Review on Nuclear Family

Marxist feminist suggest that the nuclear family meets the needs of capitalism for the reproduction and maintenance of class and patriarchal inequality. It benefits the powerful at the expense of the working class and women. They look at issues like inheritance, individualism, privacy, women work and petty power. "Nobody has ever before asked the nuclear family to live all by itself in a box the way we do. With no relatives, no support, we've put it in an impossible situation" said Margaret Mead. The great advantage of living in a large family is that early lesson of life's essential unfairness. – Nancy Mitford.

Pearl S. Buck criticized current system on part of emotional security aspects. He said: "The lack of emotional security of our American young people is due, I believe, to their isolation from the larger family unit. No two people - no mere father and mother – as I have often said, are enough to provide emotional security for a child. He needs to feel himself one in a world of kinfolk, persons of variety in age and temperament, and yet allied to himself by an indissoluble bond which he cannot break if he could, for nature has welded him into it before he was born.

Any way it is best to follow Desmond Tutu regarding your family. "You don't choose your family. They are God's gift to you, as you are to them."

Ø Explain the differences between the nuclear and extended families?

Ø What are the benefits of having an extended family?

Ideas for discussion:

1. Are you for or against trial marriages i.e. living together outside marriage to test your compatibility?

2. Do you think that marriage should be for life? Should divorce be made easier or more difficult?

3. Why do you think that the divorce rate has become so high in Britain and many other countries?

4. Is it better to marry someone of the same educational, social, cultural and racial background?

5. Is it better to marry someone of approximately the same age? Should the man be older than the woman?

6. How important is the religious aspect of marriage to you? Which aspects are more important, if any?

7. Should it be legal to marry more than one partner at the same time?

8. Do you think women and men should perform the same or different roles? Are men usually the bread-winners and women usually the home-makers in your country?

9. Belinda Brooks-Gordon, a university psychologist, has done research showing

that men in a top international company categorise women into five groups:

• Babes (young and attractive women with little professional credibility)
• Mums (considered unattractive and ignored by male traders)
• Lesbians (feminists)
• Dragons (women considered old or unattractive, rudely treated)
• One-of-the-boys (women who behave like men - only they progress)

In your country, do women have equal opportunities in the work-place, for example: the same pay and promotion opportunities as men? Are they categorised?

Дата добавления: 2015-11-16