This is a reply to the blog by Brian Roberts, a sociologist:
http://brianrobertssociology.wordpress.com/2013/04/02/nuclear-family-in-decline-bbc-online/
First this: “Functionalism and the New Right see this as detrimental to society, evidenced in the increase in crime, educational failure etc.” Then “This argument rests upon the assumption that a child needs to be raised within an environment of married mum and dad – dad being the key stabilizer here.”
If something is “evidenced in”, then it’s not an argument that “rests upon the assumption”. As a matter of fact, the “evidence” you mention shows the actual truth of the matter, something that actually some voices agree from among the more censored and suppressed voices ion today’s “sociology”.
In fact, the “evidence” is stronger than how it was presented. The studies –even from more “gay-friendly” survey organizations– show that the correspondence between a strong nuclear family of husband, wife, on one side, and less crime, more educational success, more psychological stability, and so on.
There are exceptions on all sides, depending on what measures you accept.
The damage is done when social and political pressures in the majority of social milieus impose the assumption that the family type doesn’t matter.
Besides, the historical evidence from millenia of recorded history shows us also that the tendency toward the true nuclear, natural family springs from nature. A woman is driven by her maternal instincts unless it is “socialized” out of her. Genders of man and woman are *most obviously* and self-evidentially natural, and not impositions of society, an idea some some “social disruptor forces” are trying to impose on the rest of us, mostly from positions of power.
A society with fewer stable children, after all, is more resistant to dictates from state decrees. Children raised by father and mother, less confused by gender confusions imposed unnaturally upon them, absorb more of their parents’ base values and are not so vulnerable to manipulation.
That’s why the powers that be demand state indoctrination centers for the children, and that’s why they assume that taxes extorted from the populace must be allocated there. That’s why from the beginning, free and forced education requirements were imposed early on. Instead of treating the education dole like they treat the welfare dole, they instead want to make it education by the state.
It’s not “for the children”, obviously. If it were “for the children”, they would look at the results of nearly a century of almost universal obligatory and government-provided schooling, and recoil in horror at it, and immediately insist on letting parents have those resources so they can have a choice as to where to put their children. Using the slower children as an excuse to put chains on the brighter ones to bind them to centrally planned failures is an outrageous atrocity, and not even based in fact, since the “slower ones” are often freed up in a different setting to thrive.
Related articles
- Day 366: Learned Helplessness and the Traditional Nuclear Family (journey-of-lindsay.blogspot.com)
- Family – The Basic Social Unit (cutisahouse.wordpress.com)
- Professor: Children Belong To The State, Not Parents (VIDEO) (thecollegefix.com)
- Explore the concept of ‘the family’ and reasons for family change using theories of modernity and postmodernity (graememclartyblog.wordpress.com)