Family theories essay

Social unit of two or more persons related by blood, marriage, or adoption and having a shared commitment to the mutual relationship. http://www. businessdictionary. com/definition/family. html Different types of concepts are used in family theories. Some point to the structure of a family, its composition or the way it is organized. Some concepts describe patterns of social interaction, the quality of relationships, or processes that occur in families. Some theoretical concepts show how other concepts are related to each other. For example, if a family has five members and one descriptive concept refers to how flexible each member is, the family itself may be flexible if it meets a certain level of flexibility in its members. Perhaps all members must be at least halfway flexible, or perhaps some of the five must be very flexible to compensate for the inflexibility of the others. Whatever concepts are used, it is impossible to have a family theory unless there is a fairly detailed vocabulary for describing what makes families similar to and different from each other. http://family. jrank. org/pages/601/Family-Theory-Purposes-Family-Theory. html there has been a substantial increase in children still living at home long past the age when their parents expected them to leave. The largest growth has occurred among young adults in their late 20s or early 30s: between 1981 and 2001, the proportions doubled from 12% to 24% for those aged 25 to 29 and from 5% to 11% for those aged 30 to 34. http://www. statcan. gc. ca/pub/11-008-x/2006002/9274-eng. htm Children learn at a very early age what it means to be a boy or a girl in our society. Through a myriad of activities, opportunities, encouragements, discouragements, overt behaviors, covert suggestions, and various forms of guidance, children experience the process of gender role socialization. It is difficult for a child to grow to adulthood without experiencing some form of gender bias or stereotyping, whether it be the expectation that boys are better than girls at math or the idea that only females can nurture children. As children grow and develop, the gender stereotypes they are exposed to at home are reinforced by other elements in their environment and are thus perpetuated throughout childhood and on into adolescence http://gozips. uakron. edu/~susan8/parinf. htm parents socialize children–but children also socialize parents. Peers, according to Judith Harris’s (1995) model of peer group socialization, may socialize children even more so than parents. Likewise, parents’ families and friends socialize parents. http://family. jrank. org/pages/1599/Socialization-Conclusion. html