Theoretical Perspectives On A Family

Theoretical Perspectives On A Family Theories have been useful as a tool for creating explanations for patterns of behaviour in families (Doherty et al:, 1993). Functionalism gives an extremely optimistic view of family life. Langs evidence on child abuse, violence against women and divorce statistics indicates that functionalists neglect the dysfunctional aspects of the nuclear family. Functionalism focused excessively on the nuclear family form and insufficiently on other family forms. Marxist and Functionalist theories of the family tend to assume that the nuclear family is the dominant family form and therefore neglect diversity. Both structural approaches to the family Marxism and Functionalism can be deterministic, and this can make their analyses inaccurate and maybe over-generalised. Feminists, interactionists and the radical psychiatrists of the 1960s (Laing, Leach and Cooper) have all helped to correct these weaknesses.  Postmodernism has helpfully emphasised diversity, but it can be argued that it goes too far, ignoring the evidence of structural trends and dominant norms in our society(Doherty et al:, 1993). Functionalist approach presents the most positive view of theory. Types of Family The nuclear family is traditionally known to be made of the parents and their siblings and this is the most basic family arrangement. While the nuclear family is made- up father, mother and their offspring, extended family refers to aunts, grandparents, cousins and uncles. I would like to think that most societies have a concept of extended family. The relative structure, functions and importance vary according to the particular culture. Traditionally, extended family is referred to as kinship network of economics and social ties made-up of the nuclear family plus other relatives. The economic and social importance of extended family can most readily be seen when family members are living together. Even when extended families do not live together, nuclear families may rely on extended kin to help with basic day to day activities and may also co-dependent on extender family for economically and emotionally support. Contemporary family is ..In any particular time and place, families have always been more varied than the prevailing image of what the ideal family should be. Although family types are even more diverse than in the past, most contemporary families are still variations on the traditional nuclear family pattern. Family structure Lone parent Single parent can be caused by death of a spouse, divorce, and separation. This may lead to single parents being overwhelmed with their loss and the responsibilities. Most single parents are women, who may face somewhat lower income and will often rely on child support and government subsides. When parents divorce or are widowed children often experience loss and a disruption of routine. Children may also need a lot of attention, affection, and reassurance (Meyerhoff, 2010). Reconstituted family As we tend to think of families consists of a mother, father and their children, the reality is that there is a lot of divorces and remarriages occurring in our society such that a large number of families are actually stepfamilies. In remarried families, parenting is shared among different sets of parents and different household. Children will tend to visit in and out of households for visitations. Issues with children not accepting parenting from their stepparents can be an issue and this can be hard on children as well as the parents. Strong sense of loss can recur in remarried families due to the families not feeling intact, which may sometimes cause emotional scars, conflicting loyalties. Remarried families can be complex. Each additional member of the family system allows for another relationship or another with every other member of the family. The family is made up of biological parents, grandparents, siblings, stepparents, stepsiblings, half siblings and step-grandparents (M eyerhoff, 2010). With this many relationships between so many people there is potential for stress, but there is equally an increased potential for a large support network if everyone cooperates and communicates well. Hence reward can be tremendous. Adoption family Adoption family structure is complex but potentially rewarding . Changes in family structure Family structure has changed significantly in recent years, with increasing divorce rates and single-parent households (Field, 2003). Evolving definitions of family include people who may not be kin, but who act as family for some individuals, Rothausen (1999). Bogan (1991) uses the term wider families to refer to the concept and opines that such families result from individuals lifestyles and may not involve the sharing of a household. This concept of family describes a group of people who are invested in one another due to bonds of dependence, obligation or duty, love caring or cooperation (Rothausen, 1999). In the same way Weeks, Heapy and Donovan (2001) refer to same -sex families which are founded on bonds of individual choice, as families of choice. There is also a great deal of cultural variability in how the term family is defined. Changes to the family structure is also happening through ethnic difference which is also influenced by religion within the society In many Asian countries, a normal family may include three or more generations living in one household (Rothausen, Kanye, 2005). And as life expectancy continues to rise the number of multigenerational families may increase (Levade et al, 2000). The dynamics of family have changed, with couples having children later on following economic stability and careers. A lot of women are pursuing careers thereby starting family in the late 30s. Families might only have one child, this could lead to the child being spoiled (through parents trying to over compensate) and lonely. With new legalisation allowing same-sex couples to adopt families in place, the traditional family structure has changed to contemporary. Discussion Family friendly government policies are helping families by providing childcare, pre and after school care benefits (tax credit), vouchers, extended maternity and paternity leave, flexible work / life balance, Finn (2010). This is allowing families to spend more time together there by forming strong bonds, which is essential for a better relationship between family members. The stronger the relationship the more family became a haven in this heartless world. The family is a social institution. Due to diversity, different cultures have different concepts of family values. Same families can be oppressive (oppress individual development), restrictive, inhibitive and repressive. This can lead to families masking undercurrents and patterns of abuse, violence and potentially exploitation. Finn (2010) states that majority of abuse is within family unit and close relatives. Hence for the abused people family might not be a haven. An example of abuse by family is baby P incident (whereby a little boy lost his life through abuse by family members and extended family members). Baby Ps abuse occurrence and pattern was masked by the same family members who abused him, therefore family was not a haven for baby P. More often abused people sometimes become anti-social because of their lake of trust and also often became withdrawn such that they are un-productive. Abused people may often confide in people outside the family unit and are most like to beco me estranged to their biological family and they will forge relationship with people who they will consider as family. They often get support from outside the family unit. The will make family of choice based on friendship and this family of choice might be their haven in the heartless world, Lasch (1977). Support from family members differ between same -sex and opposite sex couple. The research by Kurdeck (2001) found that gays and lesbians received very little support from their families of origin as compared to the heterosexual couples, Bravewoman et al (1998). For the gays and lesbians who do not have support from their family of origin family is not a haven of. They might face the pressure from society and family to conform to what is traditional. This can lead to unrest, but family is a haven for the gays and lesbians who have strong family ties. Lawrence Stone (1977) argued that, the new family ideal prescribed domestic privacy and strong emotional attachments between spouses and between parents and children. Todays life style has lead to longevity, meaning parent and child relationship can last fifty years or more. Family remains a central attachment in most peoples lives, thereby family acting as a haven in this heartless world. Summary The change in the perception of family in recent times is through people choosing a family life in whatever shape or form and that people still desire a family life and family is still a required lifestyle option for the majority of people, Finn (2010). Therefore there will always be a variation in family units. Families will come in different shape and sizes and such differentiation is expected. So family will vary from time to time and place to place. For the majority of people the family is a haven in this heartless world, for family is a source of great joy and warmth. Whatever your particular family situation it will have tremendous influence upon your childrens happiness, development and future. A strong relationship with extended families can be just as rewarding as close ties inside the nuclear family. However building those bonds inside the extended family can be a little more difficult because, obviously everyone does not live under the same roof. For young children, living in a big family can be a lot of fun. The traditional family will continue to exist along other alternative family and everyone has a right to choose which family they belong too and the one that suit their situation and circumstances. Hence family life in whatever chosen shape is still the desired and required lifestyle option for the majority of people.

Unhappy Cows – Short Essay

The California dairy Industry would like us, the consumers, to believe that their dairy cows In some mysterious way are â€Å"happy cows†. They literally use this term, thus insinuating that for some reason or another, milk from California is better. Or, perhaps they are trying to convince us that cows in other states are too â€Å"sad† to produce quality milk. However, I say this campaign is nothing but a big pile of manure. Pun intended. I have found no research supporting the claim that California cows are â€Å"happy sows†.At least, no happier than normal. In fact, Californians practices are quite the same If not Identical to any other states. It Is very sad that they use a campaign of hope and happiness when in all reality their dairy cows are mistreated just like the rest. Dairy cows endure annual cycles of artificial insemination, mechanized milking for 10 months out of each year, which includes 7 months out of the 9 months a cow may be pregnant. Cows both In California and around the nation are given hormones so hat they might produce more milk.This active and rigorous cycle overburdens the cows, thus only making them useful as dairy cows for two years. These particular cows are usually slaughtered at four years old. Dairy cows are expected to produce one calf per year per cow according to the U. S. Department of Agriculture fact sheet. Just imagine what kind of strain this must be on the animal! This would be comparative to a human running or jogging 6 hours a day, every day for a year while pregnant! Does that sound Like a happy cow to oh?Most female dairy calves are eventually put onto the milking line while most of the male calves are found to be useless and are often sold into the veal industry. Yes folks, even the calves from the â€Å"happy' California cows are sold to these kinds of industries. Hundreds of thousands of little baby calves are shoved into cages so small they can't so much as turn around until they are roughly 12 to 14 months old and then they are slaughtered for their meat; the meat that has gone tender after so many months of little to no activity.California is essentially capitalizing on American citizens ignorance of what is happening right in front of them. If people of this country would bother to read the facts, I doubt they would be supporting this ridiculous â€Å"happy cow' business. Perhaps Californians campaign should be a bit more realistic, such as the way we treat our cows will make your milk curdle'. â€Å"Farm Bill : Laws and Regulations : National Agricultural Library. † Information Centers : National Agricultural Library. US Department of Agriculture. Web. 10 Novo. 2011.

Issues in Scottish Curriculum Design Essay

The way that any curricula is broken up into is two main ways; one being the curriculum in action, where the aims, content and experiences of the curriculum on paper are implemented in practice. The other is the curriculum on paper which is the ideology of what should be implemented in education across the board. The ideology in curriculum can be split up into four main categories. Most papers on this topic, agree to an extent what the four ideologies constitute of, but Schiro’s (2008) ideologies are the most commonly known. The ‘Scholar Academic’, the ‘Social Efficiency’, the ‘Learner Centred’ and the ‘Social Reconstruction’ ideologies are the four main categories explained in the Curriculum Theory that will be discussed in this paper in relation to The Curriculum for Excellence, the current curriculum in Scotland. The oldest of the four ideologies is the Scholar Academic ideology which focuses on the accumulation of knowled ge and understanding. The aim of this ideology is to pass on the knowledge of certain disciplines (subject areas), to allow there to be future scholars in that particular area and therefore, further develop understanding. The academic disciplines are the result of the culture’s compiled knowledge and understanding of each area, and with this in mind, the purpose of education is to assist pupils to learn this knowledge. The next ideology is Social Efficiency. This is pretty dominant in our curriculum today and means to prepare the learner for becoming an efficient and contributing member in society. The learner’s objective is to learn certain skills that will in turn achieve certain objectives that benefit society (Lorrie A. 2000). The individual will learn a mixture of knowledge and skills that can be put together, therefore making the skills more efficient and more beneficial to society. The learner centred ideology focuses more on the needs and interests of the individual rather than the c ontent they are to learn. The idea behind this theory is that learning will take place due to the interactions between the individual and their environment, therefore being more down to the experiences rather than the content. The newest of these ideologies is Social Reconstruction. This is where the social reconstructionists are aware of the problems in society and see the job of the educator to correct these problems in the classroom, hoping that it will reconstruct their society as it is (Groenke, S. 2009). The focus of the curriculum would not be based on knowledge but more of values and opinions that would benefit the society and make it attain the greatest satisfaction of its members. In ‘Building the Curriculum 3: A framework for learning and teaching’ it has examples of all four of the classifications of the curriculum ideology provided by Schiro (2008). It has examples of Academic ideology as it discusses the importance of knowledge and the ability and opportunity to increase the depth of knowledge already acquired as it states â€Å"Throughout a young person’s learning there will be increasing specialisation and greater depth, which will lead to subjects increasingly being the principal means of structuring learning and delivering outcomes.† (page 20, Building the Curriculum 3). From this quote we can relate the academic ideology through the concentration on developing knowledge further to specialisation in certain subjects, therefore being able to pass on the knowledge and allow it to grow from there. There are many examples of ‘The Social Efficiency Ideology’ in the paper as it focuses on health and wellbeing experiences and outcomes where the individual’s get the opportunity to gain skills that benefit the individual in life and work, but also the community around them. This is to help them become effective contributors in society: †¦support all children and young people in developing skills which they will use throughout their life and in their work, including the development of pre-vocational, enterprise and employability skills, personal skills, high levels of cognitive skills and the opportunity to put learning into a practical context. (page 15, Building the Curriculum 3) This example shows that the curriculum is aiming to encourage the learning of certain skills that will improve chances of employability and life skills that will help the young people settle into society and be able to play their part within it. The Curriculum for Excellence sees itself as being centred on the learner, and their individual needs. There are plenty examples throughout the paper of this ideology where the child is involved in what they are learning and setting themselves goals to achieve and having choice in what they learn within the curriculum, â€Å"All children and young people should experience personalisation and choice within their curriculum, including identifying and planning for opportunities for personal achievement in a range of different contexts† (page 17, Building the Curriculum 3). This quote shows that the idea of the curriculum is to give young people freedom to make their own decisions in what they are learning and at their own level. There are four capacities that make up the purpose of the curriculum that are described in this paper. ‘Successful learners’, ‘confident individuals’, ‘responsible citizens’ and ‘effective contributors’, are the capacities that the curriculum aims to enable young people to become. ‘Responsible citizens’ is a good example of The Social Reconstructive ideology as it explains how they will learn respect and about different cultures and how to behave responsibly within the community in all aspects (political, cultural or otherwise). As Building the curriculum states: †¦able to develop knowledge and understanding of the world and Scotland’s place in it, understand different beliefs and cultures make informed choices and decisions evaluate environmental, scientific and technological issues develop informed, ethical views of complex. (page 22, Building the Curriculum 3) Here in this example, it shows that the curriculum wants to provide young people with varied knowledge so that the decisions they make in the future will help to create a better society. The idea is to teach them about values and respect so that they may make better informed decisions as to what is best for the society around them. Building the Curriculum 3 contains examples of all four of the ideology categories, but there are two that are most prevalent, ‘Learner Centred’ and ‘Social Efficiency’. Upon examining the evidence in more depth it seems that the ‘Social Efficiency’ ideology is the most dominant within this paper. Its main focus is on preparing and equipping individuals for future endeavours. For instance, the skills needed for future work prospects upon which Kridel’s (ed.2010) summary, of David Sneddon’s idea of social efficiency, explains the curriculum as a way to make individuals efficient for work. As discussed by Arnoldy (online), social efficiency in education is more for the benefit of the social economy than for the individual, but contradicting that theory in this paper, are the examples of learner centred ideology that is dotted throughout. Though, combining these two theories, Valades’ (online) talks about the idea that to help out society, educating young people to learn and improve their skills and capabilities to help the community in the future, is the way forward. From Building the Curriculum 3 and having summarised that the main ideology behind it is focusing on preparing the individuals to become more efficient and productive for contributing to our society, we can see that there will be some implication for teachers. Teachers who have been teaching for years under the same curriculum will struggle to accept the new curriculum, if it is as completely different way to how they have been teaching before. Although the main focus of the curriculum in Scotland has been focused on preparing individuals for the future, it has not been focused on the more individual level. This may cause implication for teachers as they only have specific allocated times to be with classes and it will be hard to offer each individual, the time and attention they need to develop specific skills to the point of being efficient. The teacher will have to focus more on the experiences and outcomes the learners are objected to, to develop the skills needed for the real world. This causes some problems as it depends highly on what the school can afford to give in ways of experiences, as most of these will probably be met outside of school. So, teachers need to find a way of achieving the outcome of making the individual a more effective contributor to society by combining what they learn in and outside of the classroom. This would be a task for teachers, as the environment each individual they teach will be different and this therefore means that the teacher will have to find a way to combine these different environments or find a similarity and focus on that. Building the Curriculum 3 has some implication for teachers, but the focus being on social efficiency means that in some ways there are not so many changes from the past as at least for the last hundred years the school curriculum has been focused on making learners that will have skills that will help them achieve objectives that will make the society a more efficient place. A Comparative Overview of the Curriculum Ideologies – Chapter 6 http://www.sagepub.com/upm-data/47671_ch_6.pdf (visited 29th dec 2012) Critical Pedagogy and Teacher Education in the Neoliberal Era: Small Openings pp 3 Springer Netherlands, 2009 volume 6 Susan L. Groenke http://www.geocities.ws/rf_valades/index2.htm Social Efficiency Theory – SAVE SOMETHING TODAY Rodrigo Valades visited 29th dec 2012 The Role of Assessment in a Learning Culture Lorrie A. Shepard Vol. 29, No. 7 (Oct., 2000), pp. 4 American Educational Research Association http://www.sagepub.com/upm-data/47671_ch_6.pdf Chapter 6 – A Comparative Overview of the Curriculum Ideologies visited 29th dec 2012 Encyclopedia of Curriculum Studies edited by Craig Kridel SAGE Publications Inc 2010 Pg 4-7 Curriculum Theory: Conflicting Visions and Enduring Concerns, Schiro, M. (2008a) SAGE Publications, Inc Pg 199-245 Curriculum Theory: Conflicting Visions and Enduring Concerns Second Edition, Schiro, M. (2012b) SAGE Publications, Inc Building the Curriculum 3: A framework for learning and teaching, The Scottish Government, 2008

Conflict and Operational Management at Green Move Free Essay Example, 1750 words

In a business, it is important to maintain the sustainability of all kinds of resources, including human resources. It is highly unethical for Green Move to continue business with an organization, which does not comply with the requirements of the contract. Since the Solar Group is an important supplier for the company, the termination of the contract is not the best solution. The company director can discuss this matter with the owner(s) of the Solar Group as the latter will have to pay a heavy penalty in the event of contract termination due to non-compliance of requirements. As the interest of both the companies is at stake, Robert and other board members must convince the Solar Group to improve their work condition as well as to remove all child labors that are employed. As a part of corporate social responsibility, Robert can take measures for the development of the child labors employed by Solar Group by contributing to their education. In addition, he can personally visit the facilities of Solar Group in order to study the work environment and take remedial measures (King 481-485). We will write a custom essay sample on Conflict and Operational Management at Green Move or any topic specifically for you Only $17.96 $11.86/page Thus, Green Move must reframe the contract so that provisions related to international labor protection law and human rights act are incorporated. Green Move can propose to invest so as to improve the work condition and wage problems in the Solar Group.