Family and Homosexuality: A sneak peak
In discussing things about the family, its importance and the main themes that rises from the context of it, we should not fail to realize that what we are defining is one of the most sensitive part of the society for everything starts to have their common day experiences with the help of their family background. We should take into consideration the vitality of the family as the central core of the values, norms, knowledge and culture that we have. For the sake of this analysis of the family in the functionalist perspective, we should take in to account what kind of family we are going to use.
And in this context, the family is a set of individuals with blood relation, living in a meaningful interaction under one roof. This would little down the definition of the terms. As we are discussing the essential point of the family, there had been a prior notion of conservatism as oppose t liberalism in existence to most of the family existing today. What we have know, the knowledge and the behaviors we have, are partly caused by the influence of our family in ourselves.
In having this particular scenario in our life, the family has been one of the great aspects that predict the several outcomes of our attitude. They are the one who holds the central values that dominates our personality as we are completely approaching the careers in our own life. Since conservatism prevails in most of the families, homosexuality is deemed as taboo by most of it. Many had developed negative attitude towards them that often produced negative behaviors and actions that have severe effects on their cognitive and social approach.
Since we are discussing here the implication of this topic to the well-being of the family, it is important to have a closer perspective in looking at the details that concerns this topic as it is essential in understanding them. Family: Manifest Function Family is one of the front runner and developer of one’s personality as one continues to live with their own life. As they experience different encounters and interactions with the members of the society, the family had developed and honed the reactions and behaviors of the people to ensure that they will have the appropriate reaction needed.
Therefore, the family at the first place serves as an institution of learning and training their members to go through with the challenge of their life. Another manifestation of the function of the family in the life of an individual is that they are the primary source of fulfillment of his or her basic needs. The family is the one expected to give their children food and shelter for them to continue living in their society. As this is one of their main responsibilities, they are expected to have the job or something that will generate income to provide their members the needs they have.
Looking closely, they are the ones who are we going to if we experience having difficulties in our life. For example, when we have our own family and we lose our job and we do not have enough savings to sustain the needs of our own family, we look back to our parents and siblings and ask for help, more importantly financial support. The instant reaction of your first family is to help you and to give you your immediate needs. In having this relationship to your family, they serve as your foundation of your personal stability for they are the ones who first provide your needs.
They are the one who influenced you that it is the family’s responsibility to ensure that everyone will be awake and still kicking the next morning and everyone was fulfilled in their material needs. Since they have this track of giving importance to the needs of each others, the sensitivity and the willingness to be a part of the family had developed to the minds of the children who will pass the tradition to the next generation. Aside from they are your sources of material satisfaction, they are also the people who will be your shelter and source of security.
For you, being with them is the strongest defense against problems and endeavors in life, so, by having this kind of perspective, you develop a more close response to your parents and family as they try to protect you from anything that may hurt you physically, emotionally and socially. If you will notice, by looking at our societal context, when someone in the family had met and accident or facing a trial in court, it is usually interfered with some members of the family and all of them are concerned with his/her future welfare.
As the bond between them had been strengthen by the fact that they had been facing problems not as an individual but as one. Aside from these cultural factors that affected the notion of the family, let us also consider that aside from this is the main function of the family, to pass on the heritage and the name of a family to the succeeding generations. They are the carriers of the physical and genetic information about the previous generation at the same time the name that was carried from time to time.
In connection with this, the family became the identification factor of the people in determining one’s identity in the society. It became a basis of the status of a person where his or her family became a central part of his or her personality. It is obvious when we are talking the traits prevailing to one family and another. An example of this is our tradition of putting a name after a name of a certain clans or family. For example, a family of fat people will be referred as the white fats or the big fats and not their real name.
This manifestation of our cultural tradition had become a norm in dealing with these kinds of things. As we progress in determining other variables that might affect the concentration of having this kind of notion towards the interpretation of family’s social position. Family: Latent Function Aside from the obvious manifestation of the family in one’s background and reactions in every day’s experiences, there exists several effects and latent function of the family. This includes the influence of the family to our daily interaction with different people.
As it is obvious I our daily experiences, we are aware that many people had been doing things based on their personal inclination and biases towards something or certain scenarios. We always think that most of it was developed by the cultural function of sharing values and norms from one person towards another. But we must not take the fact that the family had been the first ground where we first knew how to understand and perceive our own individual challenges compared to the effects of our society.
They are the first persons who taught us how to attach and decode the meaning of every little action that we do. In connection with this the family had been consistently adopting to the changes that the community is offering. They evolved from a previous system approaching towards another. This transition had affected the perception of the new generation to what is the original and righteous choice for them to follow. So, there is a basis to account that most of the actions of an individual can be based on the actual actions of his or her family.
We assume that this individual existed in the vicinity of his or her family. Then if this assumption is satisfied, the connection between the family and his or her expected actions and behaviors towards certain stimulus can be predicted and analyzed through the analysis of his or her family and its background for better definition of his or her actions and attached meanings to what is happening based on his or her senses. This will help us in determining the primary factors and effects of having a certain kind of environment with respect to a certain kind of family.
As it is evidently shown in any clinical and psychological analysis, it is very important to give significance to the background and historical phase of a family. Aside from one’s actions towards daily lives interaction, it is also visible to one’s behavior the imagination of the futuristic scenario made by the notion of the family’s core values and ideals in life. If we were to look closely to the definition of the family’s behavior, we can see that all those factors that affecting one’s initial reaction is solely influenced by the realm of the family’s influential power.
There are certain instances that we need to evaluate the exact definition of certain actions being done by an individual in connection to his prior knowledge of answering and doing things in his or her own accord. But, due to the systematic change and influential factor contributed by the increasing power set by the society to the family, which is the sole institution responsible for the upbringing of certain desired characteristics of the children of the new generation.
One of the most important functions of the family is the capabilities of the family to adapt to societal change and reproduce its characteristics in the vicinity of the family’s environment. Since this is the major role of the family in the society, much pressure were given to them in developing certain characteristics of the new generation who will be the next developer of the society. Social Dysfunction: Homosexuality in Family
One of the many problems arising from the notion of the family’s conservative view is the arising of same-sex family or even relationship that yields to a non-conformist cycle of the society. Many had seen this phenomenon as a great plague of the society for it violates the formal definition of a family. Because family was given the notion of a gender sensitive and conforming institution of the society, where the characteristics and the roles of the sexes are very much defined, there had been certain problems when the idea of having homosexual interaction was introduced.
Since the family is the most responsible to every actions done by an individual, it is important to see that this action could have been brought up due to the system in which the family introduced new topics and ideas to their children. But, this is happening on the other way around. It has been seen that the family’s role as the carrier of the traits of a generation to generation is one of the vital part in the society. Biologically speaking, if the family failed to give their offspring enough genetic information they should have, their will be a dysfunction of having a biological problem that sometimes lead to certain diseases.
One of this is the imbalance of testosterone, if happened, homosexuality will increase the chance of prevailing to their generation. Of course, from these biological views, all of this will not happen if the society does not trigger the primary effect of the biological factors to the social interaction of the individual. Then, if the cultural and the societal norms permit the definition of the individual’s sexuality of the individual, then, everything should go smoothly.
But on the other hand, if the cultural implication of having such problem will lead to the discrepancies of having a new defined sexuality that sometimes leads to a bigger problem. From this point of view, there could have been a bigger problem when the family itself failed to recognize the standard of having a family member of having an undefined personality and most especially, sexuality, when it comes to acceptance of the notion of having a societal problem’s manifestation in the family.
If the family itself can not accept the notion of having one in the family, it will result to a more serious psychological and sociological development with regards to how the individual cope up with his or her experiences in the environment which at the first place, he or she expected protection from the outside notion and discrimination being done by those who does not have the capability of understanding and acceptance. This had been resulting to severity of the problem that yields negative interpretation and attitude towards the flow of the society especially the interaction with his or her co members in the society.
Another dysfunction is when it became very tolerant of the family to the extent that everything that was being done by any member was accepted making it non-sense for any further self development to persist. As the evaluation of having a homosexual experience in the family, if the behavior has been reinforced by the family, therefore, the opportunity of having more numbers of sexuality related problem in the family will have a sudden increase and yield to a higher rate in which the society does understand the fake development as regarded to the family’s close ties and relations that permits this kind of interaction and behavior development.
Lastly, when the family became too protective and used other defense mechanism than to make them fully understand the scenario, most likely, having homosexual in the family will lead not to a better understanding but to doubts and confusions that asks the legality and the strength of one’s personal beliefs and ideas. If this will happen, then the rhythmic flow of the society will suddenly feel flaws and underdevelopment of the concepts favoring an environment that will foster a light touch of the community.
Caveat to the Functionalist perspective Although, functionalism perspective saw the society as a smooth running environment where any disruption will yield to a system dysfunction that contributes to much of the problems rendered to the society. If this is the scenario, then, it neglects the point of having individual experiences and interactions and the meanings made by it because it does not address the part of the society but rather an individual implication.
It ruled out the possibility of having a certain instances wherein they had a fake revolution of having systematical relation with regards to the flow of individuals’ life and his or her perception to his or her daily experiences in the society. If this will happen, then the attitude of the individuals will be mostly accounted to the over all interpretation of the action and not to the prior motive of the doer of the action.
Basing from the theories that persist and give emphasize to the function of a certain part of the society to the over all performance of it, the main criticism of this theory is that it does not explain why certain traits develop from a systematize society wherein change should not prevail or at least minimize its effects to the flow of the society. If this will happen, then the possibility of being engaged to different actions of the society not as a part of the society but as an individual will be ruled out.
Summing UP: Seeing Family and Homosexuality Depicting the challenges presented to the interpretation of family as a tool in homosexuality and its function with regards to the prevailing of the other will have seen as a potential cause of certain struggles and conflicts of an individual in developing his or her own identity in the society. It is a very important thing to understand what it is meant by the upbringing of this notion and concepts to an institution where the first hand of the new generation is based.
In doing so, there would have a specific attached meaning to certain actions in which the family is engaging most especially in giving efforts of doing things that has been a primordial effect of the congenital experience of the new batch of generating societal influence. Moreover, the primary reason of the influence of the family is the duplicating of the tradition that had been a long practice since the upbringing of certain notions.
In understanding the full context of family and its connection to the homosexuality, we should bear in mind that whatever the effects are, no matter how strong it is, there is something needed, such as cultural or societal intervention, for it to be triggered. References: Brim, Lie & Nelson. (2005). Sociology: Your compass for a new world. Brief Canadian Edition. Toronto. Calhoun, Light & Keller. 1994. Sociology 6th Edition. Mc Graw Hill Publishing. CA. Macionis, John. 2007. Sociology 12th Edition. Prentice Hall. CA.
Sample Essay of AssignmentExpert.com