Marriage/Chana Miller Essay

Fully explain and concisely illustrate two (2) of the Theoretical Perspectives on Families discussed in your text (pp. 3749). Use families presented in television programs, the movies, novels, or the Bible to illustrate the selected perspectives. The functionalist perspective focuses on stability and cooperation and emphasizes the importance of the family in maintaining the stability of society. The functionalist hypothesis states that marriage is a microcosmic replica of the larger society, and the family fills six basic needs for the survival of society.Family life is organized in ways that are reclaimable or functional for society. Despite being antiquated, the breadwinner-homemaker family is an efficient way to organize family life. The husband guides outside the home while the wife does the housework and baby bird care. The functionalist perspective is a male-dominant perspective (Strong et. al. 2011). In modern times, feminists have attacked patriarchy view and many women resisted male domination. The Feminist Perspective argued that the functionalist view is inadequate and idealized.It express that gender defines social roles and cultural characteristics. Yet these roles have no biological reason behind them but are culturally dictated therefore, they are socially constructed. These roles appear to be constructed to give men power. Experience of living in a family is different for women than it is for men. Families can be sources of social inequality, especially reinforcing the inequality of women. Women having economic power can lead to many challenges within the family, and within society (Strong et. al. 2011).Independence is a good quality for feminists, but not for functionalists. Since families involve domination and struggle, there must be compromise and good communication or there can be many problems, leading to domestic violence and opposite such abuse. During the 1950s, the Cleavers on the television show Leave It to Beaver epitomized the American family. In 1960, the majority of American households were like the Cleavers made up of a breadwinner father, a homemaker mother, and their kids. During most of the 1950s and 1960s, white middle-class families dominated programs.The 1960s, however, began to showcase more structural variability, with an increase in families headed by a single widowed parent, such as in The Andy Griffith Show. (Fleahman et. al. 2009) Today, traditional families with a working husband, an unemployed wife, and one or more children make up a very small percentage of the nations households. And as Americas families have changed, the image of the family portrayed on television has changed accordingly. Todays television families run the gamut from two-career families to two single mothers and their children and an unmarried couple who cohabitate in the same house.Another factor reshaping family life has been a massive influx of mothers into the work force. As wives have assumed a larger role i n their familys financial support, they have felt justified in demanding that husbands perform more child care and housework. Feminism has also been a major force that has transformed American family life. The womens liberation movement attacked the societal expectation that women confuse to the needs of spouses and children as part of their roles as wives and mothers.The larger mainstream of the womens movement articulated a powerful critique of the idea that child care and housework were the apex of a womans accomplishments or her sole means of fulfillment (Strong et. al. 2011). Historically, television has promoted a traditional family model with wise parents, little knockout conflict, and mostly conforming behavior. Families on television during the 1950s and much of the 1960s talked with each other, and parents always helped their children through adolescence.Although the 1970s had a number of sentimental portrayals, such as Little House on the Prairie or the still popular Br ady Bunch, it also experimented with more diverse relationship patterns in such favorites as each(prenominal) in the Family and The Jeffersons. In All in the Family. family members were likely to ignore, withdraw, and oppose one another, in addition to showing support and caring. (Fleahman et. al. 2009) During the 1980s, The Cosby Show dominated public perceptions of family portrayals with an desirable family.Primetime soap operas such as Dallas and Dynasty explored the seamier side of extended families. The end of the 1980s saw a more cynical view of the family in such clowning hits as Roseanne and The Simpsons. By the 1990s family relationships were again portrayed more positively in terms of psychological health on shows such as Family Matters and stem Improvement. (Fleahman et. al. 2009) Although conflicts in family programs have increased rapidly from the late 1970s, family members almost always successfully resolved the conflicts by way of positive, constructive, and pr o-social communication.