Sociology Now, Census Update

There is actually little empirical evidence that spanking serves any developmental pur-
pose, but there is a wealth of evidence that spanking is developmentally harmful. The
American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that parents avoid spanking (2007). In fact,
94 percent of all studies of the effects of corporal punishment on children showed a rela-
tionship between such forms of punishment and aggression, delinquency in childhood,
crime and antisocial behavior as an adult, low levels of empathy or conscience, poor
parent–child relations, and mental health problems such as depression (Gershoff, 2002).
Family violence is often difficult to remedy through policy initiatives. Globally,
fewer than 10 percent of all countries even have laws against certain forms of child
abuse, let alone programs to offer aid and support to victims and to prosecute perpe-
trators (Rights of the Child,2006). In the United States, policymakers have long taken
the approach that what happens “behind closed doors” is a private matter, not a social
problem that can be remedied only through public policy. Rates of all forms of fam-
ily violence are dramatically underreported; fear of retaliation, shame, and a general
cultural acceptance of violence all greatly reduce the likelihood of reporting. And the
continuum of violence, from spanking a child to murdering a spouse, is part of a cul-
ture that does not universally condemn violence but sees some instances of violence
as legitimate and even appropriate and sees perpetrators as entitled to use violence.

The Family in the 21st Century:

“The Same as It Ever Was”

In the first line of his novel Anna Karenina,the great Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy
wrote, “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
How unsociological! Families, happy or unhappy, are as varied as snowflakes when
viewed close up and as similar around the world as all the sand in the desert.
Families are as old as the human species. We’ve always had them; indeed we
couldn’t live without them. And families have always been changing, adapting to new
political, social, economic, and environmental situations. Some expectations of fam-
ily may be timeless, yet families have always been different, and new relationships,
arrangements, and patterns are emerging all over the world today, just as they always
have been. As the musician David Byrne sang in the 1980s, the family is “the same
as it ever was.”
Yes, it’s probably true that family is still the place where, when we go there, they
have to take us in. But even if we can go home again, it’s never the same.

THE FAMILY IN THE 21st CENTURY: ”THE SAME AS IT EVER WAS” 413

Chapter

Review

1.How do sociologists define family?A family is a basic

unit of society. Family is also a cultural institution; the

functions of the family include socializing new members

and regulation of sexual activity, property ownership,

and marriage. The definition of family changes over

time; the nuclear family is a relatively new phenomenon.

Agrarian families were extended, and the household

formed the basic economic unit of society, performing

all societal functions that are now handled by other

institutions. The nuclear family developed in Europe and

the United States in the late eighteenth century as a result

of industrialization and modernization. The nuclear

family model was very gendered, and the home became

the women’s sphere and work men’s.

2.How do families develop?Dating emerged in the United

States in the 1920s when children of immigrants shed old

customs and teens had unprecedented freedom. Dating