Global Families

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Western Cultural Values have been projected into many homes through mass media, television programmes, movies and the Internet.

Centralisations of states and their powers have influenced family life through the provision of services, such as nursery and schooling as well as policy implementations such as "one child policy" of Chinese Government

Governments can also use ideological apparatuses to influence family structure and choices

Goode (1963): some social scientists have argued that the nuclear family would become the dominant family form along with modernisation

Nuclear family is more suited to the needs of industrial capitalism.

The family form has diversified in ways that would have been very difficult to predict.

Therborn's Between sex and power:

- Animist, Christian, Confucian, Hindu and Islamic world views relate to how families are structured through characteristics of male dominance, marriage and the control of sexual behaviour, fertility and birth control

- Within the family, patriarchal power has lessened over the past hundred years

- Two significant moments of transformation: 1. women showed that there were no physical barriers to women working (WW1)

2. Women's liberation movement (60s and 70s) (2nd wave feminism) - brought about legal changes that were intended to entrench greater gender equality

- recently, textile and electronic industries have supported changes in women's participation in economic life which may affect family forms in non-western countries

Goode: families are not becoming the same or turning into the nuclear family as suggested by structural functionalist theory; highly industrialised countries have seen loosening of traditional forms of family life (with trends as divorce rates, high remarriage)

Therborn: thus far, the fluidity of the Western family has not been repeated in other countries