PART IV
Social Institutions
19
The Analysis
Institutions
E.W.Burgessn/an/an/an/a
and H.J.Locken/an/an/an/a
The Family: From Institution to Companionship1
… [Our] basic thesis … is that the family in historical
times has been in transition from an institution with family behavior
controlled by the mores, public opinion, and law to a companionship with
family behavior arising from the mutual affection and consensus of its
members. The companionship form of the family is not to be conceived as
having already been realized but as emerging. In fact, the conceptions of
the family as an institution and as a companionship may perhaps best be
defined and put to use for the understanding of the family by the
ideal-construction method. The procedure for this method consists: (1) in
ascertaining the most significant element in a conception; (2) in
accentuating this element so as to arrive at its most extreme formulation;
(3) in applying imaginatively the ideal
construction thus obtained to actual situations; and (4) in determining
how far this actual situation approximates the ideal construction.
From the standpoint of the ideal-construction method, the family as an
institution and as a companionship would represent two polar conceptions.
The most extreme theoretical formulation of the institutional family would
be one in which its unity would be determined entirely by the social
pressure impinging on family members. The ideal construction of the family
as a companionship would focus upon the unity which develops out of mutual
affection and intimate association of husband and wife and parents and
children. Nowhere in time or space are these ideal constructions to be
found actually in existence.
Of the historical and existing types of families the large-patriarchal
type most closely approximates the ideal construction of the institutional
family with its combination of the powerful sanctions of the mores,
religion, and law, and the practically complete subordination of the
individual members of the family to the authority of the patriarch. The
modern American family residing in the apartment-house areas of the city
approximates most nearly the ideal type of companionship family, in which
the members enjoy a high degree of self-expression and at the same time are
united by the bonds of affection, congeniality, and common interests.
A summary comparison of the historical approximations of these two ideal
types will indicate the point-by-point outstanding differences between the
small demo-cratic-family unit of husband, wife, and children and the
extended-patriarchal family.
The patriarchal family is authoritarian and autocratic with power vested
in the head of the family and with the subordination of his wife, sons, and
their wives and children, and his unmarried daughters to his authority. The
modern family is democratic, based on equality of husband and wife, with
consensus in making decisions and with increasing participation by children
as they grow older. Marriage is arranged by parents in the patriarchal
family with emphasis upon prudence, upon economic and social status, and
upon adjustment of the son-in-law or daughter-in-law to the family group.
In the modern family, marriage is in the hands of young people, and
selection is on the basis of romance, affection, and personality adjustment
to each other. Compliance with duty and the following of tradition are
guiding principles of the patriarchal family. The achievement of personal
happiness and the desire for innovation are watchwords of the modern
family. The chief historical functions of the family—economic,
educational, recreational, health, protective, and religious—are
found in their fullest development in the extended-patriarchal family.
These historic functions have largely departed from the modern urban
family.
For decades the American family has been evolving from a
small-patriarchal type revolving around the father and husband as head and
authority to the democratic type. Accompanying this evolution has been
the decreasing size of the family, the diminishing control of the kinship
group and of the community over the family unit, and a growing sense of its
independence. The external factors making for family stability, such as
control by custom and community opinion, have been greatly weakened. The
permanence of marriage is more and more dependent upon the tenuous bonds of
affection, temperamental compatibility, and mutual interests.
The Trend to Companionship. The American family is moving toward
the companionship type of family with its emphasis on affection and
consensus. It is accepted by many young people in principle, although
difficult to realize in practice. In the majority of families the control
is still moderately paternal, in a considerable
proportion more or less maternal, and in only a small but increasing
percentage by consensus of husband and wife. The proportion that includes
full participation of children in the family councils is also small. The
discrepancy between theory and practice is illustrated in the following
instance:2
It is not easy, for example, for men to adjust themselves to their new
status, to renounce their traditional claims as lord and master in the
household. Sometimes this new status results in surprise and utterly
unexpected decisions. In one educated and cultured family [with two
daughters] the wife startled her husband one day when she said to him:
… "I think that the four of us should discuss all important matters
that arise and then take a vote, just as an experiment."
So this family of four arranged to discuss all important matters in
conference and to take a vote at the conclusion. To the surprise of the man
the vote usually ran three to one and that he was the one.
Spencer, writing in 1876, makes an interesting comment on the contrast
between the relative roles of law and of affection in relation to the
development of monogamy:3 "While permanent monogamy was being
evolved, the union by law (originally the act of purchase) was regarded
as the essential part of marriage and the union by affection as
nonessential; and whereas at present the union by law is thought the more
important and the union by affection the less important, there will come a
time when the union by affection will be held of primary moment." Eighty
years after these words were written Spencer’s prophecy appears to be on
the way to realization. Mutual affection is becoming the essential basis of
marriage and the family.
Summary and Research
Family life of apes and of human beings is similar in that there
is selection of a mate, interaction between the male and the female, levels
of authority among father, mother, and children, and care of the child by
the mother; it differs in that the family life of apes, being biologically
determined, is more or less alike within a species, whereas the family life
of man is culturally determined and manifests great variations.
Co-operative research by biologists and social scientists may determine
the relative role and interaction of biological and cultural factors in
human family life.
In preliterate societies the family is of the "extended" type, being
composed of several generations. Preliterate families have been classified
as patrilineal and matrilineal, according to whether descent is traced on
the male or female line; and as patrilocal and matrilocal, according to
whether the new family resides with or near the husband’s or wife’s
parents.
Variations among preliterate families, divergencies between the
extended-family organization of ancient societies, the small-patriarchal
family of medieval times, and the modern democratic family ushered in by
the Industrial Revolution, and differences among families in the United
States indicate that family behavior is relative to the social life and
culture of a given time and place. Studies of family behavior should be
within the context of the economic and social organization of the period
under consideration. For instance, it would be valuable to compare a group
of lower-class matriarchal families in a given city with a group of
lower-class patriarchal families in the same city, in terms of resistance
to social change,
personality development of the members, and special problems which arise
in the different family types.
Family relations have always involved an intimate interplay between the
familial and the wider social life. Economic and social conditions, the
prevailing philosophies embodied in the mores, the trends of public
opinion, have had in all times and places an impact upon the family and an
influence upon the sentiments and attitudes of its members. Therefore an
understanding of family relations in our own time must be concerned with an
analysis, first, of the impact of changing conditions and culture upon the
economic and social basis of the modern family, and, second, of the
interaction of the members of the family as affected by this changed
situation.
The form of the family which apparently is emerging under the economic
and cultural conditions of American life appears to be a companionship of
husband and wife and of parents and children. The fact that affection and
consensus are the outstanding attributes of many American families does not
mean that these are characteristic of all homes in the United States nor
that they were entirely lacking in other times and places. For example, the
Chinese family will be viewed … as representing approximations both
to the institutional family in its traditional form and to the
companionship family in its present trends.
It is in the framework of the family as a unity of interacting
personalities and as adapting to changing economic and social situations
that studies of the variety of family forms in time and space should be
undertaken.
1 From , 2nd ed.,
pp. 22–26. New York: American Book Co., 1953. By permission.
2 Sidney E. Goldstein, The Meaning of Marriage and Foundations of the
Family, New York, Bloch Publishing Co., 1942, pp. 133–34.
3 Herbert Spencer, Principles of Sociology, New York, D.
Appleton-Century Company, 1897
(first edition, London, 1876), I, p. 765.