Socio-cultural functions of the family
The family's high degree of psychological solidarity ensures successful fulfillment of the task of socialization of children and parents, which is the main content of the socio-cultural functioning of the family. Socialization includes the task of education, but is not limited to it. It also covers a variety of activities for the formation of the individual: the assimilation of cultural norms and values, behavioral and social skills, preparation for the fulfillment of the most important social roles. Thus, by analogy with the formation of the basic psychological needs of the individual, the family also lays the basic cultural values that govern future human behavior in different spheres of activity, forms scenarios of all possible roles that a person has to play.
Socialization is carried out through the interaction of generations that make up the family. Depending on the changes in the type of family due to the historical peculiarities of culture and a particular society, the type and mechanism of this interaction also changes. In the modern nuclear family, it is primarily about the mutual influence of parents and children.
A traditional family is organized so as to preserve the way of life of the older generation, to repeat parents in children. Children here - the object of socialization, whose task is to "fit" them into a clearly defined framework of existing roles, norms and values. The mechanism of socialization in a traditional family operates on the basis of the unconditional authority of the older generation, custom, ritual. The norm, based on tradition, and the deviation from the norm, implying strict sanctions, are clearly delineated.
The main feature of socialization in a new type of family( egalitarian, democratic) is that each of its members seeks opportunities for self-realization. Thus, the authority of the elders does not "close" the world to itself, by affirming the model to be followed, but opens up opportunities for free development. In the communication of the senior and junior, skills of critical attitude to contradictory and competing norms and values are developed, the foundations of the formation of independence, responsibility, and conscious attitude to one's actions are laid.
In the real practice of socialization these types are "mixed", we can only talk about the preferential attraction to this or that pole. At the same time, the mechanisms of socialization, characteristic of different stages of the historical evolution of the family, not only coexist in modern families, but also "turn on" as the individual family moves through the main stages of its life cycle. At the beginning of it - if we take as the basis of periodization the age of children - the mechanisms of traditional socialization are basically functioning, and the unconditionedness of parental authority serves as a prerequisite for mastering the main values of this culture. In the future, the process of "liberalization" of the traditional family is taking place: socializing effects are transmitted not only from parents to children, but also from children to parents.
At the same time, the degree of autonomy of family members increases, and the variety of their connections with the world increases. The mechanisms of other types of socialization are included, "children and adults learn from their peers and adults also learn from their children"( M. Mead).This is the period of inclusion in the process of socialization, along with the family of teenage and youth subcultures, strengthening the influence of other socializing institutions, the emergence of situations of competition of lifestyles( on the one hand, the family, on the other - peers or a reference group).Here there are complexities and conflicts, the acuteness of which depends on what kind of communication is accepted in the family. It is determined by the type of family, the type of social interaction in it, the type of organization of the relationship.
A traditional family will continue to demand obedience, obedience, and this can lead to conflict and rupture. The "democratic" family will strive for mutual understanding, dialogue, on the basis of which a new, more mature, though more complex style of relations between parents and children arises. It is during this period( transitional for the family and coinciding with the adolescence of children) that one of the most important tasks in the sociocultural activity of the family is solved: the formation of the basis for the style of communication, the style of interpersonal relations that a person will follow. At the same time, it is necessary to emphasize the inseparable connection between the socio-psychological and socio-cultural functions of the family, since successful socio-cultural activities in the formation of communication skills are carried out on the basis of a full-fledged socio-psychological functioning of the family.
This does not mean that socialization in a traditional family is necessarily fraught with conflict, and the mechanisms of socialization in a "democratic" family imply only harmony and harmony. Rather, since in the traditional family the main emphasis in education is on obedience, the parental authority often "works" in a tense situation, which avoids an open conflict. But if such a conflict does happen, then due to the marked features of socialization in a traditional family, it becomes a riot, fraught with a rupture of relations. In a "democratic" family, the conflict is not a form of breaking relations, but a search for solutions in a crisis situation. The conclusion is not that the "democratic" family is conflict-free, but that it is more than traditional, it can form the basis of a culture of conflict resolution, a culture of communication that involves flexibility, openness, the ability to dialogue and listen to the interlocutor. Along with the general education, awareness, skills of the culture of labor, which the traditional family is capable to bring up, the listed qualities become the most important socio-cultural characteristics of the personality, providing opportunities for its successful activities in modern society.
The tasks of socialization are, as is known, not only for the family, for and before other social institutions( preschools, schools, public organizations, mass media, etc.).Thus, the first problem faced by social policy in this area is how to ensure the interaction of these institutions. If the issue is sharpened, it will sound like this: which of the agents of socialization should perform the main role in the formation of a person - the family or the institutions of public education? From the answer to this question depends, ultimately, the cultural policy of the state in relation to the family, which is expressed, first, in the formation of a certain family ideology, and secondly, in the system of concrete measures.
These activities should be aimed both at developing the system of public education, and at creating optimal conditions for the family to fulfill its psychological and cultural functions. But the ratio of both directions can be different. This is due to the fact that the family can occupy at least three different positions in relation to the society, each of which will have its own "socializing exit".
The family can be "inscribed" into the society, the norms and values of which are understood to be correct and self-evident. Then they are not realized, critically not comprehended and more or less successfully assimilated in the process of family socialization. The family does not come into conflict with other socializing institutions.
In the event that the norms and values of the family are at variance with the value-normative patterns adopted in society, the result of socialization may be a conscious rejection of the dominant ideology, an active opposition in the form of dissent or revolutionary activity, or the development of a critical attitude to reality that finds expression in the reformatoryor educational activities. In both cases, we are talking about families with a sufficiently high cultural level and "strong" educational potential.
Finally, the family may not fulfill its socializing, sociocultural function due to a very low cultural level or the violation of some vital family ties. Fundamentals of disadvantage can be different: material insecurity, alcoholism, drug addiction, crime, alienation, "dislike", etc.
The transitional society in which we live is characterized by the fact that the number of families of the second and third types is numerically growing in it, and the real problem for family policy is primarily the families that do not fulfill their sociocultural function, i.e.families of the third type. They are in greatest need of special assistance - material, legal, socio-psychological and medical.
The situation described should be taken into account when considering the problem of the relationship of the family with the extra-family socialization institutions. For many years in our country recognized the unconditional priority of public education. This was especially characteristic of the first post-revolutionary years, when the process of destroying the former forms of family organization was going on. The ideology that was formed in these years was, in fact, anti-family - denying family property, inheritance, life, stability of relations.
Beginning in the mid-1930s, and especially after the end of the Great Patriotic War, legislative and other measures were taken to strengthen the family. But at the same time it was stressed that the Soviet family is based on completely new principles, professes a new morality, has a completely different nature than the family in any other society. One of the features of this new family ideology, which has survived to this day, was still the recognition of the unconditional priority of non-family child-rearing.
Now everyone is unanimous about the need to strengthen the family, but the very understanding of what a strong family, a happy family, does not remain unchanged. It reflects the objective tendencies of family evolution, the socio-economic characteristics of society and the characteristics of family ideology. In one case, the consolidation of the family means the complication and even the actual prohibition of divorce, intolerance of new, non-traditional forms of organizing family relationships, the prohibition of abortion. In the other, it is to provide maximum opportunities for choosing the style of family life, ensuring real equality, giving women the opportunity to work, acquire professional qualifications, etc.
That one, then the other extreme positions, which find expression in the official family ideology and family law, prevailed in different periods of Soviet history. In addition, the new family ideology was spreading in a country that had and maintained deep patriarchal traditions. These traditions were steadily collapsing - the objective social and economic basis for their existence disappeared, but new "democratic" traditions were only proclaimed, because the socio-economic basis of their existence was also destroyed - and more "successful" than the roots of patriarchal relations. This is due to the fact that the traditions of the "democratic" family( for example, among the urban intelligentsia) developed on the basis of a certain level of culture and well-known material well-being, which was unattainable for most families in the 1920s and 1940s. In addition, the traditions of a democratic family were destroyed, as families were exterminated - their bearers. Now the elements of different views on the family, assimilated by different generations of people, coexist, are expressed by the media, "superimposed" on the spontaneously emerging family ideology that is always present in society. Its source is socio-historical, national and religious traditions, subcultural features. This spontaneously emerging family ideology reflects the contradictory reality of the life of the modern Soviet family, in which, as numerous ethnographic, sociological and psychological studies show, patriarchal elements are deeply rooted. Such a family, when performing its socializing functions, meets with fundamental difficulties. They stem from the inevitable conflict between cultural patterns, to which the family objectively is able to orient the people it is socializing, and the demands that modern life brings to a person. If a person is brought up in the family in the spirit of unquestioning obedience, and he has to live in a world where he constantly needs to make independent decisions based on internal responsibility, he can easily become a criminal. This means that the family is incapable of fulfilling its socializing functions, which our society now often suffers from.