How industrialization and urbanization have affected social status, family composition, and marriage

How industrialization and urbanization have affected social status, family composition, and marriage

The study of society and family, especially the American family and society, has always been and continuous to be a difficult task to accomplish, as there are so many complications associated with the study. As the society grew changed from earlier hunter and gatherer to modern and industrialized one, there have also been changes in family composition and social structure. A study of family and society, therefore, should account for various factors contributing, during different stages in the evolution of society from earlier times to present, to the aforementioned changes. Moreover, the study must also include the egalitarian, agrarian and industrial societies in order to understand how the society has evolved from its primitive form to the one we see today.

The study of early hunter and gatherer societies reveal that these people lived prior to the emergence of statehood or any form of large scale organized governments that we see today. These families usually live under the protection and supervision of their tribes or bands with a chieftain (more than often a male). In those family and social settings, the survival for every family is largely dependent upon the mutual cooperation between those families. Some social historians have pointed out that majority of those families were living in nuclear family settings but they used to live in groups. According to historians, there were also those who lived in stepfamily households and account for nearly thirty percent of the whole population of the early American society. These were the households where old age parents used to live with their children, most often with the eldest son. In return, the services of that son were often paid by greater share in inheritance or land or other possession. Lastly, there was a small percentage in of those who lived in extended family system. There were also those who lived in matrilineal and matrilocal families.

In this society of hunters and gatherers, the social life and structure greatly reflected the nature of the egalitarian society in which cooperation was the main element ensuring the survival for those people. During that period, the work of women was equally important as that of a man. Nevertheless, the nature of work done by men and women was quite different dividing it on the sexual lines. Men were responsible for a set of tasks including hunting, running the affairs of the family groups and tribes, and defending their tribe in the event of an attack by the enemy. Women, on the other hand, were responsible for collectively gathering and preparing food, taking care of the shelter and most importantly the upbringing of children. In this type of social and family settings, the nuclear family has the authority to make decisions about the matters involving the family one, whereas decision involving the group of families and/or the whole tribe was usually made by the chieftains or tribal ...