Arland Thornton and Thomas Fricke

Social Change and the Family: Comparative Perspectives from Europe, China and South Asia

1. The purpose of this paper is to identify social and economic forces that modify family structure. One of the initial concern is the provision for the proper definition of the term family. The authors contend that the term family cannot be defined structurally, for then that would necessarily lead to the search for the supposed existence of unversally shared traits among all forms of families in every cultures. Exceptions can always be found. Instead, the authors argue that the definition of the family must be defined in terms of the actions that need to be performed. More specifically, they contend that certain activities are necessarily group activities and that these activities are common to all societies. These include production, consumption, distribution, transmission of property, reproduction, socialization of children, and coresidence. So, the authors define family as: a socially defined network, not necessarily localized, and based on culturally recognized biological and marital relationships (p. 6). This definition of family is also clearly separated from that of the household, which is defined entirely in terms of coresident individuals, whether kin or not.

2. Given this definition, then, the concept of the familial mode of organization ensues. This is a type of social structure in which most functional activities of the society - i.e., that of production, consumption, distribution, transmission of property, reproduction, socialization of children, and coresidence - are in fact organized on the basis of families. In this type of society, most of the important activities of the society are conducted centering around the family. Then, the focus of the authors is on the identification of factors that transform societies in this familial mode of organization - factors, in terms of aforementioned activities that societies need to do, that in turn modify the family organization and structure.

3. The authors focus on the several causal factors as particularly salient in engendering organizational transformation of family. They are: shifts in the structure of production (e.g., separation of production activities from home to the paid employment based on capitalistic enterprise), the expansion of schools and education, increases in income, migration, and the uses of time. In describing how these factors have altered the structure of families in the three regions of Europe, Taiwan and South Asia, the authors pay particular attention to the changing interrelationships between parents and children during the transition to adulthood as a key to how family is structured. Specifically, factors considered in this respect are the involvement of children in the family economy, the living arrangements of young adults, decisions about marriage, and the autonomy of young people in making important life course decisions.

4. pp. 12 - 20 notes of major characteristics of societies organized according to the "familial mode of organization", as well as the cultural variations of the respective three regions, such as: primarily nuclear arrangement of families in Europe from the pre-industrial times, and the relative autonomy of children and higher age of marriage in that region, and the contrasting extended family arrangement and low autonomy for children in Taiwan and South Asia.

5. The rest of the paper consists of expositions on the specific effects of each causal factors considered on family change.

Education - Reduce the amount of time children spend time with their parents and family. (In the west, where children traditionally left home early to obtain training elsewhere, education may have increased the length of time older children spend time with their parents). Decrease the availability of children for the contribution to family economy. Increase the cost of raising children - fertility in turn lowered. Educational gap in generations leads to greater autonomy for children and lesser ability of parents to control activities and values of children.

Nonfamily Employment - At the onset of shift toward nonfamily employment through the industrialization, children and parents probably perceived wages of children as contributing to the family economy. Later, effects probably varied according to the prior cultural and social arrangements. While it has the effect of reducing the amount of time children spend with their families, in many places nonfamily employment and coresident kinship bond can be combined. Where families were able to find workplaces within commuting distances, the separation of workplace and household may have increased the proportion of children living in their family of birth.

Urbanization - The migration of young workers, though there are some factors that limited the separation of young migrants and their families (p. 29). In recent years, the establishement of independent households by young people spread rapidly in the West - it remains to be seen whether this pattern comes to be fully established in other regions.

Wage Income - Again, at the time of early industrialization wage income for children perceived primarily as a contribution to the family economy. In more recent years, however, the trend of increasing autonomy for children to control their own income - giving them increased level of autonomy and independence as in the case of education - took place in all three regions studied.

Mate selection and Marriage - Above mentioned factors combined to greatly reduce the amount of parental control over children's marriage and mate selection. This reduction had been probably far more acute in Asian regions where parents traditionally exercised great control over children's marriage. The influence of paid employment on the age at marriage primarily depends on the degree of parental authority and control over children. Where parents had solid control over children's income, parents would probably have had tried to postpone children's marriage as children contribute to the family economy. Where children had autonomy over their own income, greater income probably led to lower age at marriage and establishment of own household. The potential for premarital sex and pregnancy increases due to greater independence of children and greater interaction with peers, especially in societies that strictly controlled premarital sex previously. The linkage of out-of-wedlock childbearing and trends in sexual experience among the unmarried is not easy as other factors as contraception is heavily involved.