Children

For most people, children are the key to a happy family life. They are also integral to the definition of family life, and many sociologists regard the raising of children as the primary function of the family.

Childbirth, of course, is a biologic fact, but it is equally a social phenomenon. It requires a readjustment of roles as people become not only husband and wife to each other but also parents to the newborn child. The birth of subsequent children can have equally considerable restructuring effects on the family, including a change in roles for the older children. Relations between the new parents and their own parents are often heightened as the latter take on their new roles as grandparents. In many societies, grandparents are indulgent toward their grandchildren, while the parents themselves may be required by convention, and some would say by necessity, to be stricter.

The specific social adjustments people must make after the birth of a child differ according to individual circumstances and cultural attitude. No matter what pattern is followed, however, ideally the children are brought up to become productive members of their society. To achieve this, they must acquire education within the family and, later, within the institutions of the society as a whole.

Child rearing and socialization

The American sociologist Talcott Parsons believed that the two most important functions of the modern family are the primary socialization of children and the stabilization of adult personalities through marriage and the raising of children. His own concern was particularly with the middle-class American family, but these important aspects of family life are also applicable much more widely. In the present context it is worthwhile to look especially at primary socialization.

Primary socialization refers to the training of children during their earliest years, whereas secondary socialization refers to later influences on the development of the child's personality and learning activities, such as his involvement with teachers and with other children at school. Primary socialization is in most societies carried out essentially within the family as part of child rearing. In the modern family, parents take responsibility for raising and teaching their children such basic things as language and correct behaviour. Toilet training, teaching children how to eat correctly, and encouraging children to get along with others are all aspects of child rearing. However, it is not only these more mundane aspects of behaviour that children learn. Children are also implicitly encouraged to develop the values of the parents and of the society in which they live. In American society, which was Parsons' main concern, these values include independence, motivation for achievement, and competition. In other societies, different values, such as cooperation and egalitarianism, may be stressed. Yet the principle behind primary socialization in different societies is the same: the development of social values must be achieved in an environment of love and security, as is found in the ideal family anywhere in the world.

Few families are ideal, however. Studies of the families of emotionally disturbed children have shown that unsatisfactory relationships between husbands and wives can have detrimental effects on children. Sometimes a child is used as a scapegoat. The parents blame or even physically abuse the child in order to cover up their own difficulties. In such a case, the child often fails to develop the values the parents wish to instill in him, developing instead antisocial habits leading to deviant behaviour in later life. Indeed, the cycle may be repeated if such a person in time marries, has a family of his own, and treats his children in the same way. Nonetheless, there is no reason to suppose that all children of unsatisfactory marriages are treated in such a way or fail to overcome the difficulties they have as children.

Some social scientists have even suggested that the isolated nuclear family, as it exists in Western industrialized societies, is to blame for the social ills found in those societies. They claim that in the past more support was offered from the wider kin network and from the community as a whole—as is still the case in less-developed parts of the world. The British psychiatrists R.D. Laing and David Cooper suggested that the modern family is dysfunctional in that, by its very nature, it forces upon children an undue emphasis on obedience to authority. These negative viewpoints aside, most experts as well as most parents agree that the primary socialization process in the modern family offers benefits both to the child and to the parents.

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