Modernization and Family Change

The main interest here is in the effects of modernization on the family. Changes in family structure and family relationships are a long debated theme in sociology and anthropology. The origins of this debate can be traced back to the French Revolution which according to Auguste Comte had a ‘leveling effect’ on family relationships and thereby disturbed the equilibrium of the traditional extended family system and patriarchal authority (Georgas, 2006). Out of these considerations structuralism-functionalism developed with Durkheim as one of its main representatives at the end of the 19^th century. This theoretical perspective explained changes in the structure and function of the family as a result of multi-faceted changes in the structure of the society. It was further developed by Talcot Parsons, the most important family theorist of the 20^th century. Parsons argued that the changes brought about by the industrial revolution like the increased necessity for mobility required the formation of a nuclear family in contrast to the traditional extended family (Parsons, 1949).

Only the nuclear family would be able to satisfy the societal and the psychological needs of the family members under the new circumstances. According to Parsons the downside of this

development, however, was the alienation of the nuclear family from its extended kin network. While the traditional extended family encompassed almost all areas of life, the nuclear family primarily became a unit of consumption and a place to socialize children. All other functions were taken over by the state and the larger society. Though realizing the disintegration and psychological isolation that followed from this development, Parsons did not view the development towards the nuclear family as negative. Rather, he idealized the classical nuclear family with its role distribution of a working father and a housewife mother and with its strengthening of the psychological bond between husband and wife and between parents and children (Georgas, 2006; Kagitcibasi, 2006).

The decline and disintegration of the family in the course of modernization was also a much debated theme by other authors. Indicators of this decline in the Western world since the second half of the 20^th century are manifold: an increase in nuclear families with a parallel decrease of extended families, an increase in unmarried one-parent-families, an increasing divorce rate, an increase of step-families and patchwork families as a result of more remarriages, a gradual replacement of marriage by consensual union, and most of all a declining birth rate (Georgas, 2006; Goode, 1963). Popenoe (1988) argued that in modern societies the family is declining but not disintegrating. In contrast to Parsons he believes that even the nuclear family is on the decline, resulting in the postnuclear family characterized by a decreasing family size, fewer joint activities of family members and less quality contact of parents and children, and reduced contact with collateral kin like aunts and nephews but more contact with grandparents. According to Popenoe, the family is also becoming less important both in the larger context of society and in the lives of individuals.

While there is considerable agreement that the above mentioned indicators are signalizing a decline of the family and familial bonds in the modernized Western cultural hemisphere², the respective implications for modernizing non-Western cultures are unclear. Is there a trend toward the nuclear family and the concomitant signs of family decline in economically developing non-Western countries? While the trend to a separate residence of the nuclear conjugal family is commonly acknowledged, the question remains if there is also a functional nucleation or if the relationships to the extended kin-network stay functionally

2 There is not only agreement with respect to this argument. For instance, Hondrich (1996, 2004) sees the modern human being as “thrown back” into family bonds the more he or she tries to escape them: when relationships (with a “freely chosen” partner) are terminated people (temporarily) intensify their relationships to their parents or siblings. Thus, according to this view there is no simple decline but a dialectic relationship between modernity and the importance/closeness of familial bonds.

intact. The technological development in the modernization process also provides the means for keeping contact across large distances by providing communication tools like the telephone or more recently the internet. In India, for example, there is a trend towards the nuclear family fueled by structural changes in the modernization process. However, according to Sinha (1991) the (extended) family members are still psychologically and normatively connected to each other. Therefore, alienation from the broader kin-network is surely a misnomer in this case. The question of the functional connectedness of families was also taken up in a cross-cultural study of the family by Georgas and colleagues (Georgas et al., 2001). These authors studied the frequency of various kinds of contact (e.g. visits, telephone calls) of kin of various grades. The results showed few cross-cultural differences with respect to contact to close kin (mother, father) which was very high in all cultures studied, but substantial differences with respect to the contact with more remote kin like uncles, aunts and cousins: in modern Western countries these contacts were less pronounced than in non-Western countries. Though the authors emphasize that the pattern of the frequency of contacts was similar across cultures – high with close kin and lower with more remote kin – the results also show that a functional nucleation of the extended family is much less the case in non-Western than in non-Western cultures. In accordance with the recent more moderate formulations of modernization theory, Kagitcibasi (2006) contends that “research from various societies shows that despite socioeconomic development, urbanization, and industrialization, the expected shift in family culture is not taking place in the Majority World” (p. 81). As outlined above, modernization theory recently acknowledged the role and the perseverance of longstanding cultural traditions. Inkeles (1998) recognized that norms of honoring elders are so strong in some Oriental societies that they resist the breaking up of kinship ties even if societal changes make it necessary for the extended family to have separate residences.

Thus, modernization theory seems to be in a dilemma. On the one hand, it emphasizes the advantages and benefits of modernization like bringing more freedom and fulfillment for the individual. On the other hand, while some theorists like Parsons emphasize the positive features of the adaptation process in direction of the nuclear family, most researchers complain about the decline and disintegration of the family and the concomitant psychological alienation of its members. While modernization theory in its original formulation claims the inevitability and the uni-directionality of changes, these changes do not seem to be inevitable, at least not with respect to the family. Non-Western cultures seem to be able to incorporate some features of modernization like industrialization and market economies but other hypothesized changes may occur to a much lesser degree or even not at

all. Thus, the formulation of modernization theory itself may be culturally biased: a development observed in Western industrial societies may have been extrapolated to other societies without taking their different cultural heritage into account and without considering the possibility that economic, societal, and psychological changes may not be as (causally) interconnected as proposed by the advocators of modernization theory. A good point in place here is Benefo’s (1999) notion that West African societies are more picking out and choosing those features of modernization that seem beneficial to them rather than being necessarily overridden by all aspects of modern Western life. This is in line with Yang’s (1988, 1996) notion that only “specific-functional characteristics,” i.e., only to those aspects of a culture that are incompatible with a “modern” way of life, do necessarily change along with societal modernization. Many cultural characteristics, however, are not of this specific-functional kind according to the author and thus may therefore persist in modernizing cultures. While modernization theory is not able to resolve this dilemma, Kagitcibasi introduced a model of family change that views the changes from the “other side,” as the title of her 1996 book suggests (Kagitcibasi, 1996b, 2005a, 2005b, 2007). This model takes into account both:

modernization processes and the different cultural preconditions present in non-Western or

“Majority World” countries. Her theory presents an alternative view of family change that may not only be relevant to non-Western cultures but also for the Western cultural hemisphere. Since this model is the basis for the present study it will be dealt with in detail in the following section.