take low-paying jobs in Hong Kong, Singapore, Middle East nations, and many other
parts of the world in order to support their families. Thousands of nurses have also left
the Philippines to seek employment in the United States. While their pay is more
substantial than those women who become maids and domestic workers, both groups
are often composed of mothers who have left their husbands and children behind. In
many instances, personal relationships within the family deteriorate during the long
separation. In addition, there is little assurance that those who emigrated will ever
be reunited with their families.^30
This corrosion of traditional families caused by economically motivated migration
is not confined to one culture. Countless people from Africa, India, Asia, and Latin
America leave their homes because they seek a better life for themselves and their
families. When they leave families so that they can survive, the extended family is
radically altered. A woman from Zimbabwe offers a poignant example of how family
interactions and values can be altered when the family entity is disrupted:“Children
no longer sit around the fireplace in the evening to listen to stories that promote the
values of respect, integrity, peace, love and unity....”^31
You can also observe how migrating to a foreign location can produce conflicting
family and cultural values as young Muslim women move to European countries. As
Newman points out,“young Muslim women are caught between the relative sexual
freedoms of European society and the deep, and often very restrictive, traditions of
their parents and grandparents.”^32
Perhaps one of the most vivid examples of the lure of jobs away from one’sfamily
can be observed in the porous U.S.-Mexican border. Here you see a situation where
millions of Mexicans and Central and South Americans have come, both legally
and illegally, to the United States in search of employment. When this happens,
as we have noted throughout this section, families experience major disruptions
and a series of negative consequences. The central question behind all these
instances is,What happens to the core family values as people leave their traditional fami-
lies in search of employment?It may take decades to answer this question, but we tend
to agree with Giddens when he writes about the worldwide influences of globaliza-
tion on families:“The traditional family is under threat, is changing, and will
change much further.”^33Functions of the Family
All families, regardless of type, form, or culture, perform similar functions. We now
examine five of those functions.Reproductive Function
The most important function of the family in any culture is reproduction. While
modern technology has added some new dimensions to reproductive methods (artifi-
cial insemination, in vitro fertilization, surrogacy), a new infusion of children is nec-
essary for all cultures. The family, therefore, makes continuation of the culture
possible by producing (or adopting) children to replace the older members of the cul-
ture as they pass on. As simple and obvious as it sounds, this essential function allows
a culture to perpetuate itself. Without the infusion of new life, the culture would soon
disappear.78 CHAPTER 3•The Deep Structure of Culture: Lessons from the Family
Copyright 2017 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s).