Family and households

Types of family

Nuclear, extended, polygamous, single-parent, child-headed (affected by HIV/AIDS orphanhood), reconstituted, cohabiting and same-household transnational families (members working abroad).

Perspectives

• Functionalist: Murdock's four functions (sexual, reproductive, economic, educational); Parsons – primary socialisation and personality stabilisation.
• Marxist: the family reproduces labour and consumption, passes on inequality and ideology.
• Feminist: the family exploits women through domestic labour and patriarchy; dual burden and triple shift.
• Postmodernist: diversity and choice in family forms.

The African family

Kinship networks, lineage, lobola/roora, the role of the extended family in welfare, and changes due to urbanisation, migration, education and Christianity.

Changes and issues

• Changing gender roles and conjugal roles (joint vs segregated).
• Divorce and its causes: changing attitudes, women's economic independence, legal changes.
• Domestic violence; child marriage (outlawed by the Constitutional Court in 2016 and the Marriages Act of 2022); the impact of emigration on families (children left with grandparents).

Demographic change

Falling fertility, rising life expectancy, and their effects on family size and the care of the elderly.

Check yourself

1. Name Murdock's four functions of the family.
2. What is the dual burden?
3. Give two effects of emigration on Zimbabwean families.