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The final requisite function that Parsons proposed is Latent Pattern Maintenance . Every system requires not only direct management, like with a government, but also indirect management. It is not the case that everything that goes on in our body is directed through cognitive functions. Rather, some of these functions, like breathing, are managed and maintained through the autonomic nervous system, a sub-system that maintains patterns with little effort. Society is the same way. It is too costly to make people conform to social expectations, there has to be a method of making them willing to conform. For this task society uses the processes of socialization (the internalization of society's norms, values, beliefs, cognitions, sentiments, etc.). And the principle socializing agents in society are the structures that meet the requirement of Latent Pattern Maintenance, structures such as religion, education, and family. (By the way, the word "latent" from which Parsons gets this term means not visible; dormant; concealed.) All the institutions that we will be looking at in this section fall under this function of Latent Pattern Maintenance.
The first agent of socialization (structures in charge of socialization) that we come in contact with is family. The family has a number of functions, all of which you can read in your textbook reading [and, yes, we are taking a break from Turner! : ) ]. Socialization and Latent Pattern Maintenance is one of the most important. We learn our primary reality base from family. The way we see the world, the way we feel about things, the way we talk and communicate, and the way we understand our self and the role we are to play in society are all founded in family. Later socialization (secondary) does occur, but family provides us with primary socialization.
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Family is also an institution that exemplifies change. In fact, that's why your textbook author includes family as a separate chapter-it is his example of social change! We usually take the structure of family for granted (remember the importance of the taken-for-grantedness of institutions). So family is a married couple and some kids. But this model, called the nuclear family, has not always been the model. In fact, it is a pretty recent model. Up until very recently marriage and family were more important politically and economically. People got married to avoid wars or to seal an economic commitment. Today we think that marriage exists for the individual. Marriages in the U.S. are not arranged; we marry simply for love (romantic love is an idea that started during the Victorian Era and was confined to the elite and their love affairs-one would have a wife to bear children and a mistress to love).
So the nuclear model that we hold is undergoing some significant changes. Some of these changes are societal wide (like the increase in single parent homes), some are the subject of much moralistic debate (such as whether or not to define gay couples as family), and some are present but not part of the public discourse (like an acquaintance of mine who introduced me to his wife, the mother of this children, and his girl friend-all three separate women, all four people living happily in this arraignment (you're being ethnocentric if you said something like, "those women couldn't possibly be happy with that kind of arrangement!"). Your textbook gives you some reasons for these changes and some of the ramifications of change. You also have a reading that specifically addresses the notion of "family in transition," some of the reasons why change is occurring, and the myth of the ideal family.
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