Personally, I consider my immediate family to consist of my sister, mother, father and step-mother. I consider my extended family to not only include cousins, aunts/uncles, and grandparents, but also close family friends who my sister and I grew up with. I consider these people family because the relationships that I have with them are based on long established friendships and family ties. These are people who I will continue to love and depend on, no matter what happens. All of my immediate family, as well as most of my extended family share, if not the same, then very similar moral and ethical beliefs and values that I do.
It is clear that the family unit has a definite impact on the greater society. The roles of the family that we discussed in class such as socialization of the next generation are a clear example of how this impact occurs. However, I do not believe that families are either inherently detrimental or beneficial. Instead, I agree more with the conflict theorists in that there are aspects of the family that can negatively effect society, as well as those that can have a positive effect. Furthermore, I would argue that because individual family units are so incredibly different, that it would be impossible to make a significant change in the impact of families on society by making a change in the family unit.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBdkq02CZ58
Hi Nora -
ReplyDeleteI consider my family to be the same close nit group of relatives. I also have a large extended family that consist of close friends parents, brothers and sisters. I agree with your last paragraph to an extent but I do believe that a meaningful change of believes and morals within a family unit can make a difference to at least their local community. But global... yea that is a straight, but not necessary impossible.
Thanks for your blog.
Greg
I like your post, and I think you made some great points. I agree that families can have both a negative and a positive impact on society, and it is hard to measure that quantitatively. Still, I think that overall the benefits of a family outweigh any disadvantages they might have. I agree that families around the world are very diverse, but I think that there are still some basic family things that could be changed universally to make society better. For one example, if the whole world did away with child or spousal abuse I think society would benefit from it.
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