Families and Intimate Relationships
The term “intimate relationship” is used to draw the distinguish between friends, sexual partners, family and kin. Whatever form they take, family relationships are a central feature of most of our lives (Wyse and Hawtin, 2000). However, there has been a trend over recent decades for families to become less close than they were in the past and this situation is largely accepted in society. This report will discuss the reason, examine the benefits and drawbacks of this development.
Article 1: “An evolutionary account of the prevalence of personality traits that impair intimate relationships”, (Menelaos and Apostolou, 2016). Personality traits such as low emotional stability and low empathy have a considerable negative impact on an individual’s mating success. This impact is more sever in cases where such traits reach extreme levels and are classified as personality disorders. On the other hand, the mass media is also one of the reason for decline in closeness of families, because of the modern technology the young generation is more interested in their online life rather than interacting with there family members in their free time. Moreover, the busy life style that now we lead. For example, in some countries the expenses are high as compared to the earnings and people are having to do work longer hours. So as a result, they don’t have time for there families. Another factor is the consumer driven culture that we live in, which has prompted less value being set on family connections. As a conflict perspective, “inequality in wealth and power is another factor, which affects the social structure of families”. A feminist theorist and conflict theorist note that families have traditionally legitimized and perpetuated male dominance. However, the families are socially constructed and vary according to time and place.
Article 2: “The effect of sex knowledge, parent-child attachment, and family characteristics on intimate relationships satisfaction of Mozambican students”, (Cruz, G. 2014). As a functionalist perspective the family helps to teach regulations of sexual behaviour, how to survive in this world and helps in maintaining a social status.
For the purpose of this study, sex knowledge is defined as the knowledge in all aspects of sex and sexuality, including the physiological, reproduction performative, emotional, and interpersonal (Reber and Reber, 2001). Intimate relationship satisfaction will be defined as consisting of independence, equality of decision-making, intimacy, liberated beliefs about sexual roles, assertive conflict resolution, communication and romance (Stevens and Stevens, 2003).
