Insights

Anthropologist Edmund Leach
In a study entitled A Runaway World (1967) presents a pessismistic view of the family in industrial society.
In small-scale Pre-inductrial societies the family forms part of a wider kinship network linking the individual to the community providing an extensive network of social relationships which provides psychological support and practical assistance.
This close knit family contrasts strongly withthe 'isolated nuclear family' in modern industrial society, as Leach puts it:


"In the past kinsfolk and neighbours gave the individual continuous moral support throughout this life. Today the domestic household is isolated. The family looks inward upon itself; there is an intensification of emotional stress between husbands and wife and parents and children. The strain is greated than most of us can bear...[..]... The parents and children huddled together in their loneliness take too much out of each other. The parents fight; the children rebel (Harralambos 1991:465-6)"

Contemporary society literally places too much stress on the family that becomes unbearable resulting in conflict. This has consequences for the wider society in that the,

"Isolation and the close-knit nature of contemporary family life incubates hate which finds expression in conflict in the wider community... [...]... Privacy is the source of fear and violence. The violence in the world comes about because we human beings are forever creating barries between men who are like us and men who are not like us (ibid)."

Leach's conclusion is diametrically opposed to those who would argue that the family is functional and argues that = far from being the basis of the good society, the family, with its narrow privacy and tawdy secrets, is the source of all our discontents.
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Elizabeth Bott - a sociologist expert in the area of changing conjugal (marriage) roles in her book The Family And Social Network (1957) informed us of 2 types of conjugal roles.

-joint conjugal roles: couples share their social world. they tend to do tasks around the house interchangably and are highly flexible about who does what. They share common friends, entertain together and spend their recreation time together, making decisions on a joint basis. Families exhibiting this pattern were geographically and socially mobile and loosely connected to their circle of friends.

It would deem here "ideal" in that most divorces do not evolve from such conjugal roles. in this sense, in a marriage, what do you look for? Is it a obligation and a respect to the law of "living under a name" or is it for the joy of each other's company?

-Segregated conjugal roles: couples inhabit separate and distinct social and working worlds linked by their reciprocal obligations and rights. Each spouse has his/her own friends, work and space, both in and out of the house. There is a strict differentiated definate line drawn between each spouses lifestyle. Families exhibiting this pattern tends to remain in one location and build up a tightly knit circle of friends (individually).