it means to form and live as a family, especially in those arrangements in which same-sex partners parent, in which fathers take a more active role in raising children or, as in the case of lesbian families, people create families of choice. These family pioneers create questions not only about the implications for children raised in such arrangements but also about the impact of different family structures on women's equality both inside and outside the domestic sphere.

Terms & Concepts

Conjugal Unit: A family system of spouses and their dependent children.

Familialism: An ideology that promotes the family as an institution characterized by stable, monogamous, heterosexual marriages that produce children and are based on parental authority.

Kinship: Ties between individuals and groups based on biological relationships between parents and children, siblings, and marital partners.

Nuclear Family: A unit consisting of spouses and their children that may be viewed as an ideal living arrangement.

Patriarchalism: A type of domination described by Max Weber, based on tradition, and characterized by the domination of women by men and the domination of some men over other men, such as a tribal leader.

Patriarchy: A male dominated society in which women are oppressed or otherwise disadvantaged by the social, political, and economic institutions and practices in place.

Role Differentiation: In structural-functionalist theory, social change depends on differentiation of roles, which become more specialized in terms of their functional contribution to the social system.

Sexual Division of Labor: The specialized gender roles associated with instrumentalism and expressiveness (in functionalist accounts of the family).

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Suggested Reading

Calhoun, C. (2000). Feminism, the family, and the politics of the closet: Lesbian and gay displacement. New York: Oxford University Press.

Ferree, M. M. (1990). Beyond separate spheres: Feminism and family research. Journal of Marriage & Family, 52 , 866–884. Retrieved June 25, 2008 from EBSCO Online Database SocINDEX with Full Text: http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sih&AN=9102181941&site=ehost-live

Gutterman, L. (2012). Another enemy within: Lesbian wives, or the hidden threat to the nuclear family in post-war America. Gender & History, 24 , 475–501. Retrieved November 14, 2013 from EBSCO Online Database SocINDEX with Full Text. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sih&AN=77603259&site=ehost-live

Hagood, C. (2011). Rethinking the nuclear family: Judith Merril's Shadow on the Hearth and domestic science fiction. Women's Studies, 40 , 1006–1029. Retrieved November 14, 2013 from EBSCO Online Database SocINDEX with Full Text. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sih&AN=66582552&site=ehost-live

Hartung, P. J. & Rogers, J. R. (2000). Work-family commitment and attitudes toward feminism in medical students. Career Development Quarterly, 48 , 264–275. Retrieved June 25, 2008 from EBSCO Online Database Academic Search Complete: http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=3025220&site=ehost-live

Laurie, T., & Stark, H. (2012). Reconsidering kinship beyond the nuclear family with Deleuze and Guattari. Cultural Studies Review, 18 , 19–39. Retrieved November 14, 2013 from EBSCO Online Database SocINDEX with Full Text. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sih&AN=73343849&site=ehost-live