Family Modernization Theory

Steven Ruggles stated that “A nuclear family is one which contains no relatives other than a husband, wife, and their children.”(1987). It is evident that the family pattern have change over centuries. Just before the Industrial Revolution and modernization the extended family was prominent in the 1650 in England. From the modernization theory, social thinkers have observed the family from the time when industrialization had arisen in the West then in other parts of the world…. The Industrial Revolution has change the structure and the environment of the family. The family changed from extended and rurally based to nuclear and city-centered, unrestricted and less stable. William Goode (1982) believes as the society modernized so did the family

Resulting, unsatisfactory in the home and on the work place. Not all the women were married as how the functionalist saw it to be, but, they were also fighting for survival. (Elaine Leeder, 2004) emphasized, “Men became wage earners, dependent on their bourgeois bosses and women become dependent on their husbands and fathers. Poor women, if they had no husbands, and children without father were the most marginal laborers and worked in the most exploitative condition.” As result of such condition emerge conflict between classes that would lead to a social revolution. It was the springtime of the people revolution, the basic needs of the family could not be provided due to a high rate of unemployment and bad working condition including poor health system. Since there was one bread winner, increase in rent and landlords were not addressing the issues of the building and women felt obligated to be educated and work has caused a great upheaval in the home. (Louis Phillipe)

In contrast to Louis findings Anderson found, kinship ties and networks among the lower class working classes in the nineteenth century were fundamental to insure against the everyday experience of low wages, periods of unemployment, sickness and

(Journal of Interdisciplinary History VI: 2, n.p.). Today, nuclear families are still as dominant as before with some exceptions. In the Caribbean, there are more families than there were before during slavery and during the industrial revolution. Single parent and common law unions have become prominent family types in this modern society. Some may maintain that these changes are because of the gender roles, society’s expectation of the women and the division of Labor. Nuclear families today, just as in the twentieth century have extended beyond just parents and siblings. As a result of the recession, Nuclear families had to adjust in order for them to meet their financial needs. Consequently, some move back in their parent home to cut cost, reshaping he family structure back to an extended