Sociology of Everyday Life
Title:Does parenting shape social divisions in society or do social divisions shape parenting? |
The study of family has always been a broad discipline which involves a great number of research ranging from family unit such as ‘family forms’, ‘parenting’ and child development; to the society scale, such as ‘social divisions’ and ‘demography’. Given its diversity and changing nature, family studies also includes controversies and debates. One of the topics that have been the subjects of debates is the interaction between parent’s upbringing and the division of the society. Clearly put, parenting is regarded as a process involving ‘a set of intellectual, emotional and material adjustments enabling adults to become parents’ (Daly, 2007, P11), while social division is the process through which the social categories such as class, race and gender are established and maintained (Best, 2005, p8). This essay will discuss how parenting shapes social divisions with reference to three aspects, namely generation, gender as well as race and ethnicity.
In the first place, there are two reasons why generational division is considered one of the elements affecting parenting styles. Firstly, people born at the same period of time often have similar experience of life thus may have a distinctive parenting methods. Gilleard and Higgs (2002) described this ‘generation’ as having a ‘share temporal location’ and noted as ‘birth cohort’ or ‘generational site’. Each generation is molded by knowledge and skills during their critical developmental periods. The combination of similar life experience may shape how family rules are established. For example, Ruggles (1987) pointed out that there was an increase in the frequency of extended families during the eighteenth century resulted from the functional adaption of the extended family to industrial society. This helped modifying the old theory that there was a shift from extended to nuclear family structure and also indicated that this
The study of family has always been a broad discipline which involves a great number of research ranging from family unit such as ‘family forms’, ‘parenting’ and child development; to the society scale, such as ‘social divisions’ and ‘demography’. Given its diversity and changing nature, family studies also includes controversies and debates. One of the topics that have been the subjects of debates is the interaction between parent’s upbringing and the division of the society. Clearly put, parenting is regarded as a process involving ‘a set of intellectual, emotional and material adjustments enabling adults to become parents’ (Daly, 2007, P11), while social division is the process through which the social categories such as class, race and gender are established and maintained (Best, 2005, p8). This essay will discuss how parenting shapes social divisions with reference to three aspects, namely generation, gender as well as race and ethnicity.
In the first place, there are two reasons why generational division is considered one of the elements affecting parenting styles. Firstly, people born at the same period of time often have similar experience of life thus may have a distinctive parenting methods. Gilleard and Higgs (2002) described this ‘generation’ as having a ‘share temporal location’ and noted as ‘birth cohort’ or ‘generational site’. Each generation is molded by knowledge and skills during their critical developmental periods. The combination of similar life experience may shape how family rules are established. For example, Ruggles (1987) pointed out that there was an increase in the frequency of extended families during the eighteenth century resulted from the functional adaption of the extended family to industrial society. This helped modifying the old theory that there was a shift from extended to nuclear family structure and also indicated that this